Radiohead on MTV

Viewers' questions and a full playback carry the band through Kid A and Amnesiac, and the first question is why they, alone on a major label, seem to be allowed to take risks on this scale.

Part of it is money, since selling several million copies of the previous record buys room to move, and part is that not everyone who sells that many chooses to spend it on noise and turned-down guitars. They had talked about making records like this before they were signed, they say, and the strange part is arriving where it was possible after years of feeling guilty about wanting it, or lacking the means.

They object to the word experimental. The records are mild next to the music they listen to, and if they had wanted to be obscure they could have done a far better job of it.

Taking songs built in the studio on the road comes down to ego. Each of them has to be ready to play any instrument in any combination, and not feel like a spare part because tonight he is on tambourine.

Thom Yorke describes writing from inside a corridor of doors he dreaded opening, and spending six months there.