Ed O'Brien on BBC Radio 2

Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway talk to Jo Whiley on Radio 2 a couple of days after Dublin, with Glastonbury on the Friday and the OK Computer reissue just out. With their back catalogue now at XL, they could go into the archive, and “Man of War”, demoed with “Lift” and “Nude” at Chipping Norton early in 1996, has found its place at last. Setlists are usually drawn up on the afternoon of a show by O'Brien, Thom Yorke and Selway; the Glastonbury one is already written.

The OK Computer years were magical and stressful at once. Everything had to be a struggle, O'Brien says, “so we would go collectively looking for a struggle”, and In Rainbows was the first time they shed that skin. R.E.M., who took them on tour with The Bends, told them it was all right to be successful. At the end of OK Computer he found that “all this stuff makes no difference to how you feel about yourself”, and was depressed for a good year. The six months off after the tour, with no structure, felt like free fall.

In a run through their gigs, the Princess Charlotte in Leicester drew five people and a dog on the first night they played “Creep”, and Selway's future wife was in the audience. For O'Brien the night that mattered was the first R.E.M. show, at Milton Keynes, when people in Britain still called Radiohead one-hit wonders, his father among them. Selway's own high point is a Galway festival, a wave of emotion running back through the crowd. O'Brien's is Glastonbury 1997: the equipment failing, Yorke telling him he was leaving, O'Brien talking him into playing “Just” to see how he felt, and the band shell-shocked in a Portakabin afterwards, sure it was the worst they had ever played.

Their coach anthem is “Two Tribes”, from nights on the OK Computer tour when a driver called BJ played Frankie Goes to Hollywood at full volume. O'Brien thought 2003 might be their last Glastonbury, and it was not a good set. Yorke is in a great place, and this time O'Brien has one wish. “I just really want to be able to enjoy it.”