Ed O'Brien on WRFF Radio 104.5

On WRFF, Ed O'Brien plays down the drumming the host credits him with, some of it on Hail to the Thief. There is one track on Hail to the Thief with his drumming on it, and otherwise he belongs to what the band call the Conga Four, everyone but Thom Yorke on percussion; on “Reckoner” he plays tambourine and shaker. Phil Selway has the drums “pretty well licked”, Thom Yorke is a pretty mean drummer and Jonny Greenwood likes to try, and the guitar is what O'Brien loves.

Yorke has called In Rainbows a classic, and O'Brien says that is what they were trying to make. After seven or eight years of songs without verses and choruses, they had lost the knack of writing succinctly and wanted it back. “It's hard being direct, it's hard pruning your songs,” he says, taking five or six minutes down to three and a half.

The band's accountant, Adrian Bullock, who loves his graphs, has just broken the download down country by country. O'Brien had guessed that at least two thirds of people would pay. Italy was the most generous, at about 75 per cent, then Britain at around 60, with America nearer 45, which he puts down to students who get all their music free on hard drives. The genie is out of the bottle, he says, borrowing Quincy Jones's line.

People take Radiohead for serious and highbrow. When they started, the coolest band they knew was Massive Attack, dark and urban, and “we were never going to be hardcore and urban coming from Oxford”, so they put on a dour face instead. In fact they spend a lot of time laughing, and making Yorke laugh is one of the best things you can do; he has a laugh like Sid James in the Carry On films.