(introducing each other as brothers and musical soul brothers...)

Q: Can you describe this year, how it's been? You wrote most of the songs (for the album) last year, so was it just lazing about this year?

E: No!

J: We were still recording it 3 months ago.

E: We did a lot of recording and touring last year. We did a bunch of recordings with Nigel in the autumn last year. And we came to Christmas, and everybody went away and reviewed it, and it was not very good. There were bits of it that were good, but we realised it needed a lot of hard work. So we started again in January and finished recording again in July. It was a lot of work.

Q: When you realise that what you've done isn't very good, how do you go about finding a way to get yourself out of that particular rut?

E: You try something different. And you keep working at it.

J: Yeah. It's like re-writing anything. As long as it takes. Until you read it back and it's not embarrassing any more and it says what you want it to say, or as close as you can get it. Often it's just getting the gist

Q: So it was just a question of going over what you'd done. It wasn't a question of changing the method?

J: No, we didn't suddenly have to go somewhere and change personnel or anything like that. No.

C: But we did go somewhere mentally!

E: Yeah.

C: When we were doing 'Arpeggi' and '15 Step'?

J: But we didn't have to climb a mountain and play naked in the studio to get the juices going, like occasionally some bands have to do. Maybe we should next time.

C: What, play naked?

J: Isn't that what, erm...

C: Climb a mountain?

E: The Chili Peppers?

J: Who went to New Zealand, and?

E: That was Crowded House. They took acid and recorded naked. With Youth.

Q: What was it like recording without a record company peering over your shoulders?

E: It was no different. It was no different, cause they haven't been involved like that since OK Computer. Cause that album gave us a lot of freedom in that respect. They never came down to the studio and said whether they liked it or not. We presented them. So that was never an issue. Really.

Q: So you never had an issue about quality control either, cause since OK Computer you've been your own unit.

E: Our management are very good though, as sounding boards. They would be kind of what you'd call an old-fashioned A&R role where they, they hear something and - they're quite good on that stuff. So they're the first people we play it to. Although you (to Jonny) might disagree.

J: Sometimes they are good.

E: & C: Hehehe!

J: We all - we all have moments of talking rubbish in front of each other. Haha. "It should be like this". No. They're the only outside people who've ever heard anything, that's true.

Q: How have both Thom's and your own (Jonny's) outside projects - you, Ed and Colin, probably have your own which I haven't heard about, maybe you could tell me about them - how have these outside projects informed what you're doing as Radiohead?

J: The only influence from Thom's was - actually I don't think there was one. The only thing maybe was a two week delay at the beginning of January while he was finishing stuff off. That's about it. He always goes everywhere with a laptop and headphones, he's done it for years, so I think he was just relieved he finally released a batch of that music. It was never gonna be Radiohead songs. And it just made him more proficient on laptops, but then he already was, really.

Q: So there wasn't a bunch of ideas he'd constantly tried to foist on you, and you kept saying no until he went away and did it by himself?

J: He's been foisting ideas on us since the 80s.

E: Hehe!

J: That's what he does. No. Nothing brand new.

Q: And your own, the stuff with London Sinfonietta and the reggae album (a collection of reggae favourites he collected for an album)?

J: The reggae album has been a big - I'm not allowed to play reggae at home now any more, my wife is too angry with me.

Q: Why?

J: Cause we heard it for 6 months without stopping, just reggae, all day.

Q: What's wrong with that?

J: She liked it for a bit, but then she'd had enough. Yeah, I'm not sure reggae has reached this record. Erm. That's about it.

Q: The importance of spacing in reggae, what happens between the beats, has that ever played a role in your guitar playing?

J: Oh! I don't know. I never listened to the guitars really on reggae records. It's all about the singing and the beat, isn't it?

C: I don't know?! He said, not able to think of any reggae guitar player!

E: Ernest Rangling. He was great.

J: Hm. Yes. But it's.

C: It's all good, isn't it. Peter Tosh?

Q: But also all the rhythm guitar playing...

J: Yeah, I'm not very good at that. So I couldn't really - Thom and Ed are better rhythm guitar players.

Q: But they don't like reggae? (tea arrives...)

E: No, I mean - I don't think it's really - you're as much influenced by reggae as you are by anything else. Anything in music is, I guess because you, like... it influences you somehow, but it isn't a specific kind of searching for a beat.

