2008-01-17 | Zane Lowe | Radio 1 Podcast

Annie: Hello. I’m Annie Mac. Ed and Thom from Radiohead to cover Zane’s show on Thursday. There were some very, very good records. Here’s the hottest ones.
Ed: Should we say who we are? In case someone’s driving down the M5 wondering what the hell’s going on.
Thom: Oh, yeah.[with sexy voice]
Ed: We are from Radiohead. I’m Ed.
Thom: I’m Thom.
Ed: Hello.
Thom: Hello [laughs].
[MIA - 'Paper Planes' (XL) plays]
[The Bug - 'Poison Dart' (South Rakkas Remix) (Ninja Tune) plays]
Thom: Oh yes. Good evening. [with sexy voice]
Ed: Nice.
Thom: Yes.
Ed: What was that?
Thom: That was um—the South Rawkus crew remix of the Bug tune “Poison Dart”. I like that tune.
Ed: And the first track was what? That was M.I.A.?
Thom: That was M.I.A.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom and Ed: “Paper Planes”.
Thom: Sampled.
Ed: Sampling The Clash, of course, all you listeners will know.
Thom: That’s right.
Ed: “Straight to Hell”. Classic track.
Thom: Will be able to keep this accent all the way through?
[Ed laughs]
[Thom laughs]
Ed: That’s Thom.
Thom: Alright. So 81199. Send the lovin’, yeah.
Ed: For the texts.
Thom: And um…
Ed: What we got next? We got—we’re gonna play a few tunes tonight.
Thom: Are we dropping the accent now?
Ed: Yeah. Officially, we’re going back to Oxford. Strictly Oxford.
Thom: I like it.
Ed: Okay.
Ed: Strictly Oxford. The next track on our airwaves will be uh—Kings of Leon: “Charmer”.
Thom: You like the Kings of Leon, don’t you?
Ed: I bored your senses about this being the best band in the world at the moment. And they are.
Thom: Here we go.
[Kings of Leon - 'Charmer' (Sony)]
Thom: Nice!
Ed: You like that?
Thom: Yeah! It’s like The Pixies.
Ed: Yeah, man. It’s good.
Thom: And uh—speaking of that era—what we got next, boy?
Ed: We’ve got Sonic Youth.
Thom: Uh.
Ed: “Youth vs. Fascism”. Off one of my favourite Sonic Youth records.
Thom: Me too.
Ed: Dirty.
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: 1992.
Thom: With the dirty word taken out.
Ed: I saw them live on this tour. One of the best gigs in my life. Brixton Academy. Sonic Youth, and Pavement opening for them.
Thom: Wow! Cool.
Ed: Good night.
Thom: Good night.
[Sonic Youth - 'Youth Against Fascism' (DGC) plays]
[!!! - 'Heart Of Hearts' (Warp)]
Thom: Wow!!
Ed: Wow!
[Thom and Ed laugh]
Thom: It’s like ‘Give up and go home’, ain’t it, really?
Ed: Should we say who we are? In case, you know, someone’s driving down the M5 wondering…
Thom: Oh, yeah.
Ed: … what the hell’s going on. We are from Radiohead.
Thom: Yes, good evening.
Ed: My name is Ed.
Thom: I’m Thom.
Ed: And we’ve got some… What have we got here?
Thom: I don’t know. What’ve we got?
Ed: We got some texts. We’d like to read out texts... in our way. There’s one from Ken: ‘Hi guys. I just wanted to say thank you so much for yesterday’s gig and making the effort and arrangements to move it from Rough Trade. Was fantastic.’ Thank you, Ken, for being there. We had a ball.
Thom: ‘A guy I work with says his wife Joannie is teaching you harp. True?’ Nope. ‘Hey Radiohead people, looking forward to your show. Good luck, Rebecca Sinclair in Scotland. Thanks, Rebecca.’ ‘Radiohead plz-plz-plz-plz-plz, Roger the trucker’.
Ed: On the M5. He’s on board.
Thom: ‘Love, Warrior Queen. Mmm.’ That’s someone called ‘mmm’. Ah, the rest are on the floor.
Ed: ‘Big love. Big love to everyone in the studio. Cracking start to the show.’
Thom: Aye!
[Ed and Thom laugh]
Ed: You’re too kind, ?.
Thom: What’re we doing now?
Ed: What have we got, Annie?
Thom: Oh! By the way, this is Burial in the background.
Annie: Nice.
Thom: Not that Burial should be in the background. It’s just that Radio 1 should be playing it all the time. [laughs]
Annie: [laughs] So we’re going to play it all the time…
Thom: Well, actually that might not work too well. Anyway…
Annie: Every time you speak… That’s good enough.
Thom: Anyway, where are we now? [laughs]
Annie: I wanted to say there’s a chat room. If anyone wants to…
Thom: Yes.
Annie: … go in there. Bbc.co.uk/radio1. And also, every track that Thom and Ed pick is going up online as well, so you can read what we are playing in the show tonight. Um—I’ve got… I don’t know how you pronounce this. Chuck-chuck-chuck.
Thom: Yeah, I think…
Annie: How do you say it?
Thom: I think that’s right, apparently. Yeah. Or… you can… exclaim three times, because it’s an exclamation mark three times there, then you ? That’s the link.
Annie: Should we play it?
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: Okay.
[!!! - 'Heart Of Hearts' (Warp)]
Thom: There you go. That’s “Heart of Hearts”. Screaming hit.
Ed: Was it a hit? It was.
Thom: Was it?
Ed: I don’t know.
Thom: I don’t know. I don’t care that much.
Annie: I don't think it was a chart hit, exactly.
Thom: Oh.
Annie: Like a Top 10.
Thom: Really?
Annie: But it did do well.
Thom: Oh, good! Excellent.
Annie: Uh-huh.
Thom: Deserves to.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Right now… Where are we? Uh—I got more bits of paper. Mmm—‘My dad saw you in Oxford the other day, Thom.’ How unusual.
[Annie and Ed laugh]
Ed: We’re gonna—we’re gonna phone Colin and Phillip, and Jonny…
Annie: [undecipherable] band. Brilliant.
Ed: …at some stage through the show. And we’re not gonna tell them—none of them know who’s going to be phoned first. So um—I think that might be quite fun.
Thom: Hello, boys, if you’re watching, which I’m sure you’re probably not doing.
Ed: Yeah. I think one of you is going out to dinner.
Thom: Mm, alright. Um—okay. So um—what’re we doing next? Oh, yeah. Okay! So we’ll keep it brief. Another track. This is… whatchoo got? Predictably enough, Modeselektor. Um—always going on about them.
Ed: Always going on! [laughs]
Thom: I [undecipherable]. [laughs] They don’t know it. But zey are German. Zey are loopy-loo. And this is “Dark Side of the Sun” as clean as it’s gonna get ‘coz the original’s well dirty. Turn up the bass in your car.
[Modeselektor - 'The Dark Side Of The Sun' (BPitch) plays]
Thom: Yey!
Annie: I love that! That was amazing!
Thom: It’s amazing, man! I think it’s so dark!
[Annie laughs]
Annie: Who’s the rapper on it?
Thom: Um—I would have to look that up, which…
Annie: We’ll look it up.
Thom: We’ll get them to send in that one.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: Yeah. Um—what’re we doing now, boi?
Ed: We’ve got a few texts, haven’t we?
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: ‘Thom and Ed, I love you. If you read this text, my life will be complete. Radiohead is the reason why I write music. Yours sincerely, E.H.’
Thom: Ah… Well, there you are, you’re complete! No more holes.
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Ah, ‘Hey Radiohead! Loved your gig. Plz…’ Oh, ‘please read it out’. Um—okay, whatever. ‘Tom, Manchester.’ Your turn.
Ed: ‘Dear Thom and Ed, please leave Zane a playlist, as his shows are never this good or contentious.’
Thom: Ooh!
[Annie laughs]
Ed: ‘Squeeze in some Polyphonic Spree for me please.’
Thom: Oof! Ah, whatever. [mumbles]
Annie: I was excited there before Polyphonic Spree.
Thom: Yeah. Badly wrong there.
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Um—‘I queued outside yesterday, but unfortunately couldn’t get in’ [undecipherable] ‘Thanks again for webcasting. Any chance you would do something similar in London again?’
Thom: Do you know how many people watched that gig last night, Edward?
Annie: How many?
Thom: Thank you. Uh—ten and a half thousand online.
Annie: Wow!
Thom: Which is mental, ‘cause you should’ve seen the set-up. [laughs]
[Ed laughs]
Annie: And that’s just live. Who knows how many people watched afterwards.
Thom: Yeah. Nigel, our producer, was um—backstage, um—mixing the visuals.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: It was really good.
Annie: At what point did you decide to upscale the venue? Was there intense talks ‘What are we going to do?’?
Thom: We do have to ask the police that.
Ed: Yes. The police came down because uh—basically there were too many people turned up…
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: …And they were worried about all the people who couldn’t get in. So they said we couldn’t do it in Rough Trade. The original idea was to do it in the shop, Rough Trade.
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: And uh—so, we—they wouldn’t permit us to do the gig there, so 93 Feet East, which is across the way in Brick Lane…
Annie: Yes.
Ed: … some of you will know, was uh—was having a quiet night, and the owners let us play and uh…
Thom: We broke down the gear [undecipherable]. Uh…
Ed: We didn’t.
Thom: We didn’t.
[Thom and Ed laugh]
Thom: We went off and have food, didn’t we?
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: But our crew…
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: …broke down all the gear, the p.a., the lights… everything. And moved it to the venue four hours um—from start to finish, which was…
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: … the most amazing thing. That’s a difficult thing to do if you don’t know.
That’s very hard. Um—and yeah, it was a really, really good night and got home at four in the morning.
Annie: First thing you’ve played in a while as a band?
Ed: Yep.
Thom: Yes.
Ed: About two years.
Thom: I guess so.
Ed: First time we’ve done a small gig like that—shameless that we are—for about…
Thom: Are we shameless?
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Well, it’s a bit shameful not to do the old club show. I think the last time we did it was uh—we did… Around the time of OK Computer we did two shows at the Oxford Zodiac, and we did a matinée performance for the under 16’s.
Annie: Really?
Ed: You probably don’t remember that, do you?
Thom: I don’t remember.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Ed: He never remembers anything we’ve done. [laughs] And we did a show. And that was the last time we sort of done a club show, so… It was good. It was—it was uh—yeah, it was fun. It was a lot of fun actually.
Thom: Anyway, move it on.
Ed: Yes.
Thom: Where are we going now?
Annie: C’mon!
Ed: We’re gonna go to a band called Os Mutantes, and a track called “A Menina Menina”[sic], which is um…
Thom: Can you do that again? 'Coz that was really good.
Ed: Os Mutantes “A Mina e Menina” [sic]. And they’re a Brazilian band and they were part of the ‘tropicalista’ movement, which was around—which is—it was this music cultural scene that emerged in 1968 against the dictatorship in Brazil, and uh—there were all these… I’m going to play a couple of other tracks by Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa, and there was Roberto Gil. And what they basically did was they fused um, you know, they took from The Beatles and the Stones and all the psychedelic music around that time, and fused it with a samba and Brazilian folk music, and they put it in this melting pot with these, sort of, overtly political lyrics, which had to be censored. But they kind of put it in under the radar. They got it under the radar. And some of the best music, um, you will ever hear, is his. If anyone’s interested—if you like the tracks I play—there’s a compilation on Soul Jazz Records called Tropalista [sic]…
Thom: Trprl…
Ed: Tropicalista*, and it’s a really good introduction to this whole kind of genre of music.
Thom: I think I’ve got that, yeah.
Ed: Yeah. Os Mutantes.
[Os Mutantes - 'A Minha Menina' (.) plays]

*Note: Ed was probably referring to Tropicália, and not Tropicalista (which is the movement).

