Radiohead on The Beat

Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood talk around the release of The Bends and the “Planet Telex” double A-side, and the first question is about Pablo Honey selling more than a million. Looking back they are almost bewildered by it. They had not expected to sell outside England, or even outside Oxfordshire, or to leave the country to promote it, or for it to last more than a few months. It was the first thing they did properly as a band, made before they had really played live, and it held up the second album by about three years.

Yorke is open about the damage. The reviews that got to him were the personal ones about how he looked, not the ones about the music, and he says he runs most of his life between total confidence and total paranoia, with that period feeding both.

“Anyone Can Play Guitar” was widely taken as ironic, he says, and was meant as a straight celebration of being in a band.

Making The Bends, confidence was smashed and slowly rebuilt