Q: Even in retrospect you can't say that the way you played ten years ago actually probably might tie in with such and such?

E: I think, maybe, what you're alluding to, that certainly now there's a greater emphasis on getting the rhythm side and groove right then there way, say, ten years ago.

C: That's true.

E: That's very true. And that could be something from reggae, that could be something from soul, that could be something from techno, from anything that swings or moves, or Dance music, or Disco. But that's - that's actually really important nowadays. Whereas it wasn't when we were rocking out on The Bends. So, yeah. But it's not something you pull from a specific genre of music. That's just what floats your boat. That's the thing - a common ground between all of us.

Q: Do you, when you're not in the studio, get together to discuss music? Do you get together at all?

J: When you're recording you're just together all the time anyway. We were in a country house, living in caravans.

E: For four weeks. And that was quite...

C: That's what we need probably - we've just done a webcast. And what's really good is that probably for the first time people are playing... they're spinning their own tunes. And you're hearing what other people are into, what they're playing. So it'd be good to do a bit more than that.

J: I'm booking Phil for my Christmas party.

E: He has the moves. And the music.

C: And the music. The consensus was - on the web after the cast - was that Phil had the tunes and the moves. He did - it was a blistering DJ set, wasn't it.

J: I was doing that teenage thing where after two minutes you think maybe it's not good enough and play something else instead.

C: I got into trouble playing a Shannon track. Apart from that it was fine. It's that thing we do sometimes, a lot of what we do is not very musical, when we start making a record and stuff - if music's about communication I think we could be better at communicating to each other about stuff. And when we get together and start talking to each other about how we hear or see a song, then things start to move more quickly.

Q: Did you for In Rainbows - obviously it has been remarked upon that passages of In Rainbows, musically, are a bit like an echo to OK Computer. Did you actually approach the album as a kind of bringing together different strands of ten years' work, or was it just where you're at?

J: I think people forget that up until two weeks before you call a record finished you've got a blackboard with 16 song titles on. Some of them are better than others. Some of them are more finished than others. So it's far more chaotic than people assume. People don't record like that anymore where people go in the studio for two weeks and record "the album". You can't think of records like that any more, because they take such a long time to do. It's only an album in the last couple of weeks when you're looking for a running order and you have to decide what to leave on and what to take off.

E: It's so true. When you hear the story about your favourite albums - invariably your favourite song - invariably there's no master plan. It happens. And things happen in a very short space of time. And it's almost by luck - or something happens. It's always the case. The same story with every album. That's the stuff that makes it really special. Where people went "oh, fuck it", and if that hadn't happened the rest wouldn't have fallen into place. I love that story about 'Heroes', David Bowie. If Bowie hadn't seen Tony Visconti having a snog with - he hadn't any lyric for the song - if he hadn't seen Tony Visconti having a snog with one of the backing singers next to the old wall at the time in Berlin where they were recording, that lyric would never - that was the last thing that went down. "There it is, that's our producer having a snog". That's the stuff that you're saying, that's the stuff that makes it interesting. Master plans never really work, do they.

Q: Hearing In Rainbows complete in the end, was it full of surprises for you, the way it had come out? Stuff you hadn't realised had been in you before?

E: Mhm. When you sequence a record - when it felt right, it was like, you know, everything, each song grows exponentially. The sequencing of a record is when the songs actually blossom, all of them blossom. And you know it's right when the whole thing is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's - you hope that you'll get to that stage. When you have 16 songs on the blackboard you'll try and work out - at the time it can seem quite daunting. How the hell are we going to make this work? The only thing we did notice was — we didn't want to have as many songs as Hail to the Thief. We wanted it to be 9, 10 or 11 songs. Something to keep it more succinct. No flab.

Q: In terms of melody it also seems more succinct. At least more, what's the word, harmonious than the sound experiments that have gone before. Was that a conscious development?

E: Isn't that responding to what you've done before? I mean - what we've always is responding to what's gone before. We've done a lot of sound experimentation - and there was a lot of sound experimentation here as well, like what you did on 'All I Need'. There was stuff. But it wasn't - we've done a lot of that. So it was, "we like bits of that", but you don't wanna do that endlessly. You always respond to what you've last done.

J: It's all about arranging and re-arranging 3- or 4-minute songs. There's only so much you can do with that.

