Thom Yorke on Polskie Radio

Thom Yorke describes himself to Polskie Radio, on camera on a bitterly cold day, as awkward, over 40, a musician for more than half his life who still can't read music, and wearing a ponytail. Watching Brian May and Freddie Mercury at seven or eight decided him; at a boys' school, girls were never his reason for being in a band, and he found the school's music department and stayed there. Atoms for Peace grew from The Eraser, which he made on a laptop while travelling. He wanted to hear friends good enough to imitate the strictness of those beats, being a frustrated drummer who programs what he can't play. “Humans when they play like machines to me are really sexy,” he says.

Radiohead wanted control of their own recording by OK Computer, after seeing photographs of Can's homemade studio, and told Nigel Godrich, whom they met on The Bends, to buy whatever equipment he needed. The old split of producer behind the desk and band in the room broke down once Yorke watched him edit on a computer and decided to learn. Kid A came from Yorke's frustration with guitars. The others were shocked at first, but for him “it was kind of a life or death thing”.

He is good at starting things and useless at finishing them. For The Eraser he handed Godrich a pile of sketches, and when Godrich picked out ten seconds and Yorke asked about the other nine minutes, he got a level look. Amok came from three days of guided improvisation, edited so hard that the players didn't remember playing their parts; “Unless” is close to how it was played, apart from the synth riff at the start. “I don't reckon you can groove with people if you don't like them,” he says.

He fell for his partner at college because she was an amazing dancer, and his dancing on stage began with songs such as “Idioteque” and “Dollars and Cents”, when he had no guitar to hold. Stanley Donwood's Amok sleeve repeats the look of The Eraser on purpose, to tie the two together. People see the end of the world in it, and Yorke sees a joke. “What's an elephant there for Christ's sake,” he asks, and there are Disneylands at the end.