Radiohead on BBC Radio 5 Live

Nihal Arthanayake talks to Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood for his 5 Live podcast Headliners, with the two Kid A Mnesia books out. They come to him from three weeks, on and off, of trying to break their own habits while developing something new for a record by the Smile, Yorke's band with Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner. They start where they think they should, drop the should, hit mild panic and go round again.

Yorke calls one decision of the Kid A period a terrible error. He insisted they start recording with no preparation and no rehearsal, hoping to catch golden moments, and mostly caught frustration and confusion for quite some time. Still, it was the first time they had their own space, and watching the Beatles move into the basement at Apple in Get Back, he recognised it. Donwood remembers a chaotic art school without tutors or a timetable. On the OK Computer tour, Yorke says, their agent swapped the venues for ones twice the size with no extra lights, and he had to psych himself up to be twice the size too.

The pictures came from wherever they were. In Copenhagen it was the pruned trees in the park by the art museum and an expressionist print on a restaurant wall, the source of all the pointy trees and mountains. An exhibition of Egyptian artefacts there had figures in boats, with a note claiming they could travel through space, and Yorke went straight back and wrote “Pyramid Song”. Hockney's landscapes at the Pompidou got them off the computer and onto huge canvases.

Yorke remembers signing for nothing but a van and some equipment, and the call a year later to say “Creep” was a hit in Israel and America. Asked about the power balance between them, one of them says he is the boss, then takes it back. Donwood shows his work to his partner and children because they are merciless. They still paint outside, with snow on the ground, though they now have a heater.