Thom Yorke on Time Traveler

Thom Yorke talks about OK Computer in 1997, in a clip cut together from his answers.

The record is only as shocking as the atmosphere on Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds is an amazing pop record but also an album, and the album as a form was a convenient marketing ploy of its time that has gone now. Walking out of the shops with bags, he was tapped on the shoulder by a middle-aged woman who said she knew he did not like being approached, told him it was a really good record and he did not have to worry, and wandered off. The first essay he wrote at school asked him to be an alien landed in the middle of Oxford, and a lot of the album came from there. In the studio Radiohead kept one computer on the web, and he read fans' transcriptions of bootleg lyrics on the unofficial sites while he was still writing the words. The press set them up for the big crossover, and it feels to him like a record for people who liked the last one. Britpop was wrong for them, all knowing irony and the idea that it was not right to be serious about a band. He has looked at the Voyager site, which lists the music sent into space on Voyager 1, and recommends an album by the band Laika and the Polish composer Penderecki.