[recording starts here]

Interviewer: Meanwhile back in Amsterdam here the Tibetan Freedom concert, joining us now is Thom Yorke. Welcome to the studio.

Thom: Um, hello!

Interviewer: Now you've played the Tibetan Freedom concert before, right?

Thom: Yeah, we're regulars.

Interviewer: [laughs] Why is that?

Thom: Umm, it's... got caught up in it, really. It's something we believe in, you know, it's important.

Interviewer: Yeah but, how did you get caught up in it?

Thom: Um, well uh... ah... [inaudible] asked. It's quite easy, really. And I'd kind of been reading about it before, anyway, so uh, it sort of happened roughly at the same time, which was a bit odd.

Interviewer: You'd read a book by Palden Gyatso, right?

Thom: Um yeah, there was another one as well, um, which was, uh, [Robert] A. F. Thurman, his translation of Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is very full-on, very difficult to read.

Interviewer: Do you have any easy options, for me?

Thom: Easy options, oh definitely Palden Gyatso's, which is a lot better. I think, erm, yeah, no, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is very serious. Very serious book. Plus the Devil is in that. Scary. Very scary.

Interviewer: You're appearing solo here, right?

Thom: No, Jonny's here actually. I'm too chicken to do it on my own.

Interviewer: So you're not appearing just by yourself.

Thom: No. He's going to do a barefoot routine, apparently.

[laughter]

Interviewer: It's getting really big now, the Tibetan Freedom concerts. Last time I saw you was in New York, 2 years ago. And now there are 4 concerts at the same time. It's really growing. Did you expect that, when you went onstage in New York?

Thom: Um, well the first one. I was certainly caught up in the first one. The atmosphere was really, really cool in New York. And then in Washington it was very weird. Because the first day there was a sense of something funny in the air, and then the sky went green, and there was lightning. And that was a most peculiar weekend.

Interviewer: Because really, a girl got hit by lightning, right?

Thom: Yeah, that's right.

Interviewer: Was it during your show?

Thom: No, no no, no.

Interviewer: But you witnessed it, you saw.

Thom: Erm, no. I saw the green lightning. And everyone was saying the monks were freaking out, for want of a better way of putting it. No freaking out, but... It was extremely weird. Extremely weird atmosphere.

Interviewer: So what do you think of Amsterdam now? Have you been wandering around a little?

Thom: Uh, me?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Thom: No, I've been doing the usual thing, you know.

Interviewer: You didn't get a chance to, uh, peer into the crowd?

Thom: Appear to the crowd?

Interviewer: To peer into the crowd.

Thom: Peer into the crowd! Oh yeah, I peered. [laughs]

Interviewer: Into the crowd. What do you think of it?

Thom: Wot, of the crowd?

Interviewer: Yeah, of the general atmosphere down here.

Thom: It's all right, actually. It's better than I thought it would be. I was very worried, it being Europe and that, and us being a bunch of cynical old...

Interviewer: Arse. [laughs] It's good you mentioned that, because I was wondering about how big this will be in Europe, because of the fact you mentioned that Europeans are maybe a bit more cynical, or we are too caught up in Kosovo and stuff...

Thom: Yeah but then there are extraordinarily similar issues in what...

Interviewer: Exactly, exactly.

Thom: I mean, that's what strikes me as a bit bizarre about it, in a way, that our, uh, response in international affairs prefers to see itself, behind the guise of NATO sees itself as the new international police force, but let's just say it's views are highly selective, and whenever anything is inconvenient to issues of trade then it's left alone.

Interviewer: So they "solved", quote-unquote, a problem in Kosovo by throwing loads of bombs Do you think- [Thom drops something on the floor] Oh fuck, you're dropping something on the floor.

Thom: Nice, surgical, you know, little bit of a cut, pinhole surgery, keyhole surgery, whatever it is.

Interviewer: Yeah. So what do you think of the situation in Tibet. How would that problem be solved best?

Thom: Uh, I'd say you have to, you know, as the Dalai Lama said, you know, you have to get into talks, and sort of put all the issues, um, all the resentment behind you, you know. And that's what's so cool about what the Tibetans have done, you know. The nonviolence issue is the massive difference between that and Kosovo, say. You know, where because of what the KLA did in Kosovo, you know, the Serbians have an ammunition for justifying, you know, in the propaganda war. The bottom line is Tibet doesn't provide any ammunition for anybody to sort of, you know, to build up horror stories about them, you know. Because they practice nonviolence, you know, the Chinese are seen for what they are, their actions are seen for what they are, you know. Which is, it should be a real inspiration, I think.

Interviewer: Have you ever been near Tibet, are traveled near, in the north of India.

Thom: No, I haven't. I'm a really bad traveler.

Interviewer: You won't go there?

Thom: Well no, I just travel for work, so holidays are going home, for me.

Interviewer: OK. Have you had the chance to meet people from Tibet, or the Dalai Lama?

Thom: No.

Interviewer: What does he mean to you?

Thom: What does Dalai Lama mean? I just think he's really cool! I mean, I heard him on uh- Sorry, that sounds vacuous, but I heard him on Radio 4, three weeks ago in Britain. And um, he was great. Turned it on one morning, and I was feeling a bit down and that, and he was really good. He's just out of the way lost, that was really funny. But I think equally, you know, if he hadn't been the character he was, and he hadn't been conscious of the public persona, and conscious of embracing what's going on with the West, and that, Tibet would have just simply disappeared without a trace, you know.

Interviewer: Is Tibet actually an issue in Great Britain?

Thom: Well it bloody well should be! Because um, you know, Britain was responsible for walking away in 1949, you know. But we have an incredibly selective memory, Britain does. Much as America, actually.