(((chatting as setting up equipment...

Q: Congratulations, I think it's a wonderful album.

T: Thank you! You're the first who said this today.

Q: Don't you hear it all the time?

T: But it's always pleasing to hear it...)))

T: ...you know, ending up reducing them by just pushing them up on the fader, you know. Haha. Something that takes you two days. You go: oh yeah, we'll just have that there for one minute. Well, 20 seconds, and then down it goes. Lots of that going on.

Really playful in other words.

T: Yeah. Playful or torturous. Depending on how you look at how long it took to produce these bits and things.

Q: Does that still happen, "torturous"?

T: Not torturous exactly, it just takes a long lime, and (sounds really excited) you have all these ideas and you try them all out, and then you go, wahhh!

Q: What sort of year has it been for you after the solo album?

T: What a year? What a year - I have no idea, it's a year and a bit, actually. Erm, pfff - it's been, erm, is that working? It's been, erm, up and down. For me. A bit sort of we weren't sure whether we were really gonna get it together or not. And then it all sort of - when we did sort of put it - put the songs in order, did the whole thing, and then everything started kicking off, it got really good. It's actually been a really nice couple of months now. Like sort of relief, but sort of a sense of achievement. It's a good thing to have. You've got to enjoy if you've got that sense of achievement.

Q: When you first In Rainbows as it was going out did you have a "fuck, that's us!" moment?

T: Yeah. Yeah! When we finally worked out what was going on and what order and stuff, yeah. I had me moment, haha. Sitting in the control room on my own, doing this (puts head in hands), it was great. Really good, actually, it felt really - cause you just - the times you think, oh man, it's never gonna happen. It's just the nature of it. Every time you get into that creative thing there's a sort of period of everything feeling as if it's breaking down. That's part of the creative process, I guess.

Q: The white sheet phenomenon. But I would have thought - you write so much anyway, for the website and all the notebooks and stuff, that keeps you in a flow so you don't have these worries.

T: Yeah, but the hardest thing in some ways is - we chose to focus on these songs, and by the time you come to record them we were almost bored of them. Not only that, but we had REALLY high expectations of them. Because we knew they were good - but we played them a lot. And the more you play them the more ideas you want to try out, and the more dadadada - the more specific you want it to sound. So it kind of got in the way. There were points when we did "House of Cards" when I'd think: "I'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life, it's never gonna stop!" Hahaha! Playing that guitar riff. I AM GOING MAD!

Q: As she (Sarah from the record company) told you, I have spoken to the others, so they gave me all the gossip on you so I won't need to go into personal details...

T: Oh, shit. Great. How marvellous, haha.

Q: A few things they haven't answered. For instance - coming up with this fantastic method of distributing the album to the people who really want it, why bother putting out a CD at all?

T: Because if we didn't, it's like saying the entire universe is just the internet. Which it isn't. You know. And a lot of people basically would never get to hear it unless we also did a normal version. The condition of doing the whole process to begin with, for me, was that we did do a normal CD. Otherwise it's - not exactly elitist - but it's just whole groups of people you're deliberately saying aren't good enough to hear it. I just thought that wasn't right. Didn't feel right. That's about as far as I went in my head, really, it didn't feel quite right. I was totally down with the download thing. To me it's like a glorified leak date, you know. But in the end - I like the idea of someone being able to buy it at Tesco's (a supermarket chain with shops at every corner). I like the idea.

Q: You really liked the idea of your solo album being a pop album, too, chart music.

T; Yeah. Not for long, though, eh?! Haha. But yeah.

Q: How has the success of the solo album affected your perspective on Radiohead since then?

T: Hahaha! That's the standing joke of the day. Haha. Erm - it was a bit of a mo'fuck, having to go back into that group dynamic after spending a bit of time not really - erm, having to chair ones decisions, just knocking out stuff and then once it was sort of half ready I went to Nigel and made it into a sort of record-y shape, erm, but it was a one-man band. It was all THAT. And then suddenly going back into working out parts and performance and, you know, that's just a completely different... "Videotape" for example, was such a simple song, but it was really hard as a unit to work out how the fuck to do it. It was a nightmare! Because it was so simple. It was too simple, know what I mean? It was so simple. So we ended up stripping it down to nothing and that sort of thing - you know, I just had to get used to that again. Cause it can be really amazing like on "15 Step", where something happens that would never have happened if it wasn't through this long drawn-out process. And then there can be other times it takes so long it can be really, "oh, you know". You just wish you'd recorded it the moment you did it. But - I think it was worth it.

Q: Completely different topic. You did turn down the opportunity to meet Tony Blair. Would you meet Gordon Brown?

T: Erm - apparently - sorry, I'm turning this off now (mobile) - I'm so rude.

Q: That's terrible, I'll tell everybody

T: Yeah. You should.

Q: No manners.

T: I don't. Sorry. I even pick my nose. Erm.

Q: Gordon Brown.

T: I don't know - yeah - maybe if he actually does, well, a) not take us into a war in Iraq, or, rather, doesn't decide to do another one. But also, apparently he's coming round to the environmental bill I've been trying to push with Friends of the Earth. So maybe - if he actually does do that, maybe I should meet him and give him some credit. If he doesn't then I won't. I think when I look back on the thing with Tony Blair, that was in the context of the Friends of the Earth thing as well. That was - I was not happy about the fact that there were all those conditions about what I could say afterwards and so on. I just thought that was weird. That it would affect Friends of the Earth's access to the Prime Minister afterwards if I went out afterwards and said- yeah, he's full of shit.

Q: That buys you for the spin machinery!

T: Exactly! Which was wrong, man. But, more than that, actually in my heart of hearts I could not shake hands with the guy who took us into Iraq. I just couldn't do it. Brown hasn't done that yet. I'm sure he'll think of something.

Q: For a moment there you were really prominent in those sort of causes, like Friends of the Earth, and the Justice in Trade...

T: I don't do as much - I don't do that much. I don't do as much as I should. I'm lazy.

Q: I was going to ask whether you maybe took a little bit of a backseat cause there was a danger you might become Bono?

T: I wasn't worried about that, I was just - I just think I wasn't helping. You know. And a lot of the time they are doing perfectly well without me. And also, you know, you're basically out of your depth. And I don't like being out of my depth. Especially the political element of all this. I'm really fascinated by all that. But - it's erm, it's a weird world. I don't understand it at all.

Q: So you're involved in the sense now that you're giving money and you're reading the books?

T: I'm involved - I'm not involved at the moment. I'm trying to do something with them and trying to get it together, but that's in the midst of all this (the album). And it always has to take second place, because otherwise that'd get weird. And they're totally cool with that.

Q: In Britain ten years ago if you talked about ecological things you were a crank. How do you feel about the speed of the change in attitudes the last few years?

T: Well, I - I think - it's really fascinating how fast it did change, how fast people have become conscious of it. But it does alarm me that, erm, it's only in a certain section of society. The rest of society is like... well, we're fucked anyway. I guess that's the easy place to go. If you're told an environmental catastrophe may just be round the corner, do you, a) do something about it, b) say: oh well, we're fucked anyway, and carry on as normal. Which is more tempting? And it's the same in the political establishment as well. I don't know what it's like in the rest of Europe. Well, the EU seems to have got its shit together vaguely. That worries me. I don't know. Maybe it'll change.

Q: Here we are...

T: Sorry, man.

Q: Anything you'd like to add?

T: No. Thank you for saying you like the record, though.

Q: Well, erm, (taken aback) it was from the heart.

T: I know, there's a whole lot of things to say. But I think, I THINK, as far as I remember, that's why I'm here. Hahaha!