Radiohead on MuchMusic Spotlight

Thom Yorke talks to MuchMusic's Spotlight, with live clips, in the season of The Bends. Being in a band or a rock star isn't impressive any more, he says, and rather than live out the 70s idea of it they use what is normal about them. Radio 1 dropped “Creep” after the third play as too down for the English public, and the press ignored them too, until suddenly everyone stopped kidding themselves. Played four times on the radio, it still sold something like 20,000 copies in Britain, he says.

Being so famous for “Creep” is depressing, because to him it was almost a joke when he wrote it, and the letters came from people who didn't see the joke at all. The new record is a full stop on that time and something of a challenge. Much of it came from shutting himself in a room when everything changed overnight and writing songs of consolation, and he finds it more uplifting than its what's-the-point lines suggest. It was better received because it's a better album, and after a year on the road the fuses are going.