Marty: "Well, I'm Marty Lennartz, and here we are in Nashville, Tennessee with Thom Yorke of Radiohead. Thom, thanks so much for coming by."

Thom: "Hi. How're you doing, man?"

Marty: "Doing quite..."

Thom: "Marty or Arty?"

Marty: "Marty, with an 'm'."

Thom: "Marty."

Marty: "Martin."

Thom: "Martin. Hi, Martin."

Marty: "Call me that."

Thom: "OK, that's good."

Marty: "Um, you know, being here in Nashville, I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to talk to you here, but Nashville is such a city with a musical heritage. Do you feel any kind of vibe in this city, musically, at all?"

Thom: "Mmm, I've just got here, so I, um, I don't have... I mean like other people in the band know all about it, and my ignorance is complete. I know nothing. That's just terrible, isn't it."

Marty: "Maybe you'll have a day to educate."

Thom: "Yeah, well, I guess I should, um, really make the effort, shouldn't I."

Marty: (laughs)

Thom: "That's terrible, isn't it. I mean, I could have made up loads of stuff, but I didn't know anything. So what's the point."

Marty: "Well, maybe someone should take you to a record store, possibly."

Thom: "I'm sure the others could stand tell you more than you needed to know."

Marty: (laughs)

Thom: "You'll have to cut that bit out. I'm sorry, I'm very tired."

Marty & Thom: (both laugh)

Marty: "As well you should be. This is an exciting time, not only for you and the band, but for all your fans as well. You have a new record, a solo record, coming out."

Thom: "Oh, yeah. A solo record and we're touring, playing new songs as the band, that we haven't actually finished or started recording. It's all getting a bit, er, spinning plates like."

Marty: "Right."

Thom: "It's getting a bit complicated."

Marty: "Let's talk a little about the new record. It's called Erasure... Eraser..."

Thom: "Eraser."

Marty: "... and it's coming out on the 11th of July."

Thom: "Yeah."

Marty: "And on one of my favourite labels, UK Indie label, XL."

Thom: "XL. Yeah, they've got some good stuff like."

Marty: "Yeah, they do."

Thom: "Yeah."

Marty: "Tell us a little bit about how this solo record came about."

Thom: "Ummm, sort of by accident. Um, it was... I mean I had wanted to go off and try working on my own, in a more sort of electronicy way, because it's such a sort of dull process for a lot of people sitting in a room together, you know, and it's kind of faster if you just get on with it. And Nigel and I have been talking about doing it for a while. I wanted to do it with Nigel because I didn't want... I needed to have someone I trusted who could sort of, you know, push me to do things I wouldn't normally do, otherwise, it's kind of no point. I would just end up going ‘round and ‘round in circles."

Marty: "You must have quite a nice relationship with Nigel, he having produced, Nigel Godrich, having produced many of your records."

Thom: "Exactly. And also, he has a particular aesthetic, which, you know... he has a particular take on electronic sounds, which is kind of good, ‘cause it's quite different to mine. He can make things sound fat and shiny, whereas I just make them sound like they're exploding."

Marty: "It seems like there are a lot of samples on this record. Are these samples that you have been collecting for a long time or..."

Thom: "There are sort of, umm, yeah, I mean, you know... they are sort of beats and sounds and stuff that is very much part of the whole Radiohead studio. I mean it's stuff that... I mean that's why its kind of difficult to say it's a solo record, because, erm, these are sounds and stuff that have been generated over the years, that I just compiled on my laptop and when I reach for things, there they are, you know. Not all of it is there, but an awful lot of it is there. But also, I was really interested in the sort of clash between having, like, a live performance song against samples, so you don't have that sort of where it's completely linear thing where things are just repeating for the sake it. So there's actually quite a lot live playing on it, as well."

Marty: "And your vocals, really... there's a lot of room for your vocals on this record."

Thom: "Yeah, well that was sort of an odd thing. It was a bit I was very surprised about. I mean, when we initially started doing it, we didn't expect... I , personally, certainly didn't expect songs to come out of it. I mean, it very much came out of sort of doodles and experiments on my laptop that sort of took on a life of their own. And the more we isolated the good bits, which was obviously the bit I found hard, the more it was like ‘oh, well actually this is...' I was responding to and wanting to sing with it, so it was that weird thing where one didn't go into this project with any of these songs at all, the only thing that I would say was coherently musical was the chords on the first track ‘The Eraser' which, ummm, Jonny wrote and I sampled and reassembled. So it was kind of bizarre."

Marty: "So the songs just sort of came organically. You..."

