In many ways Radiohead stand alone amongst the current crop of British bands. They have no self interested record company or press sponsors and yet they have a fan base in the UK that any of the Britpop pack would be more than satisfied with. They have oughed inroads through America (that Blur and Oasis could only stumble upon) having recently toured with R.E.M., the biggest band in the world. They are, to all intents and purposes, at the height of their career and, to top it all, they got there on the own merit (which takes some doing in this age of corporate wank). A true popular music success story and, at their centre, Thom Yorke stands out among his contemporaries as the perfect specimen of an enigmatic pop star - the type they stopped making in 1968.

It was a rare treat to interview a man whose intelligence and magnetic aura are matched only by his humility and thoughtfulness. I had this pleasure after an astonishing gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands recently - it was the sort of live experience that you'll tell your grandchildren about. The dry ice, strategic lighting and perfectly toned P.A. - props for a lesser band - were merely trinkets on Radiohead 's pop crown and a couple of thousand of hoarse but exhilarated bystanders witnessed the coronation We caught up with him in his dressing room - whilst a queue of eager fans waited at the other side of a huge flowery curtain! I started by asking him about the band's fruitful American conquest...

"Why do you think Radiohead have been so successful in the United States?"

Thom - Well, we were successful in America, we're not really at the moment. I think in order to get anywhere you have to have a certain degree of admiration for the place and an affinity with their psyche. Nowadays, I think maybe the only thing we share some sort of affinity with the whole victim culture - especially in Los Angeles.

"I suppose that's part of American culture. The psychoanalysm, the exploring yourself sort of thing. It actually occured to me that the likes of The Psychedelic Furs, The Smiths, and recently Bush all have a charismatic frontman and they all come across as introspective..."

Thom - ...Bush?

"Well I don't think much of them myself but they've got that kind of element to them. Is that what Americans have come to expect of British bands?"

Thom - I don't think so. The only uncharismatic character in recent pop music that I can think of was Frank Black and he wasn't uncharismatic as such, he just didn't move. I mean you can go on and on about it I suppose. The Smiths were initially success l but they split up. The thing is there's so many fucking stupid ways to get famous in America but sounding like Nirvana is still a really good way of doing it - if you can believe that. It's still true, although it's kind of falling apart now which is odd. The radio stations just twigged.

"How did touring with R.E.M. compare with previous tours?"

Thom - Well it didn't really feel like anything else.

"I take it you're a fan?"

Thom - Well yeah, but being a support band is a pretty difficult thing to do, it can be pretty demoralising.

"Especially since most people have gone along to see a certain band and you're playing to their audience."

Thom - Absolutely, it's a fair enough thing. We discovered that the best way to cope with it was to laugh about it. We had this running joke that the only bands we would agree to support were U2 and R.E.M. A month later we got a call...it didn't really compare to anything. I don't really know where to begin actually. It was fucking fascinating and it completely blew my mind but in a nice way. It gave us such a great perspective and it really helped us.

"That was the next thing I was going to ask. Do you think it changed you personally or you as a band?"

Thom - I think it changed us yeah. But totally for the better. It's sort of like having light at the end of the tunnel again.

"Were they the biggest crowds you'd played in front of?"

Thom - Yeah, but it was funny because a lot of the times we'd be playing when a lot of the people who'd come to see R.E.M. were walking in. I remember going to see R.E.M. six years ago and the same thing happened to the Muses. I was turning round and telling everyone, 'Fucking sit down and shut up' but the Muses didn't say anything, they just played the set and left and I thought that was sort of weird. So when we went into this tour thought the only way to deal with this was to say, 'Okay, they're faci our direction and they haven't got their eyes shut so it's alright'. You just need a sense of humour about it."

"Did you get a similar reaction to tonight anywhere in the States?"

Thom - Not so much screaming and jumping up and down, no, but that was cool. Actually, one of my favourite things from the tour was going down to the front when R.E.M. were playing their show and make faces at them. Peter Buck especially - when he recognizes someone in the audience he has to look away. He spent the entire tour doing that.

"So did you enjoy the tour?"

Thom - Yeah, I did. The only thing that fucked me up really was the space involved. The numbers and the mass you know. It was like that famous evangelist?

