The other talented Yorke boy

My imagination was already running wild. With a solo UK tour beckoning, what did the former frontman of the Oxford-based Unbelievable Truth, who happens to be the younger brother of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, get up to on a 'last blast' with the boys?

When he mumbled something about sailing in a force six, I could only guess we are talking about hallucinatory drugs or a lethal vodka cocktail.

However, I'm quickly put right.

"We were on a bloody great lake learning to sail. Really strong gales. Not your usual kind of stag night."

Then again, anyone with even a passing knowledge of the other Yorke boy's career, will know that Andy is not your usual kind of rock star.

You would be hard pressed to think of many performers less taken with the hedonism, greed and hunger for fame commonly associated with the popular music industry that we know and loathe.

Since leaving Abingdon School and embarking, like Thom, on a career in music, he has followed his own lonely and sometimes dark path, which has seen him fleeing to Russia every time serious fame and fortune knocked at the door.

There have been spells working for Greenpeace as a translator, when he could have been producing best-selling albums, and years of self doubt and depression when he might have been relishing plaudits as one of this country's best songwriters.

Before recording his recently released first solo album at Chipping Norton's Bank Cottage Studio, he had determined never to pick up a guitar again.

With delicious irony, his acclaimed new album is entitled Simple, a word few would apply to this serial band quitter, who twice walked away from a major label music career and decided a masters degree in Russian at Oxford University was preferable to a life in pop.

"I hadn't really expected to do any more writing," he told me. "As time went by I picked up a guitar again and songs started to take shape."

He began writing as a long-term relationship was coming to an end, but they were to fully emerge over a three-year period.

"The songs were me trying to help myself feel better about everything. I was writing in spite of myself. They were therapy and by the end of it things were starting to sort themselves out in my life.

"It seemed a shame not to do something with them. I was not desperate to get back into the music business. But I'd written a collection of songs that I liked and they were not going to get heard by people who might be interested."

His band the Unbelievable Truth formed in 1994, taking their name from a cult Hal Hartley film, which set the tone of their art school approach to music.

They were instantly showered with praise for their delicate and often emotional songs.

The band released their first single, Building, on local indie label Shifty Disco in 1997.

Then came a deal with Virgin which spawned the EP Stone, two top 40 singles, and their 1998 debut album Almost Here, which was well received by rock critics. The trio's second, final album was fittingly called sorrythankyou.

His decision in 2000 to leave the Unbelievable Truth, who had at one stage looked destined to follow the likes of Oxford bands Radiohead and Supergrass on the conveyor belt to stardom, resulted from boredom, he now says.

It is not an explanation that will be readily grasped by those of us who would willingly have traded both parents and our bootleg record collections to be Bruce Springsteen or The Edge for just 30 seconds.

But, then, his brother, of course, is just as bad.

Stadiums full of adoring fans, millions in the bank and legions of serious music critics proclaiming him a genius and the most influential artist of his generation, have never managed to wipe the scowl off Thom's face (Maybe that's why we love him.).

Andy, 36, is more than happy to expand on why being in a rock and roll band is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Charlie Watts-like he speaks of the boredom of long tours. And like the Rolling Stones drummer, he feels the time spent on stage hardly compensates for the hours of hanging around.

"We were getting to play some pretty big gigs. But the lifestyle is not as glamorous as you might imagine. Getting on stage and playing was usually good, but that's only for an hour or two a day.

"I thought I could walk away from music because I felt there were other things that I needed to do. I felt I was not using my brain enough being in a band. My creative urges were being satisfied but the other part of my brain felt neglected."

He quickly rectified that by undertaking a masters degree in Russian at St Antony's College.

"I didn't have the right sort of character to be the front man in a major label band at the time. I didn't have the confidence," he now reflects.

You have to wonder, though, when your brother is the front man in arguably the biggest band in the world, whether that brings its own pressures.

Only the likes of Bob Dylan's son, Jakob, (who has also just released his first solo album) can perhaps fully understand the maddening irritation of being permanently categorised, defined and measured against the greatness of a close family member.

When it is a brother, it must be even tougher. Andy, however, rules out any sibling rivalry and seems genuinely relaxed when talking about Radiohead.

"It's not a major thing for me, although it does get a bit tiring. But I recognise it's inevitable. It's just the way things work. I see there are potential problems going by the name Andy Yorke. But, f**k it, it's my name.

"Radiohead are a brilliant band. I certainly recognise that myself. I love what they do. If I were being compared to someone who was rubbish, it would be a lot harder."

Nor does he seek to deny that Thom has been a significant influence musically.

"Being a younger brother, of course, I was listening to some of the same records. There was quite an obvious influence going on."

If Abingdon School may be regarded as the birthplace of both Radiohead and the Unbelievable Truth, it certainly also helped inspire Andy Yorke with a love of Russia that borders on obsession.

"I started learning Russian aged 12 because Abingdon happened to have a couple of teachers who taught it."

His first visit in 1987 was on a school trip, which he still talks of as a near life-changing journey.

"I was a 15-year-old boy and it was an amazing experience. It's been the driving force in my life ever since."

He studied Russian at Hertford College, Oxford, and spent a year living in Moscow in 1992-3.

"The country was in such an incredible state of flux. It was not so great if you were a Russian having to live through it, but to experience it was incredible. You never knew what was going to happen on any single day You didn't need to do anything. Something always happened."

After years spent battling between the lures of Russia and music, by 2002 Russia seemed to have won.

But if working for Greenpeace added to the romance surrounding his 'wilderness years', he readily admits that in recent years he has been helping western companies do business with Russia as a political analyst.

He has used his time out of the limelight he says "to think his way out" of what he now accepts to have been depression.

He continued: "At times I looked to religion and discovered how weird and crazy and vengeful the Old Testament is.

"I always had this idea of my life being very profound, very interesting and different from everyone else's. But life becomes easier when you realise it is the same very basic things that make everyone happy. So many things that once seemed complicated now appear simple."

Simple is the first album he has recorded under his own name and it is being viewed as a musician laying himself bare.

"I thought it was important. I didn't want to go by a band name. It is different. Now it's just 100 per cent me and my songs. There is a positive feel to some of the songs that was not always there in the Unbelievable Truth days."

He co-produced the album with his former bandmate and school friend Nigel Powell in the comfortable rural surroundings of Chipping Norton over three weeks.

"It was a great experience. I think previously I had been intimidated in the studio environment. I did not really understand what was going on," he told me.

Some find it more upbeat and less steeped in melancholy than earlier work. He is relishing everything being on a smaller scale and is even looking forward to touring, with a hometown date on October 12 at The Jericho, the iconic Oxford venue where, more than a decade ago, he supported his brother in a secret Christmas gig.

"I used to hide from fans at gigs," he recalls. "But I'm much better this time around."

Last Saturday, he married his girlfriend — a TV scriptwriter — in Bedfordshire. When I invite him to talk about the bride, he closes up immediately, even declining to reveal the name of the woman he is to marry.

It is good that he is back making music. But you do sense that life is never going to be entirely simple for Andy Yorke.