Thom Yorke – in pictures

Thom Yorke in 1992 Photograph: Photoshot/Hulton Archive/Getty

Radiohead in 1993, Seattle, Washington, US Photograph: Karen Mason Blair/Corbis

Thom Yorke at Reading Rock festival, August 1994. Tim Adams asks him, in his interview for the Observer New Review, if playing Radiohead's early back catalogue today must seem a lot like looking at old photos. “Yes," replies Yorke. "With bad haircuts. Of which I have had many … ” Photograph: Brian Rasic/Rex Features

Radiohead playing Glasgow Barrowlands in November 1995 Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Radiohead in 1996 Photograph: Pat Pope/Rex Features

Thom Yorke with Jools Holland on the set of Later... with Jools Holland in 1997 Photograph: Andre Csillag/Rex Features

Thom Yorke, Ryan Adams, Bob Weir, James Taylor and Neil Young perform at the 16th Annual Bridge School Benefit, in Mountain View, California in October 2002 Photograph: Steve Jennings/WireImage/Getty

Yorke performing with Radiohead at the Amnesty International Human Rights concert at Bercy Stadium, Paris in 2003 Photograph: Peter Jordan/PA Archive

Yorke at RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire as part of the protest against the "Star Wars" US missile defence system in September 2004. Yorke says now of the Labour government: “The Blair years I was most angry with. Still am. Just the level of hypocrisy. I always feel strongly that line in The Gloaming: ‘You are murderers – we are not the same as you’. We are still the generation who went into an illegal war. And the guy who took us there is giving lectures around the world and sitting in his lovely house with an armed guard. Every time I sing those words, I think of him sitting there. I think, how did we let him get away with that?” Photograph: sarahphotogirl/WireImage/Getty

Radiohead (l-r): Colin Greenwood, Thom Yorke, Ed O'Brien, Jonny Greenwood and Phil Selway in 2007 Photograph: Rex Features

Yorke performs in concert at the BBC Radio Theatre in Portland Place, London in April 2008 Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Photos

Radiohead at the 51st annual Grammy awards in Los Angeles, February 2009 Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Atoms for Peace performing in New York in 2010. The group, whose first album, Amok, is released on Monday, consists of Thom Yorke, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers (right), Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker from Beck and instrumentalist Mauro Refosco. When recording the album with Flea in California, Yorke became a surfing convert. “You can sit out there on a board for ages waiting for the right wave to come along. You can’t get angry about it. You know it will happen eventually and you start to understand the waiting itself might be part of it. Part of the fun… ” Photograph: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Yorke celebrates the physical release of the latest Radiohead album, The King of Limbs, and shocks fans who had queued for hours by handing out the first few hundred copies of Radiohead's free newspaper, The Universal Sigh, outside Rough Trade's Brick Lane store in east London, March 2011 Photograph: Dave M. Benett/Getty Images

Performing live with Radiohead at Sydney Entertainment Centre in November 2012 Photograph: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Yorke talks about his three-point plan of “running, yoga, meditation. Just being looser in your thinking allows you to avoid fixed ideas.” He has come to discover that the best things that happen musically “are often when you’re super-unsure and kind of flailing around. You just work at it and wait.” Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer

Yorke photographed for the Observer New Review, February 2013. He talks with journalist Tim Adams about his new project Atoms for Peace, and how he's feeling more relaxed in his approach to making music: “I’m 44 now. And I did start thinking, if I can’t enjoy this now, when am I going to start?” Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer

Thom Yorke Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer

In his Observer interview Yorke talks about his disillusion with the digital revolution: “Radiohead were so into the net around the time of Kid A. Really thought it might be an amazing way of connecting and communicating. And then very quickly we started having meetings where people started talking about what we did as ‘content’. They would show us letters from big media companies offering us millions in some mobile phone deal or whatever it was, and they would say all they need is some content. I was like, what is this ‘content’ which you describe? Just a filling of time and space with stuff, emotion, so you can sell it?” Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer