Thom Yorke on BBC Radio 2

Mark Radcliffe talks to Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien in a basement behind the BBC Radio Theatre, about two and a half hours before Radiohead's concert there. The In Rainbows download was their management's idea, the logical answer to every record of theirs leaking anyway, and the band treated it like radio, a record for people to pass around. The pay-what-you-like part, one of them says, “was kind of taking the piss really”. Asked whether it cost them, they call it quits. The high comedy was going to number one in America on a record bought largely from iTunes while they were giving it away.

When they started back with Nigel Godrich, it was he who got them out of their own studio and into a manor house with camper vans in a circle, hoping for what Jane Seymour's house near Bath had done for OK Computer. Later they recorded in London, which one of them preferred: decamping to the middle of nowhere is “a bit of a nasty habit to get into, frankly”.

O'Brien picks R.E.M.'s “Finest Worksong” after an afternoon playing Murmur with his children. Getting the R.E.M. support slot, while the band were still in the shadow of “Creep”, validated everything, and he spent it asking Peter Buck trainspotter questions about Murmur. Yorke's pick is “The Rip” from Portishead's new album, played from his own copy before release; Portishead had given them copies, and they called first to check it was all right. Each record is still a voyage of uncertainty; this time they had to tour in front of thousands to remember who they were. Asked whether the band suit middle age, Yorke is having none of it. “I thought I was going to be dead when I was 33, so this is all a bit of a shock to me, frankly.”