Thom: "Yeah, I mean, I wasn't looking at it in terms of writing vocals initially."

Marty: "Uh huh."

Thom: "I was just, you know, putting riffs down and then the more I assembled them together. You know, but there wasn't... I wasn't sitting in front of a piano and saying ‘I'm going to now write this song'. But the interesting thing, in order to complete the songs, that's what I had to kind of do."

Marty: "Right."

Thom: "I actually had to go and learn to play it all, well on a lot of them all anyway, because I couldn't finish the lyrics, because I was kind of out of my depth."

Marty: "What a period of discovery that must have been ..."

Thom: "It was. But the mad thing was it was just really fun; it wasn't stressful, because, I mean a) because it felt like no one was watching and no one would give a damn, anyway. And it felt like, you know, it was a sort of secret thing and then as we got to the end of it, it was like, ‘well, we need to put this out, don't we.'"

Marty: "Right."

Thom: "That's why it was fun, you know, the heat was off, there was no pressure or anything. It was just an excuse to hang out."

Marty: "Yeah, and, you know, I've heard a few songs from it and your vocals are really soulful, too, which is something that really came across to me."

Thom: "Whoa, really?"

Marty: "I thought so, yeah."

Thom: "Hmmm."

Marty: "And lyrically, um, it was interesting as well."

Thom: "There's a kind of a nasty element to it as well. "

Marty: "Yeah."

Thom: "A sense of foreboding, which is not exactly what I call unusual (laughs)."

Marty: "And with Radiohead there's so much going on. And the blips and the sounds, and this record, really, I think, highlights your vocals pretty well."

Thom: "I think, yeah, that was very much a big thing for Nigel, he really wanted to do that. I mean, there are a few tunes where it's more in the background, like 'The Clock', but that's because we were kind of looking for a disco thing, which of course it didn't end up being at all. But, yeah, he was really up for that, he really wanted to put the vocals right... I mean, he was... it's quite interesting the different takes on it, because I basically had all this stuff and was... you know, having someone else that comes in, as a collaborationist essentially, and says it actually looks like this to anybody else. It was really interesting, and one of the things he was really into was the idea of it being pretty small sounding, and pretty... and acknowledging the fact that it was done out of a laptop. Acknowledging the fact that a lot of it was out of a little box."

Marty: "It's very intimate and..."

Thom: "Yeah."

Marty: "...and I do like that. It..."

Thom: "I gave it to a friend of mine yesterday and said you should first listen to this in a confined space (both laugh) He was trying to work out which one."

[break]

Marty: "Well, I'm Marty Lennartz, and here we are in Nashville, Tennessee with Thom Yorke of Radiohead. I've always wondered when someone is, uh, a member of a successful band and decides to do a solo project, how does that play with the rest of the band."

Thom: "They were pretty cool with it, I think... I was absolutely dreading telling them, but I just sort of... it was one of those things we all felt that we should stop for a while anyway, ‘cause everything was kind of becoming a real drag. It was odd. We needed to go away and work out what to do next and get on with being with our families. And, um, I think though there was an element of relief really. They wanted me to go on and try this out and just get on with it and not always have it in the back of my mind. And it's good because it sort of cleared the air in a way."

Marty: "Is this anything you would ever consider touring?"

Thom: "I don't think I can. I mean, the others seem to be up for, like, trying to learn, trying to attempt to play it, somehow. And that would be cool. That would be great."

Marty: "Yeah."

Thom: "Blur the edges even more, which I like. So."

Marty: "Well, speaking of tours, you're on one right now."

Thom: "Oh, yes."

Marty: "And it's... (both laugh) for the most part you're playing theatres, but uh, you're also playing a big festival, Bonnaroo."

Thom: "Yeah, our crew love us. (both laugh) Like, ‘Oh yeah, we'd like to go to a really small theatre.' ‘Ok, where are we going to put all of these boxes...' Um, yes, well it came up. And, um, we were kind of... I don't know, the Coachella thing was ok, but we kind of... this sounds more like a festival as we would understand it, so we were kind of excited."

Marty: "It pretty much is, yeah. It's similar to the festivals that you know back home."

Thom: "Yeah. And you can play for a long time as well."

Marty: "Yes, you can."

Thom: "I don't know if that's a good idea."

Marty: "There's no curfew on a farm in the middle of Tennessee." (both laugh)

Thom: "No. Oh my god."

Marty: "Now are you doing pretty much the same stage set for this?"