"Billy Graham?"

Thom - Yeah, yeah. It was like Billy Graham on tour - that level of devotion and downright craziness.

"I've heard that they play the American national anthem before every gig."

Thom - They didn't on our last tour. I think that happens at certain venues. You must be referring to the Sinead thing - that was really out of order. It was complete bullshit.

"It was Frank Sinatra, I think, who said 'if I get a hold of her...'."

Thom - I think so. He called her a cunt. Frank Sinatra's a really nice bloke, of course. He wasn't involved in the mob at all - not even a little bit.

"To what extent do you seek vindication from your fellow artists?"

Thom - I've never really sought it, to be honest. I mean, for the first two years of our career we had absolutely no interest from the music industry. They kind of sidestepped to the other side of the street and that was fine. I mean, they've always bee the enemy and I think they might continue to be the enemy.

"Do you feel Radiohead are outside the current British scene?"

Thom - Hopefully, yeah. The best thing to do is to stay completely outside of it. When I turn on the radio in the morning, the first thing I say to myself is, 'Do you really want to be part of this thing'. When Supergrass comes on or Blur comes on I don' want to know about it. I mean there's an instant sort of jealousy thing to be honest. You do get really jealous. The first lesson we learnt was that you have to be able to live one hundred percent whole-heartedly with everything you do. Especially in th music business and especially in Britain. Because it's a really small, intense place you find yourself bowing under. It's a really difficult thing to stomach here but's it's easy in America because everything's shit.

"I've always seen Radiohead songs as a complete unit - if you take one element out of context, the lyrics or the vocal style or the music, then you're missing something. Radiohead is definitely a live experience. Why do you think you work so well as live band?"

Thom - I think there was a stage before we recorded The Bends where we had ceased being a good live band, that was before the James tour - around the same time of the Belly tour. We reached a point where we stopped communicating, me especially. I just decided that it wasn't true. I decided that live Radiohead wasn't some fantastic combination. I said to myself, 'This is not working, it's falling apart' and we actually sat down and had it out. We went back into rehearsals and yeah, you're right, we are quite musically attuned to each other but we all had the power of veto over things and that led to more conflict. I think, actually, when we were making The Bends we got into trouble again. I started going off on my own and Johnny was doing his thing and someone else wouldn't agree with what was going on. It just didn't work and we found we couldn't do it. The fact is, when I listen to The Bends, I hear all that going on. Now, when we record stuff, we know it's going to be like that. When we did 'Lucky' for the Help thing, and we had like half a day to do it, we all knew that that was all important. That's what you see with R.E.M. - you don't really think about it until you see it in other people. You're watching them soundcheck and you think 'bloody hell they're all such separate people, disparate people'. It's really weird.

"I suppose when you look from the outside at any band you don't see them all arguing with each other or the separate individuals within it - you see a kind of front. I though every song on The Bends was really strong so the fact that the band wasn't together surprises me. I don't think there are too many bands who can sit down and record an album on which every song is strong, you know? You'd expect to have a couple of good songs and make the rest up with fillers. One thing I noticed were the real high production values on The Bends. I read that you weren't happy about the production values on Pablo Honey which was recorded over a few days?"

Thom - Yeah, it was recorded over a few days but we wrote the songs a long time before and there we were promoting it two years later!

"It was kind of in retrospect then?"

Thom - Yeah, you see every second of The Bends fucking counted, it really did. There was no way we were going to let the same thing happen again. Admittedly, I've always been really into recording. I love recording studios. I mean, I could literally spe months in there. We had this thing when we were recording The Bends where we'd been on the rack for two months and it was coming together at last. Towards the end we had all these tour obligations and I thought, 'Fuck it, no, I want to stay in the stud for three months'. Everyone said no, you've got to get out of here and they were absolutely right. We went touring for about 6 weeks and then I went into the Manor and did the whole fucking album in two weeks - having realised what we were doing wrong. That easy, but sickening!

"Do you feel under pressure to perform offstage?"

Thom - Off stage, yeah, I'm starting to get really annoyed with myself. My brother told me off the other day for it.

"I suppose people sort of expect you to be an enigmatic character when you're having a cup of tea."

