Pinfield: Hey, welcome back to 120 Minutes. I'm Matt Pinfield. Sitting next to me are Thom and Jonny from Radiohead. And it's good to see you guys!

Jonny: Hi there.

Pinfield: Good to have you here. The Bends has been out a year now.

Thom: Yeah.

Pinfield: And uh, it's amazing how it just keeps on giving people a-

Thom: Yeah, you can't kill it! It just keeps coming back.

Pinfield: [laughs] Which is a good thing!

Thom: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. That's what we want.

Pinfield: Yeah, without question. And you're touring again right now, as well, in the States, for the record.

Thom: Yeah, it's like, uh, blah! [sticks out tongue and keels over]

Pinfield: Right. [laughs]

Thom: Three weeks? Four weeks?

Pinfield: Four week tour. That's cool. And we're going to talk more about the album as a whole in a little while. Let's talk, we're going to show the Just video in a few minutes. Let's talk a bit about the song Just, and the video itself. Now some of the lyrical themes that have gone on this album itself, there's different themes. You know, it seems the song Just itself, it's a bit about someone's own self-destructiveness. Is that really what, uh, what you were thinking of when you wrote that yourself?

Thom: It was- Yeah. It was, it was, it was quite- It was from someone I used to know. I mean, you know, who was bent on complete, not just self-destruction... But it was also like trying to get out of it as well. It was like spitting on it, and sort of saying I've had enough of it, as well. You know, it was in no way supposed to be a celebration of it.

Pinfield: Right.

Thom: It was supposed to be, you know, just keep this person away from me. You know, they're sucking me in. You know, I just don't want to know.

Pinfield: Cause you don't want to be brought down with them.

Thom: Yeah.

Pinfield: Yeah.

Thom: I just don't want to know. No.

Pinfield: Cause you're feelings for them, you don't care.

Thom: Uh, which sometimes gets lost in some people's interpretations of it. Which winds me up. But that's life. You know, people like to dwell on the bad things.

Pinfield: Right, exactly. Let's talk about the video for Just. I mean, you were making these unbelievably compelling videos about, people were really blow away by. It's not the same old thing. All right. Everybody always wants to know, what does the guy say at the end of the video? Is there a... what does he say?

Thom: I think life should be full of secrets, you know.

Pinfield: Yeah.

Thom: I think we, you know, you need secrets to stay sane. And that's ours.

Pinfield: That's your secret? [laughs]

Thom: Yeah, you have to have secrets, like you have to have secrets from your parents? So we have to have secrets from everybody who watches the video.

Pinfield: Okay! [laughs]

Thom: Kind of makes us [crosstalk]

Jonny: We had a lip reader, a lip reader correctly worked out one of the words, and it was a number, and they kind of read that right. But the rest of it was...

Pinfield: The rest of it's, nobody's gotten right.

Jonny: No, not yet.

Pinfield: Which works well! Let's have people check out the video right now, and I'm sure they've seen it before. Talk more with the band in a few minutes. Here's Radio's Head's [sic] video.

[break]

Pinfield: I'm Matt Pinfield hanging out with Thom and Jonny from Radiohead, and we saw the video for Just before, and let's talk about how the band got together. Um, going back to Oxford, is where you're all from, right? Where you all grew up, pretty much?

Thom: We went to school together.

Jonny: Yes.

Pinfield: Right.

Jonny: And um, I've known my brother for quite a long time, so, that's how I got in the band.

Pinfield: That's an important thing, when you've known your brother that long it really helps, doesn't it?

Jonny: Mmmmyeah. [Thom falls over laughing]

Pinfield: So did you go to school in... [laughs] Did you go to school in Exeter, or Oxford, where you went to school?

Thom: I went, well school's the wrong word over here. It's like, well I went uni -- university.

Pinfield: In Exeter, right. South of England.

Thom: Hm!

Pinfield: The rest of you met, what, you mean in-

Jonny: We all met in Oxford, in high school in Oxford, basically. And got a band together, and sort of sat around talking about it for a few years.