Ed: What’d you think?
Thom: That’s pretty good, yeah. I know.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: I like the fuzz on it
Ed: It’s straight out of Stones, isn’t it?
Thom: Hmm…
Ed: That fuzz guitar.
Thom: Yeah, yeah.
Ed: “Satisfaction”. Appropriated.
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: Uh—where are we going next?
Thom: Well, um…
Ed: Hottest record.
Thom: Annie says hottie… hottest record, yes?
Annie: Yes.
Ed: Hottest Record.
Annie: Hottest Record is next.
Thom: We had a bit of a discussion about that, and ended up with…
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Um…
Ed: Glass Vegas.
Thom: Oh no! No, no!
Ed: What’re we doing? Burial?
Thom: Bur…
Ed: Ah, cool.
Thom: Yes.
Annie: Well, you know what? You can have one each! Because you…
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: … you don’t have to agree on everything.
Ed: Yeah, yeah, you go first.
Annie: Thom, you go first, and then we’ll go with Ed’s hottest record after that.
Thom: Okay. That’s very diplomatic. ‘Cause otherwise there might’ve been blood.
Ed and Thom: [no idea how to transcribe that]
Thom: Okay, so… We’re gonna do um—I’m gonna choose a Burial tune because it’s Burial, and he’s the man, and… Although, actually, nobody knows who he is.
Annie: Is he—is he…
Thom: Except our mate Kieran. [laughs]
Annie: …is he a proper mystery man?
[Thom laughs]
Annie: Is anyone? ‘Cause I don’t know anyone who knows who he is.
Thom: Oh, but I do…
Annie: Do you?
Ed: Yeah!
Thom: [funniest thing ever, but how do I transcribe it?! :lol: ]
Ed: Kieran knows him, doesn’t he?
Thom: Kieran Hebden. Anyway… No, now he’s going to get followed around, after…
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Ah, ah, okay, so… Um—the one we’re choosing is “Archangel”. Apparently, there was a debate about this on the Radio 1 playlist. Is that right?
Annie: Yes, I think it was.
Thom: It was.
Annie: I think it was brought up, anyway.
Thom: Brought up. Okay. Well, I’m bringing it up again just, you know…
Annie: Okay.
Thom: … just for the sake of it.
Annie: Here we go.
[Burial - 'Archangel' (Hyperdub) plays] [Thom says something while the song is playing, but I didn’t get it]
Thom: Hoo!
[Thom, Annie and Ed laugh]
Annie: Thom Yorke was dancing in the studio…
Thom: Yeah, and then I…
Annie: Forgot that he was a D.J.
Thom: … fell through the floor.
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Um—okay, so… so uh—actually I’ve got Burial again. See that’s poor taste, so maybe we should just fade that out…
Annie: Should we fade that out?
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: ‘Cause I’ve got another instrumental.
Thom: Right, so…
Ed: We love that.
Thom: Okay, good, we love that.
Annie: Okay, tell us why you chose that one, Thom.
Thom: Um—because um—it’s uh—ufff—to me, it sounds a lot like um—2007-2008. That’s what 2007-2008 sounds like. And um—and it’s… dark as, um—and I don’t agree… Who’s saying that this [undecipherable]?
Annie: Oh, I was telling Thom that Hadouken came in last week and said—talked about Burial. They also played a Burial track. But they said they thought it was the first dubstep coffee table album.
Thom: Wrong, man! That’s so wrong! That’s not… Anyway… I um—I don’t really know what it is necessarily.
Ed: I’ll tell you why I like it. ‘Cause it’s so visual.
Thom: Yeah…
Ed: When you get a really good record like this—like Untrue is—and it’s so, it’s like a soundtrack that you can put it on and it can accompany, you know—you’re walking—
wherever you are. It feels very urban. It’s not one for the countryside. Maybe it is…
Annie: Yeah, I think it’s… I don’t know.
Thom: Yeah. I—I mean, well… I live further out than you, mate. Um—and uh—it definitely works in… down in the countryside in the dark.
Ed: Okay.
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: I can see that.
Annie: Would you, Thom—would you say it’s indicative of dubstep, that sound? ‘Cause I’m sure there’s a lot of people…
Thom: No, because…
Annie: … that don’t know what dubstep is.
Thom: No, Burial’s just cu—what’s the word? Cust, cut his own little niche.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: [undecipherable] Um—no dubstep’s generally is um—is a much more—well, I guess it’s a purer thing, a lot of people would say it’s purer than that, you know? But…
Annie: It doesn’t usually have a vocal, really.
Thom: Mm, yeah… Um—it’s just about kicking the stick and all that stuff to me. I mean… I don’t really know what it is. I mean, I know what it is when I hear it, but um—I don’t understand why its not um—taken over. [laughs]
[Ed laughs]
Annie: I think it’s on the way, though. I think—I think, in the last six months, anyway. Thom: Right.
Annie: This album—Burial’s album—has really helped it… quite a bit.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Yeah, I mean, it’s great, you know? I mean, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like it, so um… But it’s not just… As I said, it’s got this quality to it where um, you know… You know, what’s really interesting about it? It’s that it’s one of those things where he’s—someone’s working on their own a lot um—headphones, whatever… and it’s so much about actually the way people listen to music now, anyway. It’s a very…
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: … enclosed environment.
Annie: Introverted [undecipherable]
Thom: Anybody who’s listening in their car, you know, that sort of tune sounds great, because it’s got its own completely unique space. Um—you know?
Uh—so… I’ll shut up now.
Annie: [laughs] Are you enlightened, Ed?
Ed: I am enlightened. I like your—what did Wikipedia say, Annie?
Annie: Wikipedia—I looked it up today ‘cause I never really knew what dubstep was, either…
Thom: Yes.
Annie: … And I knew Thom was going to choose dubstep, so I wanted to look like I knew what I was talking about, but no, I decided to look it up, so obviously I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: But it said in Wikipedia there’s like half—it’s like half step, as in the snare, a lot of times the drums is half step. You can disagree, obviously, Thom. And then the sub-bass kind of is twice the speed, and that makes it… it’s kind of half step and…
Thom: What it—obviously it comes from dub uh—
Annie: Dub reggae.
Thom: Yeah, like there’s one tune—that we will play later—“Disrupt”, which is actually just uh—it is like old school dub. It’s sort of done electronic.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: As you say, the double the speed, but they keep the darkness of the original principles of dub.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: But it’s like—it’s up, man, you know? It’s uh—it’s supposed—it’s energy thing, I suppose. They use a lot of the kick and stick thing. It’s very dry.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: That’s why Burial is different. ‘Cause he’s not like that.
Annie: Yeah. Okay.
Thom: And that’s all I know!
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: That’s about it.
Ed: Nice.
Annie: A lesson in dubstep from Thom Yorke! What do you know? [claps]
Thom: God helps us all.
Annie: [laughs] What should we do next?
Ed: Well, you mentioned old school, so we’re gonna go real old school. Um—Sugar Bear. A track called “Don’t Scandalize Me”, which is a classic. Um—and we were sort of trying to remember when we heard it, and we were reminiscing about our brief Haçienda days. I was a student at Manchester and Thom used to come and visit me.
Annie: See, I love this! I never knew that. You were Haçienda kids.
Ed: Well, I can’t say… I wasn’t like a week-on-week devotee. But I used to go down particularly—I was there in Manchester from ’87 to ’90.
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: So the first year that I went, it was kind of—I remember The Haçienda and it was—it was very cold…
Thom: [laughs] Yeah, it was very cold!
Ed: Yeah. Very cold.
Annie: It’s just a big old warehouse.
Thom: Yeah, that’s right.
Ed: Half full, and they used to have a night called ‘Zumba Night’, that I used to go to. And I think that was on a Wednesday night. But this is one of the tracks—the best thing about The Haçienda was—and this is all pre-Summer of Love; this is before it all really kicked off…
Thom: They were wearing black flares. There were whole posses of them in black flares. That’s the thing I remember.
Ed: Yeah. Black flares. But the music was—it was the first time I heard… I remember going in there and uh—hearing this, and hearing uh—Public Enemy. I think “Rebel Without a Pause” had just been released, and hearing that. And then it was mixed in with stuff like—I dunno—the Wooden Tops, and uh—and Indie… you’d hear The Fall—they’d then play The Fall, and it was a real kind of—it was a proper-proper mix. And it was really enlightening. We come from Oxford where the clubs were, you know, you’d turn up at the door and they’d go ‘No baked beans, mate. Sorry, no baked beans. No jeans’. You know, you had to wear trousers…
Thom: You know, the queue to get into the club was a scene in itself. I remember that.
Ed: No, it was good. It was great. It was—it was an amazing education for me. I went as a total Indie kid, and I wasn’t really into soul. And I didn’t know this thing called hip-hop, but then they dropped a track like “Don’t Scandalise Me”, which you’ll obviously—you’ll either remember or hear for the first time and it samples, “Once In A Lifetime”, Talking Heads.
Thom: Toom-toom-toom. [sings]
Ed: So um—yeah. We should hear it.
Thom: Let’s do it, man. Enough talk.
[Sugar Bear - 'Dont Scandalize Me' (Solid State) plays]
Thom: Tchoon!
Annie: That was amazing!
Thom or Ed: It’s good, eh?
Ed: Sugar Bear, man. “Don’t Scandalize Me”.
Thom: Okay. Bit more rapid talking.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: 81199. Text number. Uh—people in the chat room.
Ed: Okay.
Thom: Fake Plastic Steph, Soul Rebel, [undecipherable], Fat Ambassador, Greg the Hurd, Videotape, [undecipherable] Banner, Weird Salmons… mm… Moody Jones, Radioshed, Knotch.
Annie: [laughs] bbc.co.uk/radio1 to get in there and speak to all those people.
Ed: Got some texts. Yeah, um—‘Ed, apparently my friend sat next to you on the plane back from Scotland last year, after a gig…
Thom: [snores]
Ed: … and spilled his drink on you. He said sorry about that’.
Annie: [laughs] Do you remember that?
Ed: I know nothing!
[Thom laughs]
Ed: Honestly, that’s…
Thom: Pity the poor guy that actually happened to then.
Ed: Okay. Paul N. Derry’s on board. Nice one, Paul! ‘Thom, is it true that you didn’t bother learning to read music because there isn’t really a point?’
Thom: I couldn’t understand the principles involved. Rhythm, you see? Anyway!
[Annie laughs]
Thom: I’m smiling broadly now and I’m eighteen again.
Annie: That’s after Sugar Bear.
Ed: Nice!
Thom: Nice!
Annie: She's obviously a Haçienda girl.
Ed: ‘Hi. Please tell me you like Aphex Twin, Thom. Lee from Peterborough’.
Thom: Yes, mate.
Ed: Take a wild guess. ‘Sounding fantastic. He’s cranking it right up. Neighbours are gonna love me. Any Irish dates this year. Andy McBee, County Down.’
Thom: Yeeesss.
Ed: Oh, yes!
Annie: You could talk about the tour now maybe?
Thom: Nah, nah. That would be self-promotion. We don’t do that.
Annie: Oh, c’mon! Gotta do a bit!
Ed: Let’s just say we’re doing two shows in Malahide in June, Andy Macbee, County Down.
Annie: Brilliant!
Ed: Yeah. Uh—so where are we going next?
Thom: Music-music-music!
Ed: Music.
Annie: Back-back-back to when you were wearing flares at The Haçienda.
Ed: Ahhh! Those were the days! No, we were talking about—I mean, this is a—the next track is by uh, you know, one of the greatest bands of the last century—certainly from Manchester. Happy Mondays.
Thom: I dedicate this to my mate, Martin.
Ed: Yeah, he is Mr. Mondays.
Thom: Yeah, he… yeah.
Ed: I’d like to dedicate this to a lady in Highbury called Susan.
Thom or Ed: Ah, baby!
[Happy Mondays - 'Wrote For Luck' (Factory) plays]
Annie: It’s Thom and Ed from Radiohead. Your Djs for nine o’clock tonight.
Thom: Wow! That was my favourite so far!
Ed: That’s great, man, isn’t it?
Thom: Genius!