Thom: "No, we, we, we... well, I mean, tomorrow I think we'll sort of try and assemble the good bits that we have learned so far. But we're changing the set all the time. Which can be an easy thing to do or a total nightmare."

Marty: "I think the most exciting thing for Radiohead fans, and it's really a testament to how open they are and accepting they are of your music, that you're playing so many new songs on this tour."

Thom: "Yeah, I can't believe we can get away with it."

Marty: "Eight songs. Songs for the most part that no one has heard. Nine. And no one has heard these songs, really. Not legally..."

Thom: "Well, you can go on YouTube (both laugh) they're all over YouTube, plus my silly dancing."

Marty: "Well, that's always fun, though."

Thom: "Yeah. erm, yeah, so they are out there. And we kind of knew they would be out there a little bit, and we were just desperate to sort of just get out."

Marty: "Just get out."

Thom: "Just get out of the house and go and do something."

Marty: "Right. Well, you don't have a label right now for Radiohead. Is that right?"

Thom: "No, we don't. No."

Marty: "So you've got to get out and play ‘em."

Thom: "Got to really. Yeah, I mean, we were just going round and round in circles in the studio for ages. We were sort of trying to do it on our own for a while, but it just didn't work out and it was like ‘ahhhh...' And we weren't really focused, and then funnily enough, as soon as we decided to, like, go out and play in front of people, everything came into focus extremely sharply in the space of, like, seven weeks, not surprisingly."

Marty: "I think the interesting thing is... all the reviews I've read of the show and on your fansites as well, all they talk about is the new music. So it's, it's exciting music and it seems, at least the way people that are describing it, it's a little more, um, I don't know, rock. A little more... I don't know..."

Thom: "Is it? I think at the moment it's simply because, you know, these are the instruments that we have in front of us.

Marty: "Right."

Thom: "It doesn't necessarily... Well, I mean, that's how we're having to interpret things. There are, there are, like, definitely full on ones, full on rock tunes, but there are ones that will definitely twist and turn into something way more strange."

Marty: "Right, so you'll change them when you go in the studio."

Thom: "Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that we have to keep reminding ourselves. I mean, I mean, it's kind of interesting, really, because Nigel is going to come out on tour with us for a while and, you know, it'll be interesting to hear what sort of take someone else has coming into it cold, you know, because, I mean, you get... what works on stage is most definitely not necessarily - most definitely not necessarily - (Martin: laughs) what will work in the studio. At all."

Marty: "Well, we're really excited about hearing those songs and I know that after Bonnaroo you're coming to Chicago."

Thom: "Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I know, that's good."

Marty: "Yeah, you're doing two shows at the Auditorium Theatre. Are you familiar with that theatre at all?"

Thom: "Uh, we might... uh, have we played there before? I don't know."

Marty: "I don't think so. But it's, uh, a theatre that was built in the 1890s..."

Thom: "Oh, wicked."

Marty: "...by, uh, Louis Sullivan, who's a well-known architect in Chicago. And Frank Lloyd Wright was his apprentice at the time."

Thom: "Wow, and they forgot to knock it down."

Marty: "Yes, it's still there. It's quite beautiful and it's gonna be a great place to see you...

Thom: "Excellent."

Marty: "...on Monday and Tuesday. And, uh, the last time I did see you guys play was when you were at Hutchinson Field in Grant Park..."

Thom: "Oh my god... That's just nuts, man."

Marty: "...the outdoor festival which was beautiful."

Thom: "That was a nuts gig."

Marty: "It really was. And the crowd though, for such a large crowd like that in the front yard of the city, it was really one of the most manageable shows. "

Thom: "Yeah, everyone was extremely mellow, I wonder why." (both laugh)

Marty: "Well, we can only speculate, I suppose."

Thom: "Yeah, they must be tired."

Marty: "Well, I thank you for stopping by and talking with us and good luck on the new record ‘Eraser' which comes out on the 11th of July and uh, you know, when you go back in the studio and put the new Radiohead songs to whatever tweaking you do with them..."

Thom: "Whatever mangle they go through. (laughs)"

Marty: "What do you think that might be?"

Thom: "I... God knows. I don't... I mean you'd have to go through track by track, really, which would be at this stage utterly dull."

Marty: "Yeah, so do you think there's any time soon when you'll be going in the studio to do this."

Thom: "Oh, yeah."

Marty: "Yeah?"

Thom: "Oh yeah, we're desperate. (both laugh) We are now desperate. I mean just to sort of, just, you know..."

Marty: "Well, desperation so often breeds wonderful success."

Thom: "Yeah, it certainly does. Without it, you don't get anywhere."