Thom Yorke on Launch

Thom Yorke says The Bends had a comforting resolution, arrived at by accident, and OK Computer didn't. For two weeks before mastering he got up at five every morning, couldn't find the resolution he expected and couldn't sleep. So much of the record is about everything moving too fast that slowing down was the only resolution there could be, and “The Tourist”, a song from him to himself telling him to slow down, went last.

He and the rest of Radiohead wanted back the four-track mentality they had before signing a record contract, knocking out an idea and taking responsibility for it, and producing themselves meant never having to explain it, or stare at the same studio walls with A&R men coming round. Much of the record goes back to the first essay he wrote at school, which asked him to imagine landing in the middle of Oxford as an alien and describe the people he saw.