Thom Yorke on Radiohead not playing live for seven years: “I guess the wheels came off a bit, so we had to stop”

Radiohead have revealed they have not played live for seven years because “the wheels came off a bit” in 2018, meaning they “had to stop”.

• READ MORE: Jonny Greenwood tells us about The Smile’s ‘Cutouts’ and the “fun and natural” Radiohead reunion

At the start of September, the band announced their return to the stage, confirming they will play four nights each in Madrid, Bologna, London, Copenhagen and Berlin between November 4 and December 12, with tickets for all shows selling out very quickly.

They will be the first Radiohead shows since the end of their ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ world tour in 2018, with the 77th and final show having gone down in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center in August of that year. The band have also not released any new music since the album of the same name, released in 2016.

In a new interview with The Times, they have shed light on why it has taken so long for the band to play together again. “I guess the wheels came off a bit, so we had to stop,” Thom Yorke explained. “There were a lot of elements. The shows felt great but it was, like, let’s halt now before we walk off this cliff.”

Yorke went on to share that part of the reason was that he was still trying to come to terms with the passing of his first wife Dr. Rachel Owen at the age of 48 in December 2016. “I needed to stop anyway,” Yorke told the publication. “Because I hadn’t really given myself time to grieve.”

“[My grief] was coming out in ways that made me think, I need to take this away,” he added.

Explaining the role that music played during the grieving process, Yorke said: “Music can be a way to find meaning in things and the idea of having to stop it, even when it makes sense to, because you’re not well? Even at my lowest point? I can’t. I need something that I can hold on to. But there have been points in my life where I have looked for solace in music and played the piano, but it literally hurts. Physically. The music hurts, because you’re going through trauma.”

Guitarist Ed O’Brien has also spoken about the seven-year gap between Radiohead shows. “I was nervous going into rehearsals because I was effectively over Radiohead [in 2018],” he said. “It wasn’t great on the last round. I enjoyed the gigs but hated the rest. We felt disconnected, fucking spent. It happens. This has been our whole life – what else is there? Look, success has a funny effect on people – I just didn’t want to do it anymore. And I told them that.”

He continued: “I went through a very long dark night of the soul. I had a deep depression. I hit the bottom in 2021. And one of the things that was lovely coming out of it was realising how much I love these guys. I met them when I was 17 and I have gone from thinking I can’t see myself doing it again to realising that, you know, we do have some stellar songs.”

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Elsewhere in the new interview, the band members each reflected on the controversies stemming from their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Yorke saying the “low-level Arthur Miller witch-hunt” on the subject “wakes him up at night”.

The band were criticised for playing a show in Tel Aviv in 2017, Yorke got into a clash with a protester at a solo show in Melbourne in 2024 and Jonny Greenwood has been attacked for collaborating with and playing live with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa.

Yorke said he would “absolutely not” play in Israel with the band again, but Greenwood “politely disagreed” with him, calling the backlash “the embodiment of the left”, adding: “The left look for traitors, the right for converts and it’s depressing that we are the closest they can get”.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, meanwhile, have argued that the band’s “complicit silence” and support of Israeli performers during the “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” should lead to a boycott of their upcoming shows.

The post Thom Yorke on Radiohead not playing live for seven years: “I guess the wheels came off a bit, so we had to stop” appeared first on NME.