After seven years off the road, Radiohead is finally making a comeback — and frontman Thom Yorke is opening up about why the band needed such a long break.
In a new interview with The Times, Yorke said the band hit a wall during their A Moon Shaped Pool tour in 2018. “The shows felt great,” he said, “but it was like, let’s stop before we walk off a cliff.”
The pause wasn’t just about burnout — Yorke shared that losing his first wife, Dr. Rachel Owen, in 2016 left him emotionally drained. “I needed to stop anyway because I hadn’t really given myself time to grieve,” he said. “Sometimes even playing music physically hurt — it brought everything back.”
Guitarist Ed O’Brien echoed that the last tour left him completely spent. “By the end, I was effectively over Radiohead,” he admitted. But after some time apart, O’Brien says he’s rediscovered his love for the band: “I hit bottom in 2021, and coming out of that I realized how much I love these guys.”
Now, the band is ready to return — kicking off a 20-date European tour starting Nov. 4 in Madrid, with stops in London, Berlin, Bologna, and Copenhagen. All the shows sold out within hours.
Of course, controversy still follows them — including past criticism over performing in Tel Aviv and Yorke’s onstage exchange with a protester earlier this year. Still, Yorke says the constant scrutiny “wakes me up at night,” while Greenwood added he “politely disagrees” with calls to boycott Israeli artists.
Despite the ups and downs, one thing’s clear: Radiohead’s back — older, wiser, and ready to play those stellar songs again.