Thom - Yeah, I wake up on a normal day and I go out for a meal with my girlfriend but someone is sitting there watching me for a while. Then he comes up and asks me for my autograph and it's like 'Well, yeah, I could give you my autograph but, as far as 'm concerned, I'm not going because I'm here with my girlfriend - this is my space and you're invading it'. I mean, I don't want to be seen as malicious or nasty but it gets too much sometimes.

"I can understand that. You don't want to be constantly on call"

Thom - Yeah, I just find at the moment that I don't want to be constantly on call because I can see myself getting sucked into it.

"Do you feel there's a pressure on you to be like your stage persona?"

Thom - Yeah, there's this great quote by Milan Kundera; 'The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping the public in mind, means living a lie'. That's he way I feel.

"Is that from 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being?"

Thom - Yes, it is.

"Well the next question is on the same theme I suppose. Are you happier being famous than you were being an unknown?"

Thom - Yes, definitely, because I'm allowed to make music now for a living and I'm allowed to express myself completely, that's it! I don't want to be Sonya from fucking Echobelly - that's not why I got into this!

"She has actually got a poem in this release by Pulp Faction."

Thom - Yeah, I deliberately didn't do that.

"I read it and it was bloody awful. I just thought 'What's the point of that? I mean, that might sell the book for them but I just thought 'If you're a writer, then fine, but selling it because she's written some crap is a bit pointless'."

Thom - That's what I couldn't get my head around. I mean there's a million things I could put in it but I just thought that people would judge it because it was me rather than on how good it was.

"Do you still reply to fans' letters and queries?"

Thom - I've got a box the size of this table with unanswered mail in my study (motioning towards the large table in front of us.

"This is probably just a journalist at work but I remember you saying in an earlier interview that you were interested in replying to fans and being in touch with them as much as you could. Is that really possible?"

Thom - A lot of people like to write to me personally and, if they do that, then I read it but it takes it out of you. I'm one of those people that writes loads and loads of letters and puts them in a bag. Then, a month later I come back and think, if I ost them now, they'll think I'm completely deranged. I did that once. I had a group of ten letters and I posted them late. Two or three people wrote back asking me why it took so long!

"Do you ever feel that you might not be able to sustain your songwriting abilities?"

Thom - Yes, thank you. Every day of the week and every hour of every fucking day!

"If for some reason you had to give up playing live would you still record?"

Thom - Fucking right!

"In a recent interview with Billy Corgan he told me he hated the music press. He was sick of either being misconstrued or having to invent a character in order to protect his personal life. Do you sympathise with that?"

Thom - Not anymore because I don't hate them enough to get worked up about it. But moaning about it is even more offensive because without them we wouldn't be playing here for instance.

"What about the tendency for other publications to invent or destroy certain bands so that they can exercise power over the music industry?"

Thom - It is possible for that to happen to a band and for them to come out the other side but it hasn't happened in a long time. I think that the way it all works is that you need someone to say what they think about you and essentially what they're do g is re-inventing you. 'I could do a whole album like Morrissey and they might make me the new thing', you know. It's about feedback and we never had that for ages and ages - not at the sort of level of analysis and re-invention.

"I would say in many ways that you are a band that has defeated it because they picked up on you late. You weren't a band they could control, like Menswear - putting them on the cover before they even existed properly. You kind of made something out yourselves and they were in the background. They picked up on you after you'd built up a fan base. Would you agree with that?"

Thom - I would but, at the same time, it's necessary to invent and re-invent yourself - there is just sort of different levels of it. I'm just an incredibly cynical person about the music business and I always have been. Ever since NME used to write, al the way through the fucking eighties, that all R.E.M. were was America's pathetic answer to The Smiths. Fucking what?

"Do you care what they say about you?"

