Radiohead on Bubblepop

Through an interpreter and in front of a studio audience, on their second visit to Japan, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood arrive from an American promotional run they are reported to have found dismal. They are not diplomatic about the American music industry, which they call uncool and relentlessly commercial.

The Bends, they insist, is a brighter record than people assume, and they explain the title through decompression sickness, which divers get from surfacing too fast with bubbles in the blood. On the pressure of a second album, the media's expectations were the lesser problem, they say, and the darkness they walked into was largely their own.

The audience questions range from the reasonable to the surreal. Somebody asks whether they like bananas, and later whether they like vegetables. Asked when lyrics get written, Yorke says when he is drunk, which prompts a follow-up about whether he likes a drink. The sleeve, they explain, was made on a Macintosh from a mannequin image combined with Yorke's face. As for the video in which the band climb inside a cage, being in it looked more fun than standing around outside it looking cool.