Radiohead

Playing live, Thom Yorke says, was the first thing the band ever did, before they recorded anything, and it is still the one point in a day when he can walk on stage and forget everything else.

Making The Bends, they worked out that the best way to record is to treat everything as performance. Not only the playing but running around the studio, drinking, laughing, going outside, all of it with the tape running. If the enjoyment of being on stage gets into the studio, whatever is actually happening, the recording carries it. He names the Beastie Boys as a band on whose records people can be heard having a good time.

The songs themselves are very down, he says, and making the record turned out to be enormous fun once they got past the technology and relaxed.