Thom: We talked about it for a long time. We were nice, white middle class boys. And we talked about, and we annoyed the neighbors, and it was all very safe and nice. And then it got for real, all of a sudden, and... we were, uh... We got thinner, and more nervous, and a better band, and I'll shut up now.

Pinfield: That's all right. No, that's all right! You can go ahead and say whatever you want.

Thom: I'll say whatever I want!

Pinfield: That's fine. Well, you know...

Thom: What? You sure?

Pinfield: Absolutely.

Thom: Oh, okay.

Pinfield: But anyway, so Pablo Honey, when you did the first album, how long was it between the time that you actually started and actually got that record finished? Cause Creep was out as an import single for a while, before people actually caught onto it here. Um, how much time was there in between? Was Pablo Honey already finished when Creep was recorded?

Jonny: We did Creep first with Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie, just to try recording with them. And we did the whole album about two months later. Something like three weeks, innit?

Thom: In three weeks.

Pinfield: So Anyone Can Play Guitar and Ripcord, and all that stuff came afterwords.

Jonny: Exactly, yeah.

Thom: And it was the first thing we'd ever done! You know, "Here, sign here, and go make a record!" "Oh, okay!"

Pinfield: Well you know, it influenced a lot of bands from England, from your country, because a lot of people went over, and ended up coming over and working with Sean and Paul afterwords.

Thom: Yeah! [laughs]

Pinfield: Cause they loved the dynamics of the way they produced your record. You know what I mean? And all the sounds. And they thought it was really interesting, so if you noticed, you set a precedence for a lot of bands.

Thom: Apparently.

Pinfield: [laughs] Anyway, stick around because we'll have more with Radiohead, including a live performance-

Thom: [echoing] Live performance...

Pinfield: And a second sixty on tonight's 120 Minutes. Folk Implosion will be here to hang out and play-

Thom: [reading off the teleprompter] -play live.

Pinfield: That's right. [indicates Thom]

Thom: First here's a look at the top singles on alterna-tive radio this week.

Pinfield: Thank you!

Thom: Roll tape. Roll tape.

Pinfield: Thank you.

[break]

Pinfield: [laughing] Welcome back to 120 Minutes. I'm Matt Pinfield. Sitting next to me are Thom and Jonny-

Thom: [laughing and wiping tears from his eyes]

Pinfield: from Radiohead! Now let's talk a bit about the, um, the fact that High and Dry, which you're going to see a performance in a little while, that lyrically, metaphorically, it seems like you're talking about the whole idea where people will sit and do anything, kind of that "anything for fame"-

Thom: Hmmm.

Pinfield: -like that risk of life. Now, my question was, interestingly enough, a lot of people lately, there have been more songs written about, actually, stuntmen, and that kind of thing, like the Evel Knievel, Ken Carter, that this band Ammonia in Australia wrote about.

Thom: Really?

Pinfield: People are actually, it seems that people are taking more interest in that sort of thing, those people that kind of do that sensational side.

Thom: I think that it's just because, um, for me it was just a handy metaphor for the idea of something basically, as you say, doing anything, and lots of people that you meet in L.A. and stuff, and they're like really horrible people, and they find out that you're in a famous band, and suddenly they're all over you. And you know, that whole fame trip makes me want to throw up, to be honest with you.

Jonny: I think the first famous person that you actually know about when you're 5 or 6, is Evel Kneivel, was Evel Kneivel when we were little. You know, you'd get the toys, you get the little motorbike, and you kind of... it's kind of a bit of an obsession amongst children.

Thom: And, and the things you can do to get famous. You know, what people will do to get on TV, which I find terribly fascinating, you know. Like in Britain there's that terrible talent show where fat people go on and pretend to be other famous people, you know, like I'm sure there's similar things over here. I just find it so amazing. You know, they will do anything. You know, people will- like in Japan, people will eat worms and all that sort of stuff, you know. And High and Dry was kind of about that. About, you know, the idea that that's all you want from life, and you just kind of learn that it's completely as vacuous as anything else.

