Thom Yorke on 107.7 The End Seattle

Thom Yorke talks to Kim Monroe of 107.7 The End straight after Radiohead's set at the Gorge, near the start of their American tour, and admits that the moshing at the front threw them, after so long without a gig like it. “It was like some sort of orgy going on right in front of you while you're trying to concentrate,” he says, and they only settled once they had played a brand new song nobody knew. Getting from Houston to the Gorge in under a week has meant a lot of sitting on the bus, because he doesn't fly unless he has to, and he is already going a bit loopy.

Kid A got two American shows, which he calls a smoke and mirrors trick, because the band did not think they could cope with going back into the machinery after OK Computer, which took a long time to recover from. Doing it their way this time was revenge, he admits, and quite sweet, but mostly a way of protecting themselves.

They play the songs that still turn them on, which is why the early singles have dropped out. “Creep” may come back one day “just to piss people off”; at a festival in Holland they bet each other they would walk straight on and play it, and bottled out. Songs like “Lift” may be among the best they have written, but have never been put on tape the way they want, and the bootlegs are all over the websites. Most of both new albums were on the internet within two shows of the 2000 tour, from somewhere like the south of France, and he thought that was brilliant.

His son is five months old, and on a videotape Yorke has of him the boy's legs flail around for a while, which is enough for him. His deep dark secret for Seattle is that he doesn't think they are going to split up yet.