Thom: "You mean it, yeah?

Crew: "The troublemaker.

Thom: "Hey, that’s me!

Ed: "That’s me hair.

Thom: "Oh, look at my hair...

Crew: "Okay, um... any time, Rick.

Thom: "Should we start it like that?

Ed: "Weird. [laughs]

Crew: "Yeah, it’s kind of weird getting a live feed in front of you.

Ed: "[laughs]

Crew: "Is that over here?

Thom: "How can you be getting that? How come we’re getting that? It’s a camera, isn’t it?

Ed: "Is that the...

Crew: "It’s also a teleprompt.

Ed: "Yeah, the teleprompt. HELLO! Ah, yes.

Crew: "Okay, any time Rick.

Rick: "Okay, so. The second album, The Bends. Is this, I guess probably an obvious statement, but, have something to do with you guys becoming successful in a really short period of time?

Thom: "Yeah, it was kind of sarcastic, but not really. Sarcasm doesn’t translate into music. But the reason we called it that was because the title track was the first song we had for the album.

Ed: "There is kind of an analogy, isn’t there?

Thom: "Is there?

Ed: "Do you think so?

Thom: "Yeah, all right.

Ed: "Yeah.

Thom: "Definitely. It’s pretty obvious.

Rick: "So it was the first song you wrote for the album?

Thom: "I actually had a foretrack of it when we were doing Pablo Honey. Don’t know why we didn’t do it, really.

Rick: "When you were recording Pablo Honey?

Ed: "Yep, actually in the studio at the time, I mean, we were tracking some stuff and Thom was in his little cottage with a foretrack and... “here I’ve got this song!” And here we are, two-three years later.

Thom: "Two, three, four, five, eight.

Ed: "Yeah, three years later.

Rick: " So it ends up just being an incredible coincidence in that is sort of reflects what happened?

Thom: "Well that, yeah. Well... hmm. It’s one of those songs I was rambling round and just poured all his rubbish out onto this song and then it all started happening, which was really odd. I was completely taking the piss when I wrote it and then the joke started wearing a bit thin.

Rick: "What was... I mean, it couldn’t have been all bad. You had success which I’m sure you’d hoped for when all that was happening.

Thom: "Oh, yeah.

Rick: "But it was getting a bit tiring, wearing after a while, when...

[recording cuts]

Ed: "So, it was like, we all got really excited about it.

Thom: "He was basically the only one who got the song, of all the directors we talked to.

Ed: "Yeah, and he was the most enthusiastic, as well.

Thom: "Yeah, yeah he was.

Ed: "Definitely.

Rick: "What about John Leckie?

Thom: "Um, he’s a wonderful man. He’s like our long lost uncle.

Ed: "[chuckles]

Thom: "And he taught us how to use the studio and everything, really. He... I mean, when we went to do this album we were in a pretty bad state, really.

Ed: "Fragile.

Thom: "Fragile would be to put it mildly... and he was able to make the studio a place conducive to work, which I think a lot of producers find... a lot of it is just telling you want to do and you scurry off and you say okay”. And John as very much... we’d run round the studio sort of saying “What do you think John?” and he’d go “well I don’t know, you’re the band! You decide! I’ll tell you when you’re going wrong.” But it was also one of the things I am eternally grateful for is making the studio a place that no longer seemed like some sort of science lab, and actually just seemed like something... you know. You only make something of your own when you’ve learned to use it and abuse it, and that’s kind of what we started doing. John was brilliant at doing that. He took all the mystery out of recording and made it something that you can enjoy just like playing. I mean, up until that point, we’d never really had the opportunity to record to any degree that we were satisfied with because it was always like, “oh you’ve got a day here, go and do another song” or “here’s two and a half weeks to do your first album”, which we didn’t expect to do well anyway. So everything was turned round when we did it and he was the perfect guy for the job, really.

Rick: "Right. A lot of bands seem like they’re going to houses these days, to record. Have you guys..?

Ed: "Yeah, I think the most important thing is to have fun and be relaxed in a studio. That’s the thing. It depends on the environment. Bands do different things.