Thom Yorke on KROQ

Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien come into KROQ in Los Angeles the morning after the last night of their North American tour, at the Hollywood Bowl, brains in meltdown. Their main association with the Bowl, one of them says, is a Tom and Jerry cartoon. A caller tells them she got engaged during “Karma Police” at the show, her boyfriend talking to her about karma and whether good things happen to good people, then going down on one knee while the band played.

Another caller begs them to record “True Love Waits”. They have tried it a million different ways, and the version played on this tour is the best so far. “It's not like we're going to suddenly put a bloody great big orchestra on it,” one of them says. By the time Kid A and Amnesiac were finished, Yorke says, everything after was a bonus. Asked about Travis and Coldplay, bands that sound so much like them, one of them says everybody is influenced by everybody, “but you know I don't have their records in my house”. Big venues mostly sound bad, which is why they keep to places like the Bowl and the Greek even when fans miss out.

O'Brien went to a Janet Jackson concert with Phil Selway and Colin Greenwood, who left halfway through because he was hungry. O'Brien stayed to the end and spent most of it smiling at the costume changes and the risers. A caller who read that they smoked a lot of weed making OK Computer is told not to trust the book: it doesn't sound like a record made by pot smokers. Another, who wants to sing on a Radiohead song, is reminded of the Police albums that gave each member who wasn't singing a track of his own, and that track was always the one everybody fast-forwarded. Sometimes, one of them says, the lead singer is the lead singer for a reason.

Next comes a hibernation of at least six months, Yorke says, with a book and nappies to change. Told how happy and optimistic everyone sounded in their recent Rolling Stone cover story, one of them calls it revolting.