Nigel Godrich on Beats 1

Nigel Godrich talks Matt Wilkinson through Behind the Boards, his 18-song playlist for Apple Music, at the point where the things he made more than 20 years ago, OK Computer among them, are coming round again as anniversaries and reissues. Once a record is finished he never listens to it again. Proportionally there should be far more Radiohead on the list, he says. He and the band grew up together, and no one, he says, can know Thom Yorke the way he does, or him the way Yorke does. He met them at RAK, the London studio, in 1994, during The Bends. The label wanted another “Creep”, and he had the advantage of being a kid their own age from outside the establishment.

Beck's The Information began as weeks of making breaks and pressing them onto about 50 records, and “Cellphone's Dead” is built on one of them. He wanted to polish Pavement's “The Hex” for people put off by singing slightly out of tune; then Pavement split, and so did the Beta Band and Here We Go Magic after he worked with them, until he began to think he was cursed. Paul McCartney played everything on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and is one of the most intelligent people he has met. Phil Thornalley, who taught him the job, asked him to mix Natalie Imbruglia's “Torn”. “Paranoid Android” went nowhere in rehearsal until it was pinned down. He also talks about recording away from studios: OK Computer was recorded partly at St Catherine's Court near Bath. He has a new son, and would not encourage him to become a record producer.