Last month, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced their 2019 inductees, a list which includes Radiohead. However, in a new interview with Variety, frontman Thom Yorke divulges that he will not be in attendance for the induction ceremony on March 29th at Brooklyn, NY’s Barclays Center.

In the interview, he implies that it’s apparently just not that important to them. As Yorke explains,

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame… we’ve always been very blasé about that stuff. So we don’t want to offend anyone. We just think that we just don’t quite understand it. We’ve had it explained to us, so it’s cool. But we don’t really understand it as English people. I think our problem is essentially that every awards ceremony in the UK stinks. We grew up with the Brits, which is like this sort of drunken car crash that you don’t want to get involved with. [Chuckles.] So, yeah, we don’t really know what to make of it. 

When asked explicitly whether or not he will attend the ceremony, he responds,

I can’t. I know I can’t, because of these piano pieces that I’ve written. There’s the Paris Philharmonic, so I have to be there for that. [The piece he wrote for Katia and Marielle Labèque premieres at Philharmonie de Paris on April 7, nine days after the Hall of Fame induction.] 

However, Yorke is much more excited about another potential awards show at which his name may be up for recognition: The Academy Awards. His Suspiria theme, “Suspirium“, is on the shortlist for a nomination for “Best Original Song”, and when asked about the prospect of getting an Oscar nomination, Yorke is much more excited. As he explains,

The Oscar thing makes a bit more sense, I guess, because I’ve had it explained to me a bit more. I mean, I hope it gets nominated. That would be great, because it was a year and a half in my life, and I worked bloody hard on it. So, you know, sometimes it’s nice to be recognized. Sometimes, if you understand what it means.

The fact that Thom won’t attend the Rock Hall induction is not all that surprising. Radiohead members Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien both went on record as not being interested when they were nominated for last year’s class in their first year of eligibility. Greenwood simply stated, “I don’t care,” while O’Brien explained “I don’t want to be rude about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because for a lot of people it means something, but culturally I don’t understand it. I think it might be a quintessential American thing.”

The band has yet to comment officially on whether any of the members will be in attendance at the induction ceremony on March 29th.

[H/T Variety]