Thom - Jonny always says it doesn't really matter what they say as long as it's written - as long as the noise is going on and there's some debate about us. ou have to be polemic in order to get attention. It is, in essence, like a performance or doing n ad. I suppose it can be difficult to retain your enthusiasm in those circumstances but the reason why I'm still doing all this is the same reason why I still scribble in my sketchbook and pick up a guitar - because it is still to me the most vital and important art form of the twentieth century. With most other art forms there isn't that sense of immediacy and freedom of self-expression because everything is tied up. The art world is completely tied up and other areas of music like classical music are completely polemic in order to attract some attention. It is a reaction - whereas pop music is at worst the most sickening vile pool of putrid shit to walk the earth and at best it reduces me to tears on a regular basis. Like the McAlmont and Butler sing recently. I always hated Everybody Hurts, until I heard it live and it too can have the same effect.

"It's not even that it's so immediate, it's that it's so powerful. I noticed that during tonight's gig. And I'm a permanent cynic as well - for the most part. I find it difficult to believe that there's anyone left who believes in anything in this day and age but standing in the crowd tonight I saw people whose whole being was totally involved - their whole spirit was completely part of it. What other art form can do that? I mean novels are almost a dead art form because their day of being a central medium is over. It's a visual culture now - a computer literate culture."

Thom - I believe that pop music is getting more and more frantic and obsessed by itself. It's like art before the end of the nineteenth century, when it just went in to this complete recycle - before Dadaism and before politics started trying to eat it. Music is doing the same thing, but that doesn't mean it won't carry on.

"I suppose in a sense pop music has become a form in itself."

Thom - That's the problem. The fact that it has become a form, as thought it's now in isolation. This is the whole joke. It's like when you go home to your parents for Christmas or you go to some friend's house and the neighbours say 'What do you do?' a you say you're a pop star and they say, 'Oh really, what is that?' and you go whoosh - that big (gestures minimal stature with his hands). You think 'Hang on a minute, there's something going on here, there's something wrong'. I think the problem is that all these people are supposed to be larger than life and it's killing music. The whole thing about people not having a sense of humour about it, you know. You were telling me about people believing in us but a lot of the time on stage I'm just relieved at it's going well. I got really pissed off with myself tonight because I found myself doing certain motions to attain a reaction and I thought, 'No, that's not what it is about for me'.

"I suppose that helps you retain some of your cynicism - if you don't start believing in your own hype."

Thom - Yeah, but it's really, really easy to believe it because it's absolutely everywhere you go and then you go round to your neighbour's house and you are back down to earth. The thing is you do grab any semblance of a life outside of what you're doing. I think that's really important. You can play the part for a while but you've got to get away from it. If you do, you come back more creative because of it - there's all this energy there. If you're isolated all you're doing is closing yourself in more and more until, suddenly, you lose it. I'd rather be like Kristin Hersh. She said to me, 'Look, I do home to my kid and my husband and then I go out and I'm a pop star for a while. It's great but I need to go home again.' I don't have any babies or anything but that lack of reverence about what I do is the most important thing I've learned over the past year and a half.

"Do you think there is a sense of unreality about it all?"

Thom - Yeah, totally but we've been really lucky because we've been exposed to so much of it. We've spent so much time in the States and had so many things written about us that I feel like a boring old fart!

"The 'Help' charity bash. You contributed 'Lucky'. Do you think that it will help Bosnian kids? What would you say to those who dismissed it as a backpatting exercise?"

Thom - Yeah, I'd agree with them. We did it because we were asked to do it and because Ed studied the Balkans. We just felt it was a good idea to just make the gesture. We realised that there would be a lot of back-patting but we knew it wasn't going to end up like Live Aid. To be honest, we were really itching to record the song anyway and we just didn't see why we shouldn't put it on this record. I'm not a big one for bands getting involved in charity but at the same time it was so close to home it just made sense to do it really. The other bands in it almost put us off, though.

"What about getting all your stuff stolen in the States?"

Thom - Well I think it worked out quite well actually. I had a fucking great time. I went out and bought loads of guitars because it was my birthday anyway!

"Did you have a guitar that had sentimental value?"

Thom - Well we all had them custom altered. It's one of those things. I think you become too attached to them really.

"What's next after the tour?"

Thom - The biggest thing we want to do is stop being Radiohead until the beginning of next year.

"Solo projects by any chance?"

Thom - No, nothing like that? It is great to be able to carry on, though. You don't think about it at the time but when you look back we haven't exploded or sold out or split up. It's a nice feeling.