Ed O'Brien on BBC Radio 1

Ed O'Brien goes record for record with Zane Lowe in a Radio 1 versus, and the contest soon turns into stories. Lowe's first Glastonbury was Radiohead's set in 1997, and O'Brien remembers the moment it nearly ended. With the monitors down, Thom Yorke came up to him between songs and said he was off. The next song on the list was “Just”, so O'Brien suggested they play that and see how it went, because “at times of crisis people just always say one step at a time”. Backstage, the band's own camp mostly felt relief that they had not walked off.

They did no promotion for The King of Limbs, a record shaped by DJing and Serato rather than by picking up their instruments as on In Rainbows, because it did not feel right, though an unpromoted record “stiffs after about four weeks”. The fortnight of New York television and shows happened because they wanted it. At Roseland, while Yorke played “Codex”, O'Brien felt the room get it, the way audiences got Kid A once they heard it in the tents. Next year they want to play indoors again, with eight albums to choose from. In New York they brought back “Subterranean Homesick Alien”, unplayed since 2003. They had to relearn it, and when they finished the song Yorke turned round and remarked that intros used to be good.

Glastonbury is still his carnival. He goes with his wife and friends, leaves the children at home and stays in Shangri-La from 11 at night until six in the morning. Last year, at three in the morning, a DJ in a tunnel there played Bauhaus's “Bela Lugosi's Dead”, and O'Brien, never a goth, felt he was “getting back in with my people”. His father's verdict on Pablo Honey, when it came out, was one good song.