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Message 355: Boxing Gloves

In the video for “A Brain In A Bottle,” Thom Yorke appears wearing boxing gloves:

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From a 1995 Rolling Stone article entitled Radiohead Transform Emotional Turmoil Into Kinetic Pop:

His father sold chemical-engineering equipment and was a champion university boxer. “One of the first things he ever bought me was a pair of boxing gloves,” says Yorke. “He used to try to teach me to box, but whenever he hit me, I’d fall flat on my ass.” When Yorke was 8, his family moved to Oxford. At 10 he formed his first band, and two years later he wound up at a boys boarding school near Abingdon, England, where he spent several of his most unhappy years. He had few friends, fought frequently and, despite his formative training, usually lost boxing matches.

Colin Greenwood, in an interview with The Word magazine (now defunct, article mirrored here), said Thom Yorke’s “bobbly head thing” while dancing is “a hangover from the days when Thom’s father taught him how to box. ‘Thom’s got really broad shoulders,’ says Colin. ‘When you see them go down, boxer-style, that means he’s really enjoying it.'”

[edit Jan 2, 2021 to correct link to citizeninsane.eu]

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