Thom Yorke on KRBE

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood drop in on Ryan Chase at KRBE in Houston on the day of the first of two nights opening for R.E.M. at the Woodlands. The invitation came from Michael Stipe's agent, asking what they were doing in August, then in September, “like he was asking us on a date”. Chase reads out the label on the T-shirt they are signing, which says The Bends proves Radiohead did not shoot their bolt with “Creep”. “I think we shot our bolt with it, actually,” one of them says. Dropping it now and then only made more of an issue of it. “So I'm quite prepared to shoot my bolt every night.” Talk of a new British invasion puts one of them in mind of Vikings landing on the East Coast with wooden swords and being eaten alive.

The last time they played America it was to 200 or 300 people in a club in New Orleans; now the venues are big enough that they ride to the stage in a little electric golf cart. They played “Creep” on Conan O'Brien's first show, warming up beside a blackboard full of the writers' ideas for being funny. When Chase plays “High and Dry”, one of them listens hard with his hands over his headphones, because they play it so differently live that he can't remember how the record goes. Asked if they might go loud the way R.E.M. have on Monster, one of them says, “if I had my way, we'd all give up playing guitar completely and all play keyboards.”