Pinfield: All right, that's amazing. It's a great song, and great lyrics. And right now actually we're going to show another video. Come back and see that live performance of that song, little while, on the way. Right now we've got the video from the New York band known as The Bogmen. We've seen here a couple times already on 120, but check it out again, from their album Life Begins at 40 Million, here's Suddenly, on 120.

[break]

Pinfield: Hi, I'm Matt Pinfield and you're watching 120 Minutes and sitting next to me are Thom and Jonny from Radiohead. Now The Bends has been out, as we said, for like a year now, and in your home country, in Britain, finally, you know, people have figured out what's going on with the band.

Thom: FINALLY they've worked it out!

[laughs]

Pinfield: Yeah. You had a top 5 single with Street Spirit [Fade Out].

Thom: Yep.

Pinfield: Uh, and...

Thom: The Beatles went in at 4, so I'd just like to that point out, you know. And we had no radio play and they didn't either. So we're at only 1... anyway.

Pinfield: Not bad! That's cool, though! What's interesting is, the same thing with Oasis, the fact that -- not to compare the bands -- but their first record, because of the success of the second one, still doing well on the charts. All of a sudden, Pablo Honey is doing well over there as well.

Thom: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was one week where, um, the album The Bends was #7 or something, and Pablo Honey went back in at #30 or something. Like, what? [laughs]

Pinfield: You're like, "What's going on?" Finally, people are checking it out.

Jonny: Yeah I think the thing about Oasis, in a way, is that they've got no false modesty, you know. They can't see the virtue of modesty, which is fine...

Thom: Yeah, I mean, anybody can just sort of go, "We're brilliant!" And, I mean, it's like, phew. [throws up hands] Anybody who's got the balls to do that is good in my books, man.

Pinfield: Yeah, I think it's cool too, actually.

Thom: Yeah.

Pinfield: As opposed to trying to hide how they feel.

Thom: Yeah, like us! [falsetto] Oh no! [slaps forehead]

Pinfield: No! The question I wanted to ask you was, I hear you have like 9 songs for another album. Because it's been a good year since the last one came out. When can we expect you to record another record?

Thom: I dunno. I mean, like, we've been told we can take as long we want. And we thought everyone was joking when they said that, but apparently they're not. So I'd put it at about 3 years.

Jonny: So, we tried to take as long as we could, but then we recorded 3 songs in 2 days, so it's not going to work. We're going to have an album in a month, I think.

Thom: But it's all about quality control, you know.

Pinfield: Yeah.

Jonny: Yeah.

Thom: We could have lots of stuff, but it might not be any good, so... [shrugs]

Pinfield: Are you going to produce yourself this time?

Jonny: Yeah.

Thom: Uh, yeah, I think so. We're building a studio in the middle of nowhere. In a farm, somewhere.

Pinfield: Up in the Oxford area?

Thom: Yeah, yeah, like all the prog rock bands did in the Seventies?

Jonny: Yeah.

Thom: And they completely lost it?

Pinfield: Yeah.

Thom: Like Genesis. That's what we want to do. [clap]

Jonny: We're the next Genesis.

Thom: The next Genesis.

Pinfield: Yeah. You're going to go out there and do, like, some 35 minute songs?

Thom: Yeah, yeah! I'm going to like, stand there with a kick drum, and a big-

Pinfield: Ok, cool!

Jonny: Lots of songs about unicorns, and princesses, and sort of harlequins, and jesters!

Pinfield: Ok, we look forward to that! Those videos should be interesting as well! [laughs] Anyway, I want to thank you guys for coming by and hanging, talking for a while. Now let's check you out performing live. So make sure you're here for the second 60 of 120 Minutes. Folk Implosion will be here, will be hanging with us and performing as well. But right now, stick around, because right after the break Radiohead will be performing High and Dry. You won't want to miss it. Live here in the studio, 120 Minutes.