Radiohead on Time Traveler

OK Computer, Thom Yorke tells Launch, with Jonny Greenwood beside him, is only as shocking as the atmosphere of Pet Sounds, and the album as a form was a marketing convenience whose time has passed.

Coming out of the shops loaded with bags, he was tapped on the shoulder by a middle-aged woman who said she knew he disliked being approached, but wanted him to know the record was good and he did not have to worry. Then she walked off.

He traces part of the album to the first essay he was ever set at school, which asked pupils to imagine landing in the middle of Oxford as an alien and describe what they saw.

In the studio a computer stayed on the unofficial fan sites, where people had typed up lyrics transcribed from bootlegs, so he could sing a song he was still writing and then go and read what strangers had decided the words were.

He waves off the expectation that this would be their big crossover record, saying it feels like one made for whoever liked the last one, and he is hostile to Britpop for its knowing irony and its suggestion that being serious about a band was faintly embarrassing.