Ed: The Mondays—when I saw them—is when they used to end the set with that—with “Wrote For Luck”, and they used to do like a ten minute version. And the gig I particularly remember is the one they did at Gmax, which is the day before Step On was released. So, they did two shows, and I went to Sunday night. They finished with this and the smoke fills the stage; it’s like ten minutes, and there’s lights going on. And suddenly, on stage with the Mondays is every dealer in South Manchester…
[Annie laughs]
Ed: … and I go ‘Ah, there’s Alfonso! He’s from the red line in Readington(?), what’s he doing there?
[Thom laughs]
Ed: And it was amazing! It was just the most kind of euphoric kind of up gig I’ve ever been to. It’s—it was just… When the Mondays were on, they were unbelievable! I saw them when they were bad. I mean, they were bad at Glastonbury 1990. That was really… But when they were on, they were just magic!
Annie: Did you ever meet Shaun Ryder?
Thom and Ed: No!
Thom: No, we actually didn’t.
Ed: We never met them. No.
Thom: I used to play them at my club when college was on as well. [undecipherable]
Ed: Yeah!
Annie: Did you use to DJ, Thom?
Thom: But I haven’t listened to it… this particular album since I left art college.
Ed: Really? It sounds good, doesn’t it?
Thom: It’s mental, man!
[Ed laughs]
Thom: Mental!
Annie: Uh—did you use to be a DJ?
Thom: Every Friday.
Annie: Really?
Thom: Yeah, I did the university club um—I made ‘em a fortune! Never made any money. Gave me 60 quid a week, and I had to buy me records out of that!
Annie: Ah, that’s not good.
Thom: Anyway!
Annie: And that would be for the whole night’s Djing? Five, six hours?
Thom: Yeah, great ego boost, though.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: Power!
[Annie laughs]
Thom: It was great, honestly! And people—I wasn’t exactly an expert by uh—I used to go on until 2 o’clock. We’d start at seven. And in order for people to, you know, get to play their records they'd have to, you know, they’d usually buy me a drink…
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: Unless it was a good record. And so by one o’clock I’d literally consider it a day because…
[Annie and Ed laugh]
Thom: I was smoking then as well and so I had a fag in my mouth.
Annie: Ash falling all over the vinyl. [laughs]
Thom: It was ugly. If one more person came up to me and asked for The Pogues I was going to [undecipherable]. Anyway, it was great.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Annie: Wow! It’s 8 o’clock.
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: It’s Radio One. If you just tuned in, it’s Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien from Radiohead, taking over from Zane’s show. Um—I’m Annie. I’m helping with the buttons.
Thom: Hi, Annie!
Annie: Hi! Ah, you’ve got some texts there.
Thom: Yes.
Ed: ‘“Archangel” by Burial is completely amazing. You’ve made my day playing that. Now make it even better by reading this out. Please. Tammy in Bath.’
Thom: You’re made up, Tammy. Uh—‘Amazing tracks. Lexis’. ‘Radiohead’s my head.. [undecipherable]’. Yes, Dan. ‘Sounded fantastic. I was cranking it right up!’ Have we already done that one?
Ed: ‘Hurray! Hurray for Tropicália! You’re right. That compilation is awesome. And thank you for In Rainbows. It’s a bit incredibly brilliant.’ Wow!
Thom: Mm, okay…
Ed: Nice. ‘How about a secret gig in the Scottish Highlands? No queue problems. Love and thanks for everything so far.’ Yeah!
Thom: Yeah!
Ed: Okay, you used to live in Scotland, didn’t you?
Thom: I did. That’s where I grew up: Fife. I used to grow up—I grew up really near where the Beta Band grew up, as well. I left… before I could meet them. I met the lot of you instead.
Ed: Now they’ve re-formed…
Ed: Are they re-formed—Beta Band? I heard they had.
Annie: I don’t know. Phil(?), have you heard about that?
Phil(?): No.
Annie: No, none of us have heard that. We could be lying, though.
Ed: Okay.
Thom: Okay, so… um—uh—we’re gonna play Aphex next… ‘cause of that earlier you’re saying, whatever… Um—“Crying In Your Face”. Aphex Twin. It is uh—genius. And a maniac and a genius.
Annie: Another elusive character. Yes.
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: Okay.
[AFX - 'Crying In Your Face' (DGC) plays]
Thom: Alright! We got some more texts.
Ed: Yees.
Thom: We like this text thing.
Ed: Yeah, it’s good.
Thom: Can you blow up that text machine?
Ed: ‘Hi, Thom!’
Thom: [undecipherable] 99.
Ed: … ‘Hi’…
Thom: [undecipherable] text machine.
Ed: … ‘Hi’…
[Annie laughs]
Ed: ‘Hi, Thom’. I’m sorry, I’m really bad at this djing thing. I keep talking over everyone.
Thom: You’re alright.
Ed: ‘Hi, Thom and Ed. I once had a conversation with Damo Suzuki from the German band, Can, and asked if he’d heard you guys. He said ‘no’, but will keep his ears open. A few months later he got in touch with me saying he’d heard “Pyramid Song” on the radio and that he loved it. Just thought you might like to know.’
Thom: Wowow.
Ed: Thank you very much.
Annie: That’s amazing!
Ed: It is very cool.
Annie: You were fans of Can?
Thom: Yeah, yes, Can. If you’re uh—if you wanna know then, yeah. Go and get some early Can. Nineteen seventy… two?
Ed: There’s a really good compilation out.
Thom: It’s the best to [undecipherable].
Ed: If you want to get introduced to them. And then you can go to the albums.
Thom: There’s a compil…
Ed: There’s a compilation out.
Thom: Is there?
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Oh…
Ed: It goes from back in ’69 to present. I can’t remember the name. It’s just like a Can’s greatest hits, but it’s a good—it’s got like twenty-five songs on it.
Annie: Okay.
Thom: Uh…
Ed: [undecipherable]
Thom: Got more texts. ‘On a three hour drive, making a mental note of loads of new music…’ Uh—‘to go out and buy this weekend.’ Exthcellent! That’s why we’re here. [with a weird accent thing going] Um—but you can actually sort of go on the website and we’re putting it up…
Annie: Yes.
Thom: … aren’t we?
Annie: Yes, exactly.
Thom: Thank you very much. I could do this.
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Now… ‘Dear Thom and Ed, what is your favourite sound and why?’
Ed: Wow!
Annie: I like that one.
Thom: Sound… of… Go on! You go first.
Ed: Sound of… uh—I like the sound of… I really like the sound of birds at night. When you live in a city—and you know, birds aren’t supposed to… they don’t start chirping ‘til about… until sunrise… But in London, where I live, they go all the whole night through ‘cause…
Annie: They're all ravers. They stay up all night.
Ed: Yeah, man. They’re into Burial in a big way.
[Annie laughs]
Ed: It’s that post-rave thing going on.
Annie: [undecipherable] four word in Brixton…
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: ‘Cause they’re staying up all night. [laughs]
Thom: My favourite sound is uh—my coffee machine. [laughs]
[Annie and Ed laugh]
Thom: Okay.
Ed: I’ve got a good one here! It’s ‘Hi Ed and Thom. I’m listening to you while I do the ironing. I’m…
[Annie laughs]
Ed: … on board. [laughs] From [undecipherable]
Thom: Oh, man!
Ed: Nice one, man. Good luck.
Thom: Lower the tone. Okay…
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Next um—Bass Clef. This is allegedly dubstep. Um—yeah. Thanks.
[Bass Clef - 'Ballad of The Broken' (.) plays]
[XTC - 'Sgt Rock (Is Going To Help Me)' (Virgin) plays]
Ed: Nice! XTC. “Sgt Rock (Is Going to Help Me)”. I like…
Annie: [laughs] It’s new wave, right? Right?
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: New wave music, is it?
Ed: That’s like seminal music for—for me, and I guess for all of us. We’re big XTC fans. And that must’ve come out in about 1980. And that whole post-punk new wave era was just, you know… so happening.
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: And uh…
Annie: Are they British?
Ed: Yeah, they’re from Swindon. And we’re from Oxford.
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: There’s a big rivalry.
Annie: Oh, really? Oxford and Swindon?
Ed: Along the A420.
[Annie laughs]
Ed: People there will know what I’m talking about.
Annie: Ah, it’s quarter past eight. We have 45 minutes. It’s gone quite fast!
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: Gone really fast. We have a lot more music to play.
Ed: Yeah.
Annie: Um—what do you think we should do next?
Thom: Uh—holy fu-holy…
Annie: Holy fu-? Holy uh?
Thom: Holy uh.
Annie: Right. This is… What is this track?
Thom: This is called “Lovely Allen”, and this is um—for when you get up uh-uh. Hello! This is for when you get up in the morning. ‘Hi there, kids! Yes, it’s a beautiful day!’ That sorta tune.
Annie: Okay.
[Holy F*** - 'Lovely Allen' (Young Turks) plays]
Ed: Nice!
Thom: ‘Hi! First, my husband’s just come in and asked me why it’s taking so long to do uh—to pack up? And they caught me out dancing to your show. Keep up the good tunes, especially as you’re playing my teen idols XTC. From Allison in Leicestershire.’ I was obviously doing that in a hurry.
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Um—but… uh—‘Guys, this is just awesome. I’m trying to leave my car to get some shopping, but I’m sitting in Tesco’s carpark glued to the tune. I’m gonna starve to death at this rate down in whereall!’ ‘Shaving my legs to the rhythm of that song.’ We were just consulting and hoping that wasn’t Bass Cleft…
[Annie laughs]
Thom: … ‘coz there’d be blood everywhere.
[Annie and Ed laugh]
Thom: ‘It would make my night if you read this out. Gem, in Portsmouth.’ Congratulations, Gem. You’re—good luck with your legs. Uh…
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Can we send her a goody bag or something? Just so we can send [undecipherable].
Thom: Uh—plasters, you mean. You got any Radio 1 plasters?
Annie: Radio 1 stickers?
Thom: Yeah.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Razor blades? Nooo!
Annie: That was some song, anyway. Tell you what, you'd be conquering the world, putting that on first thing in the morning.
Thom: Yeah, man.
Ed: That’s amazing.
Annie: Holy *uck. “Lovely Allen”. Not heard that before.
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: Amazing.
Ed: That’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Thom: It’s really, really good. Excellent.
Ed: Yes.
Thom: Who's feeding back? It ain't me
Ed: Is that me?
Ed: Probably. You accused me of feeding back last night twice on stage.
Thom: That's right
[Annie laughs]
Ed: And neither one of the times was it me. It was bloody bass frequencies going. I'm an easy target, you see.
I’d only arrived.
Thom: He’s got all these pedals and stuff!
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: I’m only allowed two pedals. Anyway…
Ed: Anyway. Aside from…
Annie: Do you fight over how many pedals you’ve got?
Thom: Well, he wins.
Ed: No, we don’t. Whenever anyone comes in with a really nice new guitar, there’s that kinda look between the guitarists. ‘Mmm, that’s really nice!’
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: ‘Hey, can I have one of those? Your new—your new Jazzmaster?’
Thom: Yeah, yeah.
Ed: Or ‘if you don’t want that, I wouldn’t mind having that’.
[Thom and Annie laugh]
Thom: Get it! ‘Coz I’ll use it!
[Thom, Ed and Annie laugh]
Ed: Exactly.
Thom: Where are we going next?
Ed: We’re going to—we’re going back to Brazil. Let’s just imagine yourself uh—it’s warm—it’s a warm evening. Sipping a caipirinha uh—in uh—next to the sea or whatever.
Thom: You’re not in Tesco’s carpark.
Ed: [laughs] You’re not.
[Annie laughs]
Ed: This is a guy called Jorge Ben, who’s from that era but he’s a bit early—he’s not strictly part of the tropicalista movement, but he was a huge influence, apparently, on them. And this track is called “Umba-bara-uma” and it’s just—it’s funky as hell.
Annie: I hope I’ve got the right one.
[Jorge Ben - 'Umba-bara-uma' (Philips) starts playing]
Ed: You have.
Annie: Brilliant.
Thom: Oh, yeah! I know this!
Ed: Yeah.
[Jorge Ben - 'Umba-bara-uma' (Philips) plays]
Annie: I want a cocktail.
Ed: Nice!
Thom: Ah, someone mentioned margaritas. Oh! It’s not fair, man!
Annie: [laughs] C’mon, you’re Thom Yorke from Radiohead! Can’t you just…?
Thom: Yes. Staff!
[Thom and Annie laugh]
Thom: Right. Were are we—okay, we’ve got a couple of texts. We’re addicted to the text thing so… Whoever these people are they’re all… Ah, ‘We have a cat called Thom, and a cat called Ed.’
Annie: Oh, no way.
Thom: ‘But we draw the line at Colin.’
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: ‘Thanks, Radiohead, for all the lovely music. Nick and Johnny at [undecipherable]’.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: Bummer, man!