C: The other thing is cause of the structure of these songs, they don't have choruses and things, to keep your interest in them, they had to look more at things like groove. That's why it took so long. Like Ed said earlier.

Q. Were you surprised at the fuss that was being made at the way you marketed the album?

E: I think we were surprised about the extent of it. And how quickly. That was the surprising thing.

J: Yeah, there was the thought, though, going into it, "We don't actually know if anyone's gonna be...". We assumed everyone would be interested and excited. But a few days before we were like going "we don't actually know that". There could be no interest at all, or we could be too late. No one knew what kind of interest there would be, to the extent that there were suggestions whether ten days was enough for word to spread that we were doing it. Maybe, we were saying, it should be two weeks. Or maybe it's gonna happen in 3 days. How long will it take to reach the newspapers. It was all up in the air.

C: It was. It was a step in the dark, wasn't it.

J: Yeah. It really was.

C: Yeah. We didn't have a clue. It was so exciting though.

E: Yeah. It was really liberating.

Q: Liberating?

E: Yeah. It really is. Cause, you know - we haven't done this before. It's the response, people getting music in this way initially, knowing there's another way people are gonna get it as well, there's gonna be a physical CD in the new year, but it's realty exciting, yeah.

Q: Do you have any figures yet?

E: No. We'll get them at the end of December.

Q: One hitch there seems to have been which led to some sniping, in that - what doesn't seem to have travelled so well was the announcement that there would be a proper CD later, so there has been sniping about basically you got people to pay for something they'll have to pay again if they want the proper CD.

E: To be fair, when we made our initial announcement through our press people there was always at the bottom a footnote, a CD, a physical release will be available at the end of the year or the beginning of the new year. That was always the case. But what happens probably is that the media aren't reporting that, so what people are getting is information second hand. Of course, it's - you know - it's - there are flaws. My big problem with the way we released is, for instance, the website is in English. Ideally there would have been a website in German as well, you could have clicked on whatever language. That felt a bit uncomfortable. But you know - we're just doing it ourselves. We haven't got a big record company behind us. And we wanted to do it quickly. So there are flaws. But we have really done it with the best intentions.

C: They're virtuous, though, aren't they. That's the thing. The shortcomings are virtuous cause we've done it ourselves. It was like a performance. It was like doing a show. That's what was so exciting about it. It was like - after spending two years closeted away making a record, it was like opening the door to the studio and there's like a million people and you're going to give it to them and they are THERE. That's what's cool about it, it's not mediated by music magazines. It's not mediated by the record shops. It's not mediated by the radio stations. It's just us and a piece of wire in the computer and the internet, and that's it.

Q: You also made it very difficult to resist - it happened to me - you go on the website and von start off with "OK, I'll pet the download, pay a couple of quid, and then there's that box as well, "fuck, it'd be stupid not to go for the box as well", so of course you order the box.

C: Cool!

E: But presumably you like what we've done in the past.

Q: Very much so.

E: So there's - so that's for you. But most people aren't gonna do what you did...

C: Like in America!

E: But I agree with you - if I'm a real fan of a band, like if Kings of Leon had released this, it would have been "I've got to get the fucking box set, I want it all!" I think that's great. You know. I think that's - to allow people who have a passion for a band, a real passion, to dig deeper and for that stuff to be available - trawling over the art work, looking at the credits - all that stuff...

C: Cause you know it's something we've made as a band, it's all been put together by us. It's not the record company.

Q: It's not some kind of marketing exercise.

All: (enthusiastically) NO, it's like...

E: So much CARE, you know! So much love, and - for want of a better word.

J: Listening to the masters of the vinyl and thinking about what you'd do when you get it, and all of that, and you know that the intention, not just the music, but the physical thing itself had that poured into it by the band.

E: Even how much the vinyl weighs, you know! Heavy or light.

Q: The way it smells.

All: YEAH!

E: Totally. It's really important. All of that. It's that same feeling, when you're a teenager, when you love music, when you love - and there's something quite big and physical about it, and you can pore over it, that's the only problem with the CDs, that it is a little bit unsatisfying like that.

