LimeWire Music Blog

I was intrigued when I heard that Thom Yorke would be attending last week’s climate change summit in Copenhagen. Was the Radiohead frontman — who has always been a voice in progressive politics — grasping for a Bono-level role among the world’s movers and shakers?

As it turns out, apparently not. In an interview you can watch at Huffington Post in Copenhagen with FORA.tv, Yorke was the same lovably dour outsider as ever. Sporting unkempt hair, his usual three days’ worth of scruff and wearing nothing resembling a suit, he told the interviewer that he was at the summit with a friend who he’d helped pass some important climate change legislation in the U.K. Asked what his role in that movement had been, Yorke deadpanned, “I was their hairy mascot.”

The Radiohead frontman didn’t have much positive to say about the conference, either. “Political life is… you don’t get any more stale and stultifying than this,” he said, in his typically candid style. “I’m utterly, completely out of my depth and have no wish to spend any more time than I have to in this environment.” What Yorke found most frustrating, he told the interviewer, was “the nonsense of so much of the discussion… we need to be working out the practicalities of the action that we need to take.” He also mentioned his disappointment in the summit’s elitism. “I’m stunned that there’s this whole G-8 vibe going on,” Yorke said. “This is a global agreement, so do it globally.”