Oi! Nutter! Whoever’s coming up with the ideas for Radiohead’s latest CD sleeves is obviously away with the fairies, so it’s no surprise that artist Dan Rickwood is a mate of The ‘Head’s bonkers frontman Thom Yorke. You wanna know what’s happening with both sleeves for the new single ‘Street Spirit’, don’t you? Take it away, Danny boy…

Street Spirit CD1 (inlay front)
[escalator] Thom got this escalator image back in Japan. The idea was to get across the spirit of people living in the 20th century technological society.
[immerse your soul in love] That’s a line from near the end of the song. Thom had it scribbled down in his notebook so we just floated it onto the picture.

Street Spirit CD2 (inlay front)
[‘r’ icon, top] That’s a little icon of the world which is based on the revolving world the BBC used to use before programmes came on. I hate it actually, but everyone else likes it.
[helicopter icon, top] That’s a toy rescue helicopter that Thom originally had sitting on a scrabble board but we had to drop the idea of using the whole board because of copyright.
[cat] That’s Michael Caine’s cat from The Italian Job which is one of Thom's favourite films.

Street Spirit CD1 (inlay back)
[background image] The background comes from a Spanish advert. Thom tends to snap away with his camera when he's watching TV abroad and then we can scan the picture into a computer. The plate of food sits behind the tank to show the connection between war and famine.
[tank drawing] This is a piece of art from Thom's notebook. He does a lot of sketches on tour and we just float them onto sleeves. The tank represents a lot of the sickness in the world and the word 'joy!' expresses its linear opposite.

Street Spirit CD2 (inlay back)
[background photograph] That's a mate of Thom's who got her head stuck in the freezer. She was trying to cool herself down when it was really hot last summer and the sweat on her head froze and she couldn't get her head out. Rather than help her, Thom decided to take a photo.
[small icon, top right] That's an anti-Prussian poster from the First World War. It's a gorilla with a Prussian hat on and it had a slogan over it which said 'Destroy This Mad Brute'.
[small icon, middle right] The padlock repressents the idea of love. The two separate bits have been together for so long that they've become one.
[small icon, bottom right] We used the cat again because we liked it so much.