Ed: Oh, man!
Thom: Sorry, Colin!
Ed: Thom!
Thom: Reminds me we haven’t called him.
Ed: Thom!
Annie: Yeah, we should call him.
Ed: ‘Thom, can you say hi to my daughter, Lily? I named my son after you and he’s in bed and asleep. Lily is 3 and should be in bed. Thanks, Gary.’
Thom: Oh… the three year olds.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: Right then! What are we doing now, boss?
Ed: Where are we? Where are we going?
Annie: Any more texts, man?
Thom: Oh-uh-um-uh-uh-um-uh. No!
Annie: Okay! Um—Zane Lowe just called. He’s listening live from New Zealand.
Ed: Hi, Zane!
Annie: He said we sound really heavy.
Thom: Yeah?
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: Does that mean good, or just means we’re just being turgid?
Annie: It’s a really positive thing. It’s a big, big, good thing.
Thom: Oh, good. Alright.
Annie: Um-uh—well, we’ve got about half an hour left. Do you wanna call your bandmates? Maybe one of them?
Ed: [undecipherable] text in.
Annie: Do an eeny-meeny-miny-moe? [undecipherable] into a grimace.
Thom: If it was me, no! But, you know…
Annie: Do you reckon any of them are actually listening?
Ed: No.
Thom: No.
Annie: No.
Thom: Um-um, so… uh—I think we should play some music, man! That’s why we’re here!
Ed: Alright. Okay.
Thom: That’s what the people are getting off on.
Ed: Alright.
Annie or Thom: Don’t you think?
Ed: We’ll go. Alright.
Thom: Oh, God! I’m in trouble now!
[Annie laughs]
Ed: There might be an incident. [undecipherable] reconvene for rehearsal.
Thom: Okay. We’ll ring them all. We’ve got four minutes. We can ring them all and get them all on the line.
Ed: Okay. Can we conference call?
Annie: Yeah. Can. Easy.
Ed: Let’s get everyone on.
Thom: Then we’re gonna pay [undecipherable]
Ed: Because we need to ask the question whether we’re rehearsing next week.
Thom: Alright.
Annie: That’s good.
Ed: Let’s get them all on board.
Thom: We’ll ring them up then. But, in the meantime…
Annie: Someone texted and asked me do either of you like Detroit techno, right?
Thom: Yeah, that’s right.
Ed: Colin does.
Annie: [undecipherable] Have you got the name?
Thom: Ah, I could do this for a living! ‘Do either of you like Detroit techno artists like Derrick May, Meg(?) Michael, Jeff Mills?’ Actually, yes, boss! We do. From Radiohead Jed in Birmingham. Yeah, Colin is the Detroit freak. So for Colin, the poor cat… who isn’t a cat.
[Annie laughs]
Thom: This is um—actually one he made for me ages ago. He’s got the vinyl somewhere. This is called Craig and Laurent Garnier, “Demented”. It’s very old and very good.
Annie: The man who will never be a cat.
Thom: Yeah.
[Carl Craig - 'Demented (Laurent Garnier Edit)' (Planet E) plays]
Ed: Hello!
[Annie laughs]
Thom: So. Why?
Phil: Hello there!
Ed: Hey! It’s Phil!
Phil: Ah! Good evening.
Ed: How are ya?
Phil: I’m very well, thank you. Very well, indeed.
Jonny: Actually, you forgot to tell me to turn my radio down.
Thom: Get on, Jonny. So you’ve turned it all up, haven’t you?
Jonny: I was about to, yeah, to see what happens. [laughs]
Annie: There’s gonna be major feedback, Jonny.
Jonny: Oh, there's just loads of delays
[Ed laughs]
Annie: I love the fact Jonny’s experimenting down the phone [undecipherable] [laughs]
Jonny: [undecipherable]
Ed: Of course he is! [laughs]
Jonny: It was great [undecipherable]
Thom: Mm—yeah…
Jonny: You’re sounding good.
Thom: Yeah, well thanks. But we’ve done it now, haven’t we?
Ed: Yeah, um—do we have a rehearsal next week?
Thom: Oh, yeah.
Jonny: Um—yeah, well we’re [undecipherable], aren’t we?
Ed: Yeah: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Thom: Oh, yeah! We’ve got… Jools Holland. Tell him!
[Annie and Ed laugh]
Thom: Jools Holland, don’t we? That’s important.
Jonny: Yeah, we have.
Thom: Yeah, we’d better get our thing together then.
Jonny: Yeah, yeah…
Thom: Yeah…
[Annie laughs]
Thom: Yeah…
Ed: How’re you feeling today af-…
Jonny: [undecipherable] get started again.
Ed: How’re you feeling today after last night?
Jonny: Oh, it was great! Wasn’t it?
Ed: Yeah. A little bit stiff?
Jonny: A lot of people couldn’t get in, which is… a bit embarrassing, but…
Annie: But you had the webcast, so that was nice.
Thom: Yeah, did you hear how many were on the webcast?
Jonny: No.
Thom: Ten and a half thousand people were watching it live.
Jonny: No way!
Thom: Yes way!
Jonny: It’s amazing!
Thom: Yeah, it’s nuts, init? I didn’t…
Phil: I’ve been watching you on the webcam and Ed’s looking pretty good, obviously, Thom.
Thom: Oh no!
Annie: I was gonna say, you two have both been listening and watching and supporting your band members?
Thom: If I’d known I would’ve dressed up!
[Annie laughs]
Jonny: Yeah! [undecipherable] with the name Colin for a cat.
Thom: Now, speaking of… speaking of Colin. We did ring Colin, but he’s enjoying the show so much that he said ‘Nah, I just wanna listen’.
[Jonny laughs]
Thom: But uh—just to make you feel…
Annie: [makes chicken noises]
Thom: … just to make you feel better, there’s a text coming in saying um—‘We’re getting a cat called Colin’. From Ross. There you go, [undecipherable].
Jonny: Uh…
Annie: Uh…
Phil: Oh, that’s nice. What about Phillip?
Thom: Um—oh, yeah…
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Yeah, can someone out there please name their…
Phil: [undecipherable] stately Doverman, myself actually, I think.
[Thom, Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: Really?
Ed: A Doverman or a Rhodesian red back.
[Phil laughs]
Annie: So have you two been enjoying the music choices then? Do you approve?
Jonny: It’s been great! Loved the Sonic Youth and the Burial tracks.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: That’s pretty cool!
Phil(?): Yeah… The um—who is it?—Os Mutantes?
Ed: Yeah.
Jonny: Fantastic! Great track!
Ed: I’ll do you a little compilation.
Phil(?): Oh, you’re too kind!
Thom: We’re probably going to fit in an Iron and Wine track for the end of the night so…
Ed: Yeah. We’ve got an Iron and Wine track because you…
Phil: Oh, can we? It’s a request spot now, is it?
Thom: No, no, no, no, no. You have to be here for that.
Jonny or Phil: Well put it on and get [undecipherable]
Thom: Yeah, c’mon, Ed.
Ed: Would you like… I’ve always wanted to say this: Would you like to say hello to anyone?
[Annie laughs]
Jonny: Can I say hello to my Thom and Ed?
Ed: Yeah. [laughs]
Jonny: Okay. Alright, Phil.
Ed: Phillip?
Phil: Okay, maybe Colin.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: C’mon, Ed!
Jonny: See you Tuesday.
Ed: Alright. Are we done? See you Tuesday.
Annie: Thank you very much for the [undecipherable]
Thom: Bye!
Annie: Bye!
Jonny: Bye!
Ed: Bye!
Annie: What’s next, Thom?
Thom: “Happy Happy” by Tomas Anderson!
Annie: Wicked.
Ed: Nice!
[Tomas Anderson - 'Happy Happy' (Bpitch) plays]
Thom: ‘I have a cat called Colin. Lumpy Colin, to be exact.’
[Thom, Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: KJ(?) Electronic Theatre. ‘I used to have a rat named Colin. I also have a Jonny and an Ed. No Thom. Sorry, Thom.’ Where’s Phil in all of this?!
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Yeah, c’mon!
Thom: [undecipherable] Phil! No!
Ed: Name your Rhodesian red back after Phillip. [laughs]
Someone said, ‘My Rhodesian red back is called Elsa, but I will call her Phillip from now on.
Ed: Yey! Huzzah!
Annie: It’s from Adrian, in deepest, darkest Welsh wet Wales.
Ed: Nice!
Thom: What a confused dog.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Thom: ‘Oh, that last song was splendid! Thanks for the great music. If you wish, I can send you some raspberry jam that I made.’ Oh thank you so much! …Anna.
[Annie laughs]
Ed: Who was that?
Thom: That was “Happy Happy” by Tomas Anderson! He’s in Bpitch b-b-b Bpitch Control.
Ed: Nice.
Thom: Very good.
Ed: We got—next we’ve got “New Rose” by The Damned. A classic track, Phillip reliably informed me the other day this is the first punk single, and it still sounds amazing.
[The Damned - 'New Rose' (Stiff) plays]
[Asian Dub Foundation - 'Naxalite' (London) plays]
Ed: ‘I’ve just found a big spider in my bed so I named it Phillip.’
[Annie laughs]
Ed: ‘He wants you to play Iron and Wine. T.J. in Devon.’
Thom: ‘I’ve got a Jack Russell called Phillip. Don’t worry, Phil. Go Radiohead! Eddie from Workington.’
Ed: ‘My brother is named Phil. Does that count? Elodie.’
Thom: ‘Hello. I just bought a bunch of cool Phils. See you in tour, guys. Mark in ds-ds-d.’
Ed: ‘Brilliant song choices. Your mine and my dad’s favourite band.’
Thom: ‘We’ve…
Ed: [undecipherable]’
Thom: ‘We’ve got a ferret called Phillip. Love Tom and Claire in Yorkshire.’
[Ed laughs]
Ed: Phil, does that satisfy you now?
Annie: Ah now, this’ll make him happy. ‘My son has an imaginary friend called Phil. It’s from Jay in Cantebury.’
[Thom mumbles]
Ed: There you go. Previous track was “Naxalite” by ADF, one of the finest bands…
Thom: Uh-huh.
Ed: …of the last fifteen years. Yes.
Thom: And now we’re gonna do…?
Ed: Now we’re gonna do uh-uh—it’s a track by a band called Iron and Wine, and the track’s called “The Devil Never Sleeps”. Phil put me onto—put us onto this, and I think it’s a great album. It’s off “The Shepherd’s Son”, one of my albums of last year.
[Iron And Wine - 'The Devil Never Sleeps' (Sub Pop) plays]
Thom: Woah! There’s a nice feed in that.
Ed: Do you like that?
Thom: Yeah!
Annie: It’s a song [undecipherable]
Thom: It’s a nice tune.
Ed: It’s good, innit?
Thom: More texts! We like this.
Ed: ‘I used to hear you practicing when I stopped at the traffic lights in Clifton Hamden. Said you would never be successful.’
[Annie laughs]
Ed: [undecipherable] That was a long time ago.
Thom: It was a long time ago.
Ed: ‘Mark in Clifton.’ [laughs]
Thom: This is the best radio since John Peel.’ Woah, ooh…
Ed and Annie: Ahhhh…
Thom: ‘This mad, tremendous variety is like back into my life. Keep it up, fellas. See you in Glasgow.’ I can’t read. Sorry.
Ed: ‘Guys, please give me a sound bite quote to put in my dissertation. Maybe I’ll footnote it Radiohead [undecipherable] the author. It’s about pornography.’
Thom: Pffft!
Ed: ‘What do you think about it? Mike in Oxford.’
Thom: I know nothing about that.
Ed: One for you, Thom.
Thom: What?!
[Annie laughs]
Ed: One for you. [laughs]
Thom: [laughs] You’re dead, man! [laughs] It’s just coming out, man!
Ed: I know. That did come out. I’m not insinuating anything. ‘[undecipherable] in my room eating grapes. Loving the tunnage. Stop being so bloody bare.’
Thom: Yeah. Konono No1 next.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: This’ll confuse you.
Annie: Straight into it.
[Ed laughs]
[Konono No1 - 'Lufuala Ndonga' (Hyperdub) plays]
Ed: I’m feeling that… big time!
[Annie laughs]
Thom: That’s tran-… that’s special trance uh—music, apparently. I don’t know nothing about this stuff. [undecipherable]
Annie: African trance or something?
Thom: Yeah—but… yeah. But to me it’s like, this big hit you’re listening to is like, well… this is rave, man.
Annie: Yeah.
Thom: They even got the whistles.
Annie: [laughs] Yeah.
Thom: Though they’re doing it on bits of tin and bits of metal and homemade gear. I mean, it’s mental. Completely mental. [undecipherable]
Annie: Konono No1?
Thom: Yeah.
Annie: Yeah.
Ed: What’s the compilation called? Do you remember? Is it Congatronics or something?
Thom: Congatronics; there’s a series of it.
Ed: Yeah.
Thom: Congatronics Konono No.1 is the best. I think. Okay, so we’re coming out to the end. Bummer, man!
Annie: Did you have a good time? Enjoy this?
Thom: Can we do this again, please?
Annie: I’m sure Zane will only be too happy to let you do it, yeah.
Thom: Yeah, thank you. We gotta thank Zane…
Ed: Yeah, thanks, man. Hope you’re having a great time in New Zealand.
Annie: He’s back on Monday, on Radio 1.
Thom: Wow!
Ed: Have a good flight. We hope it’s all good.
Annie: [undecipherable] show. [laughs]
Ed: Yes.
Thom: Um-uh—thanks everyone for listening and sending in those really loony texts.
[Ed and Annie laugh]
Ed: And thanks, Annie!
Thom: Thanks, Annie.
Ed: Cheers!
Annie: You did really good. What should we end on?
Thom: We gotta end on the Grizzly Bear tune called “He Hit Me”. It’s beautiful, man!
Annie: Okay. Thank you, Thom and Ed.
Thom: Good night, everyone.
[Grizzly Bear - 'He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)' (Warp) plays]