Q: Also, the time span (of a record). Twenty minutes, and you have to make a conscious effort to get up and change it. There's so much to be said in favour of vinyl. - But I'm aware of the five-minute warning. What I also wanted to ask was, one thing I found it really cleverly circumvented - the record companies go on so much about the dangers of people downloading for free, and the artists being fucked, but what you've shown is, by giving the option you probably got 1000s of people listening to it who probably never would have paid for it in a shop. Now they've listened to it - maybe they're converted to your cause, maybe not...

C: Yeah, that's right.

E: Yeah. And why criminalize these people who download it for free? You know - that's what they do. That's what they expect. These are mainly kids. Teenagers, you know.

Q: That's how we all got into music, isn't it? Listening to our friends' records.

E: Home taping!

Q: "Home taping is killing music".

E: Yeah. Exactly.

C: The previous generation listening to Radio Caroline. Pirate radio station, trying to find it, tuning in.

Q: Dread Broadcast Corporation. Did you know that lot?

All: No!

Q: They were a reggae pirate station in the 80s broadcasting from the top of Trellick Tower.

J: I bet that was great.

Q: Fantastic. DBC.

E: Hurhur. DBC!

C: And those people weren't doing it to sell it in two years' time and make millions, they're doing it - they're going through all that shit of carrying the equipments up that tower and things, cause they have a passion for something and they want to share it with other people, and that's all it is.

Q: Have your experiences from doing it led you already to new ideas what you might be trying out next?

C: Yeah. We've just done this webcast, which we've done before. But it's just been - the thing about all of this though, you have to remember, a very small number of people have heard the record. A very few people on the internet. There's loads of people who don't...

(last question)

...when you make or record something, whether it's any good or not, you can hand-pass that decision making on to the fans. And it's really liberating because it means - we did a webcast and some of it was a bit dodgy and some of it was really great, and then people decide what they like and they put it on their blogs, or they send it to other people and so there's a sort of filtering. And it's taking place by the sort of people you want it to be, which is the fans, not by someone in an office at a record company. So it means you don't have to think about any of that, you just think about doing what you do as an artist. And I think that's really exciting.

Q: Have you had loads of bands calling you up and saying "well done, fantastic" or "you bastards you've fucked up our business"?

J: Haha.

E: Unfortunately, the way bands are in Britain - people don't really talk. You know, they don't really go "Well done! This is Liam from Oasis, well done old chaps, this is the model for the future!"

C: Hear hear!

E: But I think - I went to Q awards about seven weeks ago, and I had a couple of people coming up to me going, "That's-" Ian Brown, people like that, "It's really good". I think people like it.

Q. And the captains of the industry?

E: No IDEA. No idea.

Q. You haven't had hate mail?

E: No. Nonono. I think - what's really interesting is that we had to wait until we did our record deals until after this whole thing was released. We couldn't tell any of the record companies who were interested in signing us and expecting that once the download thing had come out several of them would pull out. They'd just think: "What's the point of getting involved? And actually the opposite seemed to happen. It seemed to stimulate the record companies' resolve. So when they were making their pitch to our managers they seemed even hungrier to sign us.

C. It's a world turned upside down.

E: I think the record companies - they're looking for stuff. You know? I think the people working in the record companies since the mid 80s - they're bored! One of the things we've always moaned about the last 12 years, the roots, the channels, it's like an industry, you feed this in and that comes out - people who work in the record companies are bored with that. It used to be a very creative business. In the 70s the marketing person in some cases was as creative as the artist! It was all fun. I think - getting that anarchy back, that fun back, and stopping it being - about shifting units all over the world, it's about being creative and having some fun.

Q: And the beauty of the internet is that you can do that within your own community without depending on any corporate involvement.

C: That's right - that's what I was saying!

Q: Anything to add you haven't touched on?

C: Erm - I don't think so. You're doing this for Musikexpress and radio in Switzerland...

E: We're going to play dates in Germany next year, hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully in Berlin as well.

Q: A good place, apparently, Berlin, I haven't been.

C: Where are you from?

Q: Zurich.

E: Ah! I remember going there years ago, when we toured The Bends. It was pretty - going to a late night kebab house and seeing all the guys with the headbands with the needle exchange program. I was like, "what the fuck is going on here"? It was really...

C: Near the station, wasn't it.

E: Yeah, yeah, needle park, or whatever. And it was like, "wow", it wab quite an eye opener.

J: And there was a good launderette. At the end he was so happy to have our business he turned up with little bottles of vodka for us all.

E: Oh, yes, that's right - we got the tram there!