Thom Yorke Read Online Free PDF Page B

art college it was the first time in my life that I’d ever been with people who did the same thing as me, they’d dress up for effect, get on the bus for effect.”
    Thom discovered that Exeter University had everything he loved and everything he hated. He couldn’t stand the lazy complacency of so many of his fellow public school educated students but the art course offered him a huge amount of freedom. Initially it was almost too much freedom. They told him he could do whatever he wanted but, for most of the first year, nothing appealed. His sketchbooks were full of lyrics and designs for possible future record sleeves. He was heavily into Francis Bacon so, on the rare occasions he did touch a paint brush, the results were large, morbid pictures with heavy splashes of black and red. He once said the best painting he did in the first year was of “a man blowing his brains out”.
    In the first year, he lived in halls and found himself part of a large scene of people who didn’t feel like they fitted into Exeter’s dominant, ‘Sloaney’ ethos. The band quickly dumped the name Git, only to choose the almost-as-bad moniker Headless Chickens; nonetheless, it provided a ready-made social life. In the first year, as well as Thom, Shack and Martin, the band included two talented violinists, John Matthias and Laura Forrest-Hay. They felt like they were part of their own, very distinct arty clique. Although Thom never took Headless Chickens entirely seriously, he appreciated how it gave him a social standing at Exeter, as well as a ready-made group of friends.
    “He had a kind of awkwardness about him, that somehow he didn’t quite fit, so when people were nice to him he really appreciated it,” says Martin. “I wouldn’t say for a moment that I took him under my wing, but the fact that on the second or third day of university there was somebody who knew him and said, ‘Do you want to join a band?’ I think he appreciated it. And I used to pick him up and tell him where things were and he definitely appreciated it.”
    To their surprise, Headless Chickens quickly became very successful, albeit in the tiny world of Exeter student life. Thom might not have liked everything about the university, but the fact that it was so conservative made it even easier to stand out and make a statement.
    “Because Exeter was such a Sloaney university, there was an awful side to it,” Headless Chickens’ violinist Laura told the author, “which was all these very rich, upper-middle-class kids who hadn’t got into Oxbridge who’d been sent by their parents to Exeter and were definitely not clever enough to go to university. They had way too much money and lived out in farmhouses in the countryside and had gambling parties. But what that meant was, those of us coming to Exeter from less well-off backgrounds, or normal backgrounds, were a little minority and that brought us together. Anyone who wasn’t Sloane-y and who was remotely interested in the arts formed this weird little gaggle of people who weren’t into anything else. We all mixed together and it was quite intense. We went to Edinburgh, and we had these one-off Dada nights and [we had] Headless Chickens, anything not to be with the Sloanes.
    “It was very easy to be alternative at Exeter because the norm was so conservative,” she continues. “It was so conservative it was embarrassing. There were so many very comfortable people. If you were in Headless Chickens you were the pinnacle of the alternative scene! If you were a bit unsure of yourself and knew that you didn’t fit in with the main crowd, it was great to have the kudos of being in this band.”
    Despite its reputation, that era of Exeter University produced a number of people who would later be highly successful. JK Rowling was there a couple of years before Thom, while Basement Jaxx’s Felix Buxton was a contemporary, as was sculptor John Isaacs and presenter and documentary maker Toby Amies.
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