2008 January 3 | XFM

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Thom Yorke, recorded in the studios of XFM last year for X-Posure. And I’m very pleased to say that he’s back, with friends. Hello, Thom.

Thom: Hello, this is my friend, Ed.

Ed: Hello! How are you all?

John: It’s Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien tonight because In Rainbows is the new album, which is out in a physical form this week around the world pretty much, I think. Am I right? It’s out in the UK, in Europe… around the world around by now?

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: We have manifested ourselves in a physicality.

John: And we’re going to give it the Exposure album playback treatment tonight, which means that you get to hear the whole thing, but with Thom and Ed talking us through it track-by-track. Which—we’ve already played the album on the day of release--on the 10th of October—when you could download it. We played the whole thing in the middle of the day, but for some reason now that you’ve come in to talk to us about it, they want to put it on at night time. I don’t know how it works.

Thom: Poor dear!

John: I know. Don’t feel offended.

Thom: Was anybody listening then, or did they all turn off?

John: No, no, it had a great response.

Thom: Good!

John: I listened. There were some other people as well.

Thom: They listened too, did they?

John: Yeah, they did. And then we all had a chat… chat rooms around the world.

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: Well…

John: No, I mean, we did. It went down really, really well, and it’s really interesting to be able to do that… to be able to play the whole of the brand new album and just kind of let it out in the day…

Ed: Yeah.

John: …which was really, really cool. And obviously, the delivery of this album seems to be such a talking point, I thought we’d get that out of the way.

Thom: Let’s get it out of the way.

John: I mean, it’s seems to have had such a massive impact on various different aspects of industry and art. I mean, how do you feel about it now, a few months down the line?

Ed: It was, like you said… the excitement comes from the fact that you could… you would actually hear it at the same time as everyone else. And that was something that we really loved and the whole aspect of people saying what, you know, speculating about what it means for the industry, I mean, all that stuff is really, you know, it’s not really our point, it’s not our agenda. Our agenda was to get it out as quickly as possible, and we weren’t in contract so this seemed to be the obvious way to do it, really.

John: Yeah. And, I mean, how quickly was it… two-three weeks between finishing the album and actually getting the people to hear it?

Thom: Mm, I think we were actually taking the pre-order thing, and asking people if they were interested in it on the net… while we were doing that we were actually mastering the record. [Laughs]

John: [laughs]

Thom: So it was a little bit tight in the end.

John: So that kind of gave you a deadline to work to… to make sure you got that mastering done, which is good, because I get the impression that deadlines can be good for you, um.

Ed: They can be very good.

John: Yeah.

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: Every four years or so… yeah. [laughs]

Ed: Yeah, that’s the deadline [laughs]

John: I’m just thinking it could’ve… you know, you started work on the album, you knew there’d be these messages saying… Yeah, ‘with no deadline to work to it’s kind of difficult to get going’ or words to the effect.

Ed: Yeah.

John: But obviously that was a very tight deadline. And mastering, do you get involved in that, is that part of the process that you’re involved in?

Ed: Yeah, it’s a really, really important part. We had the record mastered about three or four proper times and then each time they would’ve been mastered about two, three times each of those four times, so it makes a huge difference in terms of the overall sound. It’s a bit like framing a picture… if you will. Mm, the frame, you can bring out certain elements of the picture itself, and colours and stuff, and that’s exactly what mastering does.

Thom: Or squeezing it through a shape.

John: And now…

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: [laughs]

John: I don’t know how to carry on from ‘squeezing it through a shape’.

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: [laughs] Ah, it’s good!

John: Need to change tonight.

Thom: I think you should.

John: Now it’s out physically. I mean, a CD format, and a box and all that kind of stuff. Um, does it feel more real in any way? I mean, you know in… maybe in the old days, when you’d be able to walk into a record shop and see your record, that you had made, and it must’ve been a huge thrill—from Pablo Honey, or something—to be able to go in and see ‘Yes! We exist! We have an album’ and all that kind of stuff. Does that… is there any level of importance there now? Because obviously there were some people who wouldn’t have been techno-savvy or whatever—wouldn’t have been able to download it or something. And there was almost a kind of splinter group, the naysayers, who were saying ‘It’s not fair! We’re left out of the equation!’ But now obviously this week, they’re not.

Thom: Yeah, well, I mean, that was always the condition of us doing it in the first place. We probably were the naysayers in believing the internet is a… it’s not the universe, it’s a… it has its limitations. And it was also very important for us that it physically did exist—and not just the record box, which is a sort of special sort of… another part of the experiment, really. It was important that friends of ours who can’t be bothered to go through the whole shenanigans on the net… yeah, they could get a hold of it. I mean, it’s important… the act of putting it… you know, there’ll be a vinyl of it as well, but I was going to say, the act of putting a CD player, CD in the CD player is still kind of like an important thing. I mean, trouble with like your MP3 players is you can just flick around a lot, you know? (I’m) sounding like an old fart, which of course it’s what I am, and now I’m gonna shut up. [laughs]

John: [laughs] So the discbox, is that going to be available in the shops as well?

Ed: Mm, I don’t know. We’ve only made… we made a hundred thousand and we’ve sold most of them, so I think some shops might pick them up but it’s mainly really the vinyl and the CD.

John: Yeah. So those extra tracks on the second CD…

Thom: Not sure what’s going to happen with them yet.

Ed: Yeah. We don’t know yet, do we?

Thom: I mean it’s cool that they’re just there. I mean, they’ll get passed around. Anyway… we’ll just see… we’re not quite sure.

John: Yeah. Fair enough. Well, let’s get talking about the creation of this work, In Rainbows. We’re gonna play the whole thing tonight. You’re listening to Exposure. It is XFM. I’ve got Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien with me. My name is John Kennedy. And the creation of the work… Did work actually start in 2005? I mean, was it that… kind of drawn out? I mean, obviously we can’t look at 2003, when the last album came out. There was a bit of a break.

Thom: There was a break. And it took a while to sort of gear up. Mm, I’d say we probably started uh… properly last year. Mm, like October last year?

John: Yeah.

Thom: In a derelict house in the middle of nowhere… as is our wont. Mm, so yes. I would say everything up to that was kind of leading to that, really.

John: Yeah, so that was kind of the preparatory…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … the foreplay.

Ed: We needed to take a year off. You have to realize that it’s, it’s, it’s—you lose so much inertia and momentum.

Thom: Momentum.

Ed: Yeah. And you just need that… you know, you don’t realize quite when you’re going on how much you exist by that by that… by just rolling on. When you stop dead, you know, for a year, it takes a—it takes a long time to get it going. You know?

Thom: It’s a curious combination of things that happened as well because uh, you know, we sort of got out of contract with a big label. We took a long break and nothing. After about a year, most of us were sitting around going ‘What is it exactly that we do? What… I do distinctly remember playing in front of 60,000 people in America. It was… did I imagine that? I’m having some really wild dreams at the moment… some odd flashbacks.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Do you get caught up in other things? I mean, obviously you did a solo album, Thom, but I mean… Do you get caught up in DIY projects…? Or doing up the house? Or building, you know, an extension or whatever it is that you do… to make your life better?

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: Well, personally speaking, I mean, you know, having children and doing all of that for the first time and, you know, really getting my hands dirty doing that, and…

Thom: Oh… you didn’t have to say that!

Ed: And that stuff and doing that for a while, that’s when, you know, when you’re in the middle of that, when you’re in the traffic jam, having gone, you know, and you’ve got the shopping in the back, and you’ve got a screaming child or whatever, in the back…

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: … and you go, ‘What is it that I do? I remember there was a [undecipherable] when they were doing a thing on… just before Glastonbury 2005, and it was on another radio station—a national radio station—with one. And they were doing sort of a run up, like they had a poll with uh… you know, who they’d like to see playing Glastonbury this year and I was literally stuck in a traffic jam outside Oxford, on the ring road on a Friday afternoon, and Glastonbury’s about to kick off and I was just like ‘What’s this?! What is it that I do?!’ And you know, you get those moments, and I think they can be kind of quite important at times. You know, the juxtaposition of what you do with this kind of domestic existence.

Thom: If you want to know what the record is really about. That’s what it’s really about.

John: [laughs] But I mean, it must be important… I mean, you talk about inertia… there must be important to have that period of inertia that recharges your batteries and makes you kind of want to do this again… to do what you really do again.

Thom: Yes.

John: Hmm… yes, that’s what I would’ve thought. So you reckon in earnest the album proper started recording in October 2006 or so… something like that. After you’d road-tested some of the songs on the tour.

Thom: It was annoying that we couldn’t get it together until sort of Nigel came and gave us a walloping kick up the ass.

John: [laughs]

Thom: ‘Cause we love that stuff.

John: [laughs] A bit of spanking.

Thom: Yes.

John: Is he good at that kind of thing? I mean, after all these years of knowing you, is he still able to say ‘Look, just get your shit together and go and do something’.

Thom: Well, he tends to be a bit more polite than that.

John: Right.

Ed: He’s really… he was really good because we hadn’t worked together for about three years, and obviously he worked on The Eraser, and he came in and he literally… the way he records, he holds a mirror up to what you do, and I don’t remember in the first—up until Christmas—not once did he ever say ‘Listen, this is just not good enough.’ He just… he knew it wasn’t good enough but he let us realize it wasn’t good enough. And it was after that, when we started really—beginning of this year—when we started to, you know, notch it up a bit. He was uh, he was a bit more critical. But, you know, he was amazing in that respect. He was very gentle at the beginning, ‘cause he knew it was kind of quite fragile at first.

Thom: The weird thing is that, you know, there’s too many traffic jams, basically. We’d lost our confidence. Even though we’d gone out on tour and stuff, it’s easy in some ways to rattle the songs out in a situation like that. But once we got back into the studio, um, and, you know, we listened to sort of how it was rough and ready all over the shop, it was like ‘well, this ain’t quite good enough’ and it really knocked us for sick for ages. Mm, yeah.

John: That’s interesting, but you were able to pull yourselves up and face that, and conquer that.

Thom: It could be worse, you know? It could be worse.

John: [laughs] So this house in the middle of nowhere, is it Tottenham House? Is that…?

Ed: Yeah.

John: Is it in Wiltshire?

Ed: It is.

John: Somebody mentioned Somerset. Did you ever go?

Ed: Yes, we did go to Somerset.

John: Okay.

Ed: This place is in Wiltshire and it’s just outside… Mm, what is it? What is it called? It’s not Malmesbury. It’s somewhere like… It’s a little market town near where my Granny lives. And I forget the name of it. But it’s uh… it’s literally, apparently it’s the last thing that’s going on there before they do the big refurb. It think one of these big chains… Well, I think it’s “Four Seasons” or somebody…

Thom: Yeah, another golf course.

Ed: Yeah, they’ve got these beautiful capability brown landscape front gardens which are gorgeous and of course they’re turning it into a golf course. [laughs]

Thom: That’s because that’s what people want, ain’t it?

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: All they want is their irrigated bleaming green holes.

Ed: Eighteen holes in the middle of the English countryside.

Thom: For old duffs.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Wow! But I guess, well they might be doing as they’re going around the tees… Maybe you might get a hole named after you or something… you know, the In Rainbows…

Thom: After that, probably not.

Ed: [laughs]

John: They’d be discussing the qualities of the album. [laughs] ‘Of course, it was recorded here.’ Did it have an effect, you think, on the recording? I mean, obviously on the recording physically, but do you think it affected the mood of the songs or anything like that? Were you literally camping out?

Ed: Yeah!

Thom: Well…

Ed: Well, we went on the canvas. We were in caravans.

Thom: See, it was a carry on camping-type situation, rather than a…

John: [laughs]

Thom: … you know…

John: It wasn’t like boy scout camp.

Thom: Too cold for that. Mm. Did it have an effect? Yeah, it definitely had an effect. I mean, I think you just absorb… I mean, it had some very weird vibes, it being a… um, a heroin recovering addict place, being a weird prep school… but it was like, derelict in the stricter sense of the word, where there’s holes in the floor, rain coming through the ceilings, uh… half the window panes missing. You know, it was a pretty weird place. I’m not sure whether it was haunted or not, but it had some pretty strange vibes. There was places you just basically didn’t go.

John: [laughs] Wow! Wow! Bizarre. How did Nigel find this place?

