Thom Yorke on WHFS

Thom Yorke plays alone on WHFS's Just Passing Through, starting with “Street Spirit”, the last song on The Bends, and ending with “Fake Plastic Trees”. He also plays “Lucky”, from the Help album; on the day they recorded it, the first five hours went on interviews with the TV crews. In between comes a new one, called “Motion Picture Soundtrack” for the moment because “I thought that'd be a really good way to get on MTV”. He hopes it makes the next record; it is one of the songs he is proudest of, a melody that wakes him in the middle of the night.

The band who hated videos are now very into them, and Yorke is the one who rings the directors. Jake Scott, who made “Fake Plastic Trees”, was so experienced and so expensive it was intimidating, so they went looking for people who had hardly made any: the director of “Just” had just left film school. What the man says at the end of that video is sworn secret, and keeping it for ever was part of the idea. For the second “High and Dry” their first words to Paul Cunningham were that they didn't want to be in it, and if they had to be, he would have to come round and film them in bed. What he likes about touring America is that he goes home in five days. R.E.M. threw them a party in Seattle, and he calls the two bands “this disgusting mutual appreciation society”.