Radiohead's Thom Yorke would 'sue the s*** out of' David Cameron if Tories used his music

The singer doesn't believe music and politics mix - despite rubbing shoulders with Obama at a climate change summit

Radiohead frontman has said he will “sue the living shit” out of David Cameron if one of his songs was used for a Conservative election campaign.

In a rare interview to promote his side project Atoms for Peace, Yorke told Dazed & Confused: “I can't say I love the idea of a banker liking our music, or David Cameron.”

“But I also equally think, who cares? As long as he doesn't use it for his election campaigns, I don't care. I'd sue the living shit out of him if he did. I can't believe he'd like [Radiohead album] King of Limbs much," he added.

Amok by Atoms for Peace, released on 25 February, is the first album Yorke has made with a full band other than Radiohead.

The 44-year-old musician says his political interests and his music rarely mix. However, he doesn’t agree with musicians such as Keane, Morrissey and Paul Weller who have lambasted politicians for enjoying their songs.  

In 2010 Keane’s single “Everybody’s Changing” was used at a Conservative Party manifesto launch leading drummer Richard Hughes to react on Twitter with the words: “Am horrified. To be clear – we were not asked. I will not vote for them.”

He did pen a song about the death of weapons expert David Kelly in 2006: "The David Kelly thing was very much an exception. I thought it was just so horribly English, so f***ed up. Politics is not a fun thing to write about."

He is a passionate climate change campaigner and ran into the American President in Copenhagen in 2009. "I went to the Copenhagen summit, and that permanently flipped my lid, because the whole thing was so wrong. Obama stormed straight past me after the meeting he had with China, and it was just horrible,” he said.

“It sort of spun me out permanently to be honest. When you're presented with that level of stupidity it kind of blows your mind."

The musician sounds mildly dissatisfied with Atom, calling it “not dancey enough” adding:  “It’s not like The Eraser [his 2006 solo album]. But it's not a band album either. It doesn't sound like a band playing … We wanted to go into the song realm, because it felt good to do that. If it were up to me, every track would be 10 minutes long.”

Yorke admits to being a workaholic and describes yoga as his means of maintaining emotional balance while touring.

"I do a minimum of an hour's yoga a day, usually an hour and a half,” he said. “Coming off tour you have this mad adrenalin, so it's a way of stopping the adrenalin crash. It stops me dropping."

The latest issue of Dazed & Confused is out now www.dazeddigital.com