Ed: Well, he put the… He went looking—he went scouting in the summer. And whereas, when we did this the first time, we did this ten years ago when we went to St. Catherine’s Court, did OK Computer, there were a lot of houses then. Now there aren’t… they’ve all been bought up. So there are very few sort of run down… because we didn’t want to go in somewhere that was really smart and… you know, it’s just not the right kind of vibe. And I think this was—I think apart from—I think there was one in Scotland, like possibly. Um, this was sort of the only one available, really.

John: Wow! And uh, then how long did you spend there and how long did you…? Did you return there? Or did you…?

Ed: No.

John: So this is kind of autumn 2006.

Ed: Yeah, we were there end of September and beginning of October: three weeks.

John: And you ended up getting the basic of the album done there?

Thom: Interestingly, no.

John: No. [laughs]

Thom: [laughs] We got extremely random stuff done there. I mean, the joke was, when we left, that ‘Well, it’s okay, guys, ‘cause we’ve got the reverb sound’...

John: [laughs]

Thom: …for every track.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Um, and that was kind of it. Although actually, looking back that wasn’t it but it definitely felt like that at the time.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Reminds me of the story of Trevor Horn. Do you remember Trevor Horn, who produced…

John: Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Thom: Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Spending like a week in the studio, someone we knew was coming out the end of the week going ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’ And it was like ‘What?’ ‘The kick drum! I’ve got the kick drum sound!

John: [laughs]

Thom: It was a little bit like that.

John: So you had the reverb sound.

Ed: Yeah.

John: All you needed to do was the rest.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Which you did where?

Thom: Small fry. [laughs]

Ed: Well, we did the rest of it… We then went for three weeks down to Somerset and had a…

Thom: Went bonkers.

Ed: Again it wasn’t—it didn’t seem to be—we didn’t get all achieved, but we did, I think, things like “Reckoner”, I think the basics of “Reckoner” came out of that, so that was cool.

Thom: No! We got a lot achieved, but I mean that was the way things… Both these sessions…

John: Yeah.

Thom: …we got an awful lot achieved but we didn’t know that at the time.

John: Yeah.

Thom: It was… I mean, we did “Videotape” at that one throughout.

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: We…

Ed: “Bodysnatchers”.

Thom: “Bodysnatchers” we did at Tottenham Hall, and “Nude”, the vocals we did at Tottenham. “All I Need” bits of. It was just a weird… this weird jigsaw, funnily enough, stuff that… We were deliberately using different versions of different things with uh… spliced together as well. I was really into that. The sort of notion of, not exactly sampling but… ‘Appropriating’ was the word I was using. You get a vocal of one version and the drum thing off another. Very, very sort of artificial, but actually not. That was the idea, anyway.

John: Hmm… And so after Wiltshire, after Somerset, you completed the album in your own studio?

Ed: Yeah, and in Covent Garden.

John: Right.

Ed: Nigel’s been using a studio there.

John: Yeah. And so…

Thom: We need to feel glamorous.

John: [laughs] Um, then literally I guess September would’ve been when you finished it. So in a way it took. No? September, I mean if…

Thom: This September…

John: Yeah, September 2007.

Ed: The master.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Thom: In a way. We took a big break over the summer, but yeah.

Ed: We basically got all the tracking done by the end of… by the beginning of July.

Thom: Um.

Ed: And then did a mastering beginning mid-July. Then took six weeks off. There were… there was one other master done and then I think there were two done back in September.

Thom: [sighs] And that’s the timeline, John.

John: Yeah, I like the timeline.

Thom: [laughs] The whole thing, yeah.

Ed: I think it’s almost like a year.

John: I think it’s brilliant that that took a year in effect but then you got it so everybody could listen to it…

Ed: Yeah.

John: Almost instantly…

Ed: Yeah.

John: …especially to what we’re used to.

Ed: You know, that’s the… but that’s also been one of the frustrations about what we do, is that you finish something and, of course, you’re like kids, you want it to be heard immediately. You’re excited about it. And you have to wait. There’s always this traditional way of waiting at least three months. You know, Supergrass have finished their record they’re not gonna be—it’s not going to be out until March, you know?

Thom: Mm.

Ed: They finished it quite a while ago. And that’s quite demoralizing.

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: You know, if you’re going to treat musicians as musicians, musicians want to keep on moving. They keep on evolving. If you’re going to say, ‘Okay, this piece that you just recorded isn’t going to come out for six months. And you have to wait until there’s a slot in the marketplace that’s right. Then it’s just, you know, it’s really demoralizing. So um, it’s been incredibly liberating doing it this way.

John: So it’s kept you buoyant?

Ed: Yes!

John: Not demoralized. You’re ready, up and excited.

Thom: Yeah. [laughs]

John: The future’s looking good.

Ed: [honks]

John: And we will discuss more as we hear the whole of the album. On the way, the first track from In Rainbows, plus more from Thom and Ed. Do not go away.

[“15 Step” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead. “15 Step”, the opening track to the new album In Rainbows. I know you’ve heard it for the last few months but it’s actually physically available this week in the shops.

Thom: It physically exists.

John: It physically exists. It’s probably in your hand as you’re listening to the radio, maybe. Um but I have Thom and Ed here. They’re gonna talk us through the whole of the album. “15 Step”, where does this figure in that timeline that we were just discussing in such great detail?

Thom: [laughs] Um, uh…

John: Is it worth trying?

Thom: Yeah, no. It was kind of a cool one because um… uh, I think for a lot of people it was a sort of breakthrough song for us because it came together very fast. I mean, what you just heard is basically one take, um, with almost nothing changed at all. Um… uh… so and it was… it evolved in a very interesting way as well because it was originally extremely electronic, and very much sort of… um, stripped, and noisy. Um, and then we sort of wanted to work out a way of doing it live, um, and then out of that came the one that you heard. And it’s sort of just, you know, everything’s sort of… it turned into something… we agonized over like whether um, the real scrouchy electronic one was good, or whether this one was good, and it was a sort of blindingly obvious that what we ended up with was miles better. And it was very much in the sort of vein of when we finished Kid A and stuff, like say, “Idioteque”, which was, you know, has a very specific sort of sound on the record and then when we sort of try to work out how to play it live, it became something even more sort of bigger and madder. Uh, and the “15 Step” is sort of the same sort of thing, really. Um, it’s sort of got an important lesson that we learned during that period.

John: Yeah. No, go on. I won’t interrupt you.

Thom: Well, I’m just waffling, really. Me? Surely not. [laughs]

John: [laughs] [mumbling] What I was going to say or ask was about the importance of playing some of these songs live, and obviously you’ve played “15 Step” live and tried it out and it does lots of clapping on it and…

Thom: Do you do that?

Ed: In the spirit of the…

Thom: Aww!

Ed: Yeah, it’s a nice moment, actually.

Thom: Sweet. I bet you don’t do that anymore, do you?

Ed: No, not in the studios, only you bastards do it!

Thom: Yeah.

John: [laughs] Can we look forward to you clapping in this upcoming tour?

Thom: C’mon kids!

Ed: Yeah… well, we’ll just have to see. In the heat of the moment, you just never know.

John: [laughs]

Thom: You might go for a swifty and then come back.

Ed: Yeah.

John: And “Bodysnatchers” is the next song. Was this road tested as well?

Ed: Yeah.

John: This is road tested. Is that fuzzy guitar? Is that guitar or bass?

Thom: Yeah, it’s guitar. It’s um… uh, Nigel has this really wicked old mixing desk that he managed to get off a studio in L.A., which was… it’s the same… exactly the same model—if you’re interested in this, if you’re not then turn off—the…

John: [laughs] [whispers] Don’t turn off!

Thom: No, go on, they won’t. It’s a Motown desk. It’s from like late 60’s. It’s the exact model that they used to record Motown stuff. Um, of course, and if you turn on everything on full, it sounds exactly like a guitar and it sounds like that.

John: I think it sounds brilliant. It kind of sounds like Sabotage or something like that, but at least it was in that fuzzy…

Thom: In my dreams, yeah.

Ed: [laughs] You’re just saying the right things!

John: That’s how it sounds to me. Is it a film reference at all? Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? Near the end I thought…

Thom: Actually, it was a film reference but not that one. It was a… I started the tune um, watching the original Stepford Wives… bizarrely…and cutting and pasting bits from that. But I think it never actually got used. That’s where the tune started from. I got a little bit obsessed by Stepford Wives. Watched it several—three or four times.

John: So in a way I guess that’s about bodies being possessed.

Thom: Yeah, well there’s the bit at the end where uh, yes all the women are finally being turned into the robots or whatever. Anyway… uh. But also the song actually—the title actually came from a very strange ghost story—a Victorian ghost story.

John: Any further elucidation on that?

Thom: No. Pfft. Just, you know… digging up bodies, you know, Sun in the morning and then the bodies come back and get ya.

John: Right. Okay.

Thom: Good stuff!

John: Yeah. The author, do you…?

Thom: No. I can’t remember.

John: [laughs]

Thom: It’s an anthology. Victorian ghost stories.

John: [laughs] Excellent! And with that in mind, here’s Radiohead: “Bodysnatchers”, on X-Posure, XFM.

[“Bodysnatchers” plays]

John: Brilliant. “Bodysnatchers”. Radiohead. On X-Posure. XFM. From In Rainbows. Getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed and Thom talking to us though track-by-track. What do you think of it so far? John Kennedy at xfm.co.uk. 83 XFM. And hello again to Andy Hewitt who said, ‘Did you just mention me? I missed it! [undecipherable] Please do it again!’ Hello, Andy. Good to have you listening, and I’m glad you like In Rainbows. ‘Please play “Bangers and Mash” afterwards, if there’s time.’ Andy, it’s a very good suggestion. But on the way, next, of course, track three “Nude”.

[“Nude” plays]

John: Radiohead, with “Nude”, on X-Posure, XFM, getting the X-Posure album play-by-play treatment tonight as part of In Rainbows. Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien in the studio here with me.

Thom: Butt-naked.

John: Butt-naked. It’s a pleasant sight. I think it’s a good, good sight. I’m up for it. We always do the shows naked.

Thom: Sure!

John: Yeah.

Thom: Is that why we’re in such a small room?

John: Yes. It keeps the temperature up.

Everyone: [laughs]

John: Um, “Nude” dates back a long time.

Ed: Yeah. So all you pock pickers in Radiohead fans will know that it’s on the end of Meeting People is Easy. That’s the rock version.

Thom: Is that right?

John: Yeah.

Thom: ‘Cause I have to say I haven’t watched that since we did it.

Ed: From Radio City Music Hall, from the last show we did on the OK Computer tour.

Thom: Really?!

Ed: Yeah. And so…

Thom: Did we play it?

Ed: Yeah, man! We played it. We played it. And it’s uh… it’s, you know, it’s one of these songs that you know that it’s great but had never seemed appropriate, or maybe, you know, it’s partly it’s to do with you singing it.

Thom: Yeah… Getting back into that.

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: The old uh… you know, high—high thing.

John: [laughs] Yeah.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Having gone through various different versions, this is the one you’re happiest with because it’s now on the record.

Thom: Yeah, we’re gonna do the remix version…

John: In ten years’ time.

Thom: In ten years’ time. Um…

John: Nice.

Ed: Yeah. Kind of a theme emerging here.

John: I like that.

Ed: Yeah, so it’ll be remixed in…
John: …2014.

Ed: Sure!

John: Yeah, yeah. Excellent! “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is the next track. Another song that was road tested and now, if you search on the internet… I’m always amazed by how much information is about you on the internet, and how much is speculation and how much of it is fact. Do you ever look at any of that stuff?

Thom: If I’m trying to remember some words, then I do.

John: Right.

Thom: But, you know, they’re usually slightly wrong. Um, uh…

John: Listening to the song…

Thom: I don’t uh…. I like… I’ll tell you what I do like. ‘Cause when we were out on tour, the first time we did “All I Need” was uh… it was, I mean it was [undecipherable] a good version in Chicago, and like 40 minutes after we came off it was on youtube. First time we’d done it, you know? And it’s sort of like a bizarre—I mean it’s all crunchy, it’s all from mobile phone but… ah, that’s sort of an element of it I really find incredibly exciting. Um… and I think it’s nice that people are interested enough to come up with all these mad ideas. There’s one about… ‘ten’ comes up a lot. I don’t know what… But every time, you know, I get asked about it, yeah, you know I say ‘Oh, yes, absolutely! We thought of all that.’ Yes.

John: [laughs] This is the binary theory.

Thom: Is that the binary theory? I think there’s the binary one as well.

John: The binary theory seems to have something to do with, yes, ten years since OK Computer.

Thom: Oh, right!

John: And ‘ten’, some kind of number pattern within the sequencing…

Thom: Yeah.

John: …of this album. And then there’s the ‘Golden Section’?

