Thom Yorke on CBC

Thom Yorke plays “Street Spirit” and “Killer Cars” in CBC Vancouver's big studio, his throat raw from the cold on the drive over the mountains from Edmonton and Calgary. The band have about four versions of “Killer Cars”, one of them acoustic, and never found one that did it justice for an album, “so that's why I keep playing it”. Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of the Posies happen to be in the building and join him at the end; the band met them one drunken night at RAK Studios in London while making The Bends.

A year on, The Bends is still in the top 20 in the States and Canada. The band dreaded the two nights they played for KROQ, the Los Angeles radio station, on a bill of famous bands like Oasis, and then loved them, and afterwards he spent January failing to sit still. They began rehearsing and recording in February, but he doesn't think they are ready. He has spent the time learning samplers, and has millions of songs without knowing whether any of them are any good. The record company has told them they can take as long as they want over the next album, a year or two, and at first they thought it was joking.

He has bought a house and become a normal person with a mortgage. His one domestic job over a snowy Christmas was to keep a hole open in the ice for the oriental goldfish in the garden. He forgot for three days, and found the two big ones frozen right next to the hole. The first fan to knock at his door wanted nothing at all, and just stood there saying sorry, she had to knock.