Thom: Theory, is it?

John: Yeah.

Thom: Umm.

Ed: I love that one.

Thom: You know that one.

Ed: Because I’m actually interested in the ‘Golden Section’.

John: So the ‘Golden Section’ is…

Thom: Is that that film coming out…

John: Uh…

Thom: ….coming out at Christmas? Oh no, that’s…

Ed: [laughs] That’s the Golden Compass! [laughs]

John: [laughs] There might be a Golden Section in the Golden Compass.

Ed: Right. [laughs] The Golden Section! Right… [laughs] Yeah…

John: Maybe we’ll go back to the Golden Section.

Thom: I think you should carry on!

Ed: This is really interesting, because you know it’s basically found in nature. Another thing that’s interesting in terms of the record—because this theory apparently says that you get to the heart of the record right in the middle of “Reckoner”. Which is…

Thom: That’s very true.

Ed: Which is true but it’s… it wasn’t deliberately done like that, obviously.

Thom: Yes, of course it was! Completely! What are you talking about?

John: [laughs]

Ed: There’s a ratio there.

Thom: Yes!

John: Yeah.

Thom: I just don’t know where it is.

John: The Golden Section is like the sweet spot? Or the…?

Thom: Darling!

Ed: It’s the… it’s like the Greeks used to… you know like Georgian houses and the proportions of their rooms.

Thom: No, mate.

Ed: They got it right because they borrowed it from the Greeks, and the Greeks had this ratio that was in relation to the Fibonacci sequence. It’s a ratio as well. The Fibonacci sequence is obviously found in nature a lot in the way that things grow. And it’s a very—the Golden Section is the same as, you know… Leonardo’s picture of man, the proportions… there’s a ratio that’s inherent in the Golden Section of Fibonacci, that’s uh. … We don’t really need to know.

Thom: I’m impressed!

John: [laughs] I’m listening.

Ed: [laughs] It’s not very relevant to the record. It’s more really…

Thom: It's more relevant than anything else.

John: A bit of art history…

Thom: I just want to know what your bookshelves look like now. I wanna know what on Earth you spend your time reading.

Ed: [laughs] Yeah! You haven’t been around for a while. [laughs]

Thom: Yeah—God! That’s what education does to you, man!

Ed: Yeah…

John: It’s a good thing.

Thom: Is it?

John: It is. And this is Radiohead with “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”.

Thom and Ed: [laugh]

[“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” plays]

John: Radiohead: “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, track four from In Rainbows, was the album which has just been released physically this week through XL Records. We’re playing the whole of the thing tonight with Ed and Thom from the band talking us through it track-by-track. Somebody’s asked ‘Where are the others? Why aren’t they all there? They were involved in the album as well. Where are Jonny, Phil and Colin?’ says Kyle. They often divide these things up, and take turns to do interview duties and all that kind of stuff ‘cause it’s kind of tedious, I think, for some people’s perspectives. And there’s somebody else asking something too. Well, Angelo saying ‘Please tell Thom and Ed thank you for In Rainbows.’ That is all. That definitely seems to be the reaction from most people. Most people getting in touch just saying how much they like In Rainbows and how important it is. We’ve got more to come, of course. “All I Need” on the way soon, plus “Faust Arp”, and of course more from Thom and Ed. You’re reaction? john.kennedy@xl,co.uk, 83XFM on the text.

[“All I Need” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m going to be here until one, and that is Radiohead with “All I Need” from the brand new album, In Rainbows, which is out now this week, in a physical form. You can touch it, stroke it, do whatever you like to it. Maybe even play it. And it’s getting exposure on [undecipherable]. I probably said, because I have Thom and Ed here with me. That was “All I Need”. I’m getting distracted by various different things. I don’t know why.

Thom: It’s ‘cause we’re talking nonsense, first of all.

John: [laughs] You were saying Thom how you were excited about the fact that within minutes of you performing “All I Need” for the very first time…

Thom: Oh, yeah.

John: … it was up on the net for all to check out, in a kind of dodgy phone version.

Thom: Hmm.

John: And it’s great the way it could’ve built to the end. What else can you tell us about “All I Need”?

Thom: Well, we actually used that version that someone recorded off the Chicago sort of phone as one of the reference points. [laughs] What else can I say about it? It was originally done—it was a sort of a beat sequence thing that Colin and I did very rapidly and then got out, and I found again. It was actually written extremely quickly. I got to rehearsal one day early, which is very unusual. I had twenty minutes to meself and wrote the words then… and then… I mean, that was it. It’s sort of, really… It’s extremely full-on. [laughs] That bit in the middle is extremely full-on.

John: Is it about obsession? Is it about… something like that?

Thom: Oh, John! That’s up to you!

John: Well, it’s sort of a personal interpretation.

Thom: Yes, I… Yes. Someone said it’s about music business, which I really think is stretching it possibly a little.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: What do you think, Ed?

Ed: It’s definitely about the music industry. That’s for sure.

Thom: Right.

Ed: Right. Spot on.

Thom: Yeah [undecipherable]

John: “Faust Arp” is the next track and I wanted to ask you about some of the other contributors to the album. We've got some children on 15 Step I think... and there are strings, ehm, evident in "All I Need", "Faust Arp" and uh... the track we heard few minutes ago...

Ed: "Nude".

John: Thank you. Ehm, who has provided the strings sound? Particularly beautiful, I think.

Ed: Well, Jonny did the scoring and, ehm, he was conducted by a woman called Sally Herbert and... they're not an orchestra or an ensemble as such... but they sort of play together, do the odd session. They called themselves the Millenia String Ensemble

Thom: Well... well done, Ed!

Ed: Yeah. And... uh... and they're great! They're great. They had lead violin player, Everton, who was... he was very good really on the case. And it was a joy we went back to RAK to do it, where we recorded The Bends... Studio 2.

John: Wow.

Ed: Uh... and had a couple of days there. Had one day, and then another day.

Thom: Yeah, we did, yeah.

Ed: And it was really good. It was a really lovely day because also when the strings are put down, we still hadn't completed the songs, you know? "Jigsaw's" got strings on it as well, so it kind of... we needed to put the strings on for these songs at this time for them to sort of either, like "Faust Arp" to be sort of complete. Or "Jigsaw" to embelish and...

Thom: It was quite funny 'cause Jonny needed loads of, sort of, ehm, you know, I kept saying to him--I kept saying to him: 'It needs some strings, Jonny!' [mumbling]

John and Ed: [laugh]

Thom: You know... and he was like 'What do you want?'. "I don't know"... Fluffy stuff!

Ed: [laughs] He's got different styles, you know?

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: He doesn't have the one... you know? He's obviously very apt at this.

John: Yeah

Thom: Yeah.

Thom: Ehm, but it was...

John: But he was still having to write the score without the finished shape or songs?

Thom: Yeah, you know, there are some songs like "Nude" and stuff, it was sort of, you know, the... when we mixed it, you know, the strings were on one fade and then we just brought them in for a little bit, bring them out, after all that work. Poor chap. Never mind.

John: (???)

Thom: That's the way it goes.

John: ?

Thom: Well, you have to ask him that. [laughs]

John: [laughs]


[“Faust Arp” plays]

John: It’s Radiohead, with “Faust Arp”. On X-Posure, XFM. From In Rainbows. Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien from the band are here talking through us track-by-track. The “Golden Section” is on the way. “Reckoner” is the next song.

Thom: Ooh, ah.

John: Which is another one that hasn’t been played live yet, or…is that right?

Ed: Yeah, not in that form.

John: Yeah, not in that form. Yeah.

Ed: Yeah.

John: I should… While I remember talking of playing live, and I’ve got a few questions, because I mentioned to X-Posure listeners I was going to talking to you and a few came through with some questions. I’m trying to remember off the top of my head. One was from Diana, who listens in Brazil…

Thom: Ahh!

John: … and wants to know if you’re ever going to go to Brazil.

Thom: Funny you should say that.

Ed: Yes, please!

Thom: Yes, sir.

Ed: We’re really… we’re hoping to go next year, for sure.

Thom: We’re working on it.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Mm, another question that somebody came up with was with regard to Glastonbury. You mentioned Glastonbury earlier on…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … listening to a radio reportage of Glastonbury and stuck in a traffic jam.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Is Glastonbury 2008 a possibility for Radiohead?

Ed: Um… no, no, no.

Thom: I can’t tell you.

John: Is that ‘I couldn’t possibly comment’?

Ed: No, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Thom: Is it?

Thom: We… no.

John: ‘Cause that’s not saying ‘no’.

Thom: What usually happens is that Mr. Eavis announces…

Ed: Yeah… Yeah….

Thom: [laughs] And then we find out afterwards. Uh…no. He hasn’t done that this time. Which is probably…

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: Yeah. Am I digging a hole?

Ed: I think we should…

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: We don’t know but probably not.

Thom: Probably not.

Ed: Don’t presume that we are.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Okay.

Thom: Don’t…

Ed: Don’t think that we are.

Thom: No.

John: And the dates that you are doing, have you got supports already?

Ed: Yeah. No.

Thom: No?

Ed: But there will be supports.

Thom: God! We’d better sort that out!

Ed: Yeah. That’s fun.

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: Yeah. That’s really fun.

Thom: Yeah. We change around a bit but…

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: Yeah, that could be very exciting.

John: So people will get value for money and all that kind of stuff.

Thom: Yeah, hopefully we won’t get blown off stage.

John: [laughs] Always a tricky one.

Thom: It is a bit.

John: Uh, “Reckoner” is the next song. Another percussive number. I like the percussive numbers.

Ed: Sure!

John: Personally they are my favourite.

Thom: Hmm.

John: What else can you tell us about “Reckoner” apart from the Golden Section, which comes up midpoint?

Ed: Well… it’s… What can I say? Um, it was one of the songs that really, truly evolved in the studio. It hadn’t been road tested. It was exciting for the… it was… for us probably it’s one of the most exciting tracks on the record because we didn’t really have a vision for it. It just evolves and I think to hear Thom singing falsetto is really new and it’s uh… It’s kind of… it feels… we weren’t trying to do it, but we were just trying to get it out and do it, you know, try and present something with a percussion and do it differently, and looking back it sort of has a real gospel-y feel. And I think it’s very…

Thom: Really? Reminds me of early rave 1992. It’s just the drumbeat thing, I guess. Uh… um… early rave isn’t 1992. Get your facts right, boy! Anyway, the funny thing was that to be honest the guitar on it was really influenced by… I went to see the Chili Peppers a few times and I really like the way John Frusciante plays. And uh… it was sort of a homage to that, in my sort of clunky ‘can’t–really-pick' kind of way.

John: Okay. And this is it… Radiohead… “Reckoner”.

[“Reckoner” plays]

John: Radiohead with “Reckoner” on X-Posure XFM out of In Rainbows, getting exposure album treatment tonight. Did you enjoy the ‘Golden Section’? I hope so. And uh…

Thom: Yeah. Did you come?

John: [laughs]

Thom: Sorry.

John: What was I going to say? Oh!

Thom: [laughs]

John: Critically, a lot… You were talking about Thom…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … Thom’s falsetto…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … in that track.

Ed: Yeah.

John: And uh… I’ve read somewhere, at least one critic thought that was… that’s the pinnacle of the whole album.

Ed: Yeah. I can totally see that. Absolutely.

John: And the whole critical reaction…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … to this album has been really strong…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … in favour. Do you pay any attention to critical reaction?

Ed: Well, personally, I mean, you’re talking probably to the two people in the band who aren’t… I mean, I don’t read reviews. Thom, I know you don’t read reviews.

Thom: [undecipherable]

Ed: So, stopped reading reviews a long time ago, but, having said that, friends have texted me on the mobile and stuff and said they’d been obsessing about the record, so you know… I get the feel that there’s a good feeling about the record.

John: Yeah. So that kind of personal reaction…

Ed: Yeah, yeah.

John: … is kind of worth it.

Ed: It’s great. I mean, friends… You know, your good friends will… you can see it on their faces as you play it to them. You get a different reaction. And they come out with some, you know…

Thom: Do you play it to people?

Ed: No, no, I don’t. I can’t do that.

Thom: I can't do that.

Ed: I can’t do that.

Thom: No.

Ed: No, that gives me the horrors but friends will, you know, um… having played it or whatever, you can tell when their response, rather, is different in its…

Thom: I got a mate who’s a brain surgeon called Simon Hurt. ‘Hello, Simon’. And he likes it and he plays it when he’s operating on brains.

John: No way!

Thom: And he says it’s the best one we’ve done so…

John: Does he…

Thom: And he’s clever. He’s got…

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: He’s clever.

John: Does that help him concentrate? Is that why he would play it?

Thom: Well, normally he plays Aphex Twin so I should imagine his patients are very grateful.

Ed and John: [laugh]

John: Luckily then. [undecipherable]

Thom: Yeah. Actually, sometimes they’re not.

John: Really?!

Thom: No. The top of their head’s unscrewed but they’re talking to him. Well, sometimes you need to know that, like in case you hit the wrong bit.

Ed: Wow!

Thom: Mm.

John: Wow!

Thom: So are we getting off the point a little?

John: Amazing!

Thom: [undecipherable]

John: Very impressive! Uh, “House of Cards” is the next track. A question that can relate to some—well, quite a lot of the songs: Are they more personal lyrically venture for you, Thom? I mean, are they personal things that you’re… Let’s say, well…

Thom: It was very much um, uh… psychic dumping… um, where I was deliberately trying to uh… as much as I possibly could, except for “Faust Arp”, to write quickly and not think about how… what sense could be made about it or not, so… Um, you know… in essence, one of the things I’ve been most wary of—talking about the record at all—is actually taking any responsibility for the lyrics, or having to comment on them, because um… it was…[sighs] I kind of don’t feel answerable to them in a way. Sometimes with these lyrics I’ve done sort of paste them together in a sort of much more constructive way, and you sort of feel there’s a point to explaining how you’ve done it. And I kind of… To me, of all the records we’ve done, this is the one I feel I can least explain anyway. [laughs]

John: Hmm. No, that’s interesting because I was listening to it the other day and thinking that there’s a kind of dream-like quality to the album as a whole, in a way. If you listen to the whole thing… say, if you’re driving along, it’s just kind of there, around you. And it’s almost as if the band are kind of lost in the music as you play together. And there are points when the singing seems as if it could be a shaman, or a shaman dancing as part of some kind of ritual, or something like that. Loosing, getting lost in the music, and…

Thom: Well, there are things… One of the reasons it took so long—and yes, I would love to be a shaman…

John: [laughs]

Thom: [laughs] One of the…

John: Maybe you are…

Thom: Maybe I am… I don’t think I do enough drugs for that. Um, one of the things that was really important—one of the reasons it took so long—was to get this… the pulse right on each tune—“House of Cards” being the most obvious example—where you kind of lose yourself in the pulse, and then the vocals can come in, sort of thing. Which is much like… you know, which is a much more… a dance music thing…much less a rock music thing. You can argue the Stones do it. And sometimes it happens. So I would agree to some extent that there’s this thing about being lost in stuff. I mean, “Reckoner” is absolutely that. You know, I think Nigel… that’s one of the things Nigel’s really, really good at… is finding the bits when we play, when we are lost in stuff. And it’s not necessarily the bits, but we’re enjoying it. It’s usually just before all that. [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Thom: ‘Cause by the time we’re enjoying it, we’re thinking ‘Ey, we’re good!’ And that exact point is where it gets crap.

John: Excellent. This is “House of Cards”. It’s Radiohead, on X-Posure. XFM.

[“House of Cards” plays]

John: Radiohead: “House of Cards”. On X-Posure XFM. From In Rainbows. Getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight. Two more tracks to go. Thom and Ed to continue explaining what it’s all about. And the e-mails and texts keep coming through. Can’t go through them all but it’s great to get them and I will pass on all your questions and everything to the band. John.kennedy@xfm.co.uk 83 XFM. “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is next.

[“Jigsaw Falling Into Place” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead with “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, the ninth track from the album In Rainbows, physically released right now, in the shops, as I speak and getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed O’Brien and Thom Yorke, from the band talking us through it track-by-track. “Jigsaw” is also the first single from the album. Having released it in the digital way and obviously you said that you were always going to release it in a physical form at some point, and that was always part of the plan. Uh, singles and all that sort of thing, they still are the picture, or the way that you see yourselves releasing music?

Ed: Well, I guess. I mean a single is a song that gets played on the radio. So yeah... I mean, we wanna get our songs played on the radio so if that’s the form that—if that’s the means that you have to do, then absolutely, you know?

John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’ll probably shift in the…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … years to come, they will become key tracks.

Ed: What was interesting was when the record came out, people… there were no singles picked out. People—different radio stations picked whatever tracks they wanted and that was interesting.

Thom: But then they all come out to you and go ‘Can you tell us what it is now? ‘Cause we don’t know—we don’t want to make a mistake’.

Ed and John: [laugh]

Thom: ‘Why can’t you just carry on playing the one you like?’

John: Yeah. No…

Thom: Weird.

John: I agree with you. Uh, and I mean, “Jigsaw” almost has a… Is it a reference to “Paranoid Android” with that guitar line at the beginning? I mean, it kind of reminds me of “Paranoid Android”. Or it almost seems as if you could’ve chucked it in there just as a nod to your past.

Thom: Really?

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think it’s more that I only have about three ideas.

John: [laughs]

Ed: Oh, c’mon! I like this. I mean, one of the things for me in this record was I always kept on sort of saying was the lyrics. And one of the things I love about this whole song is that, if I may…

Thom, Please, please do.

Ed: Um, it’s the Friday night in the pub and it’s all kicking off. And there used to be a line in there that wasn’t there but that’s central ‘You’ve just been paid’. And, you know, and it’s all going off and I love that kind of…It’s kind of—to me—it’s totally, you know… For me, when we get our songs right it’s very visual. And I totally imagine kind of like a quiet, thin bar and it’s all kicking off. and people looking at one another, and it’s all in the music and buying more drinks, and that euphoria at the end of the week. And you get to that—you get to the last section and it’s all building up and it’s just that glorious feeling, you know? 11 o’clock and before it all goes nasty and you kind of have enough booze inside you, and it’s all… And the world doesn’t get better than this in this very moment and that is… that’s what I love about this song.

Thom: And half an hour from now it’s all going to get [undecipherable]

Ed: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! [undecipherable] that first kebab.

John: [laughs]

Thom: Or you wake up in the morning and you don’t know what her name is.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: So that moment is when the jigsaw falls into place. Before it all goes wrong.

Thom: Yeah.

[“Jigsaw Falling Into Place” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead with “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, the ninth track from the album In Rainbows, physically released right now, in the shops, as I speak and getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed O’Brien and Thom Yorke, from the band talking us through it track-by-track. “Jigsaw” is also the first single from the album. Having released it in the digital way and obviously you said that you were always going to release it in a physical form at some point, and that was always part of the plan. Uh, singles and all that sort of thing, they still are the picture, or the way that you see yourselves releasing music?

Ed: Well, I guess. I mean a single is a song that gets played on the radio. So yeah... I mean, we wanna get our songs played on the radio so if that’s the form that—if that’s the means that you have to do, then absolutely, you know?

John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’ll probably shift in the…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … years to come, they will become key tracks.

Ed: What was interesting was when the record came out, people… there were no singles picked out. People—different radio stations picked whatever tracks they wanted and that was interesting.

Thom: But then they all come out to you and go ‘Can you tell us what it is now? ‘Cause we don’t know—we don’t want to make a mistake’.

Ed and John: [laugh]

Thom: ‘Why can’t you just carry on playing the one you like?’

John: Yeah. No…

Thom: Weird.

John: I agree with you. Uh, and I mean, “Jigsaw” almost has a… Is it a reference to “Paranoid Android” with that guitar line at the beginning? I mean, it kind of reminds me of “Paranoid Android”. Or it almost seems as if you could’ve chucked it in there just as a nod to your past.

Thom: Really?

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think it’s more that I only have about three ideas.

John: [laughs]

Ed: Oh, c’mon! I like this. I mean, one of the things for me in this record was I always kept on sort of saying was the lyrics. And one of the things I love about this whole song is that, if I may…

Thom: Please, please do.

Ed: Um, it’s the Friday night in the pub and it’s all kicking off. And there used to be a line in there that wasn’t there but that’s central ‘You’ve just been paid’. And, you know, and it’s all going off and I love that kind of…It’s kind of—to me—it’s totally, you know… For me, when we get our songs right it’s very visual. And I totally imagine kind of like a quiet, thin bar and it’s all kicking off. and people looking at one another, and it’s all in the music and buying more drinks, and that euphoria at the end of the week. And you get to that—you get to the last section and it’s all building up and it’s just that glorious feeling, you know? 11 o’clock and before it all goes nasty and you kind of have enough booze inside you, and it’s all… And the world doesn’t get better than this in this very moment and that is… that’s what I love about this song.

Thom: And half an hour from now it’s all going to get [undecipherable]

Ed: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! [undecipherable] that first kebab.

John: [laughs]

Thom: Or you wake up in the morning and you don’t know what her name is.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: So that moment is when the jigsaw falls into place. Before it all goes wrong.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Like it. “Videotape” is the next track. And when you were sequencing the album. Did you always think this is the best way to end the record?

Thom: Well, no. Mm, Nigel and I for ages thought it should be the first track, until some… Chris, our manager, pointed out, you know—having come in from the outside, we’d been locked in the studio for a while—‘You must be bloody kidding! They’ll just play that and say forget it’, ‘cause it’s pretty dark, but um… I think that was only just because it was the thing at that particular moment that we were most proud of, you know? So…

John: So usually I mean, that’s the one that you want to share first and say ‘Hey! Look what we’ve done!’

Ed: Mm, not necessarily. I think—no, not necessarily. I think it’s like every song has its place and if I was… in the morning—well, I don’t play the songs to friends—but if I were to. I mean, it depends, if I come back from the pub and—maybe one o’clock in the morning—and sit and have a smoke that would probably be a good one to start with. But it might not be a good one at ten o’clock in the morning. You know what I mean? It’s like, I like that thing someone said once about ‘every song has its hour of the day’ almost.

Thom: That’s true.

Ed: So, it seems… I think the reason that Nigel… I remember Nigel said he wanted it to be at the start of the record because it’s just literally Thom’s voice. You’ve got the piano but you just got his voice, and we haven’t done that for a while, you know? The thing that was cool about the rest of us, when we heard The Eraser and it was like ‘Ooh… his vocals are loud! Ooh! I like that!’

Thom: ‘Why can’t he do it with us?’ [laughs]

Ed: [laughs] No, exactly. ‘Why does he want to bury it in all our noise?’

Thom: Just giving you space, chap! It’s alright.

Ed: That’s right. Hiding? No. And so I think that it’s great for that because it’s really—the voice is upfront and, you know? It’s such a great lyric.

John: Mm, yeah. Well, it’s a great way to end the album, great way to start it, then. And, of course, people can shuffle it around if they want to.

Thom: If they must.

John: Listening to the whole of In Rainbows. Something: Phil has got in touch with the programme and wanted to know that in the past, at some point, Thom, you had said that “How to Disappear”, you reckoned, was probably the best thing that Radiohead...

Thom: Oh, yeah.

John: … had ever done. Is there anything on In Rainbows you think you could’ve, as a band, have reached that pinnacle again?

Thom: Uh, me personally it would be “Videotape”. Because it was one of those songs where it was absolutely sort of—we just didn’t know how on Earth we were gonna do it; and, you know, and to end up with this really stripped-down thing where you’re hearing all this extra stuff—it’s maybe there, maybe not—you know, it’s just… it exists on a different sort of weird… There’s something else going on which you can’t hear, but it’s going on, and it transforms you hopefully, that’s the idea. “How to Disappear” was a similar thing. There’s a point in there where it’s like… You know the old Murakami?

John: No.

Thom: Uh, Japanese author. Japanese-American author. And in his books they always have this—well, it’s a constant theme of like having holes in walls that you go through and then you’re sort of a parallel… You break through to the other side sort of thing. And I think that’s the aim of records for us. Making music is—every now and again you get those bits where you break through to the other side.

John: And will that keep you going? You mentioned a remix in ten years time, 2014, of “Nude”, was it? And…

Thom: [undecipherable] [Thom sings a silly "Videotape" remix]

John: [laughs]

Thom: [undecipherable]

John: There was a point when you released a series of albums quite quickly, in a row, you think you’ll ever return to that?

Ed: Hopefully, yeah.

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: Yeah, that’s the idea. We’ve got to kind of change some of the model that’s been floating around the last few years. And we will… we’ll do it quicker. And now we’ve got the means to do it as well, so…

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think this is a very specific method of working, as well. We deliberately, like, didn’t—we kept with what we knew in a sort of weird sort of way and concentrated on just getting the songs right. But the next time it’s much more concentrating on what we’ve done now. [laughs] You know what I mean. Trying some different gear, you know, different methods.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Next. [undecipherable] Now.

John: Thom, Ed, thanks so much for coming in. It’s great to see you. And this is the last track tonight from Radiohead: “Videotape”.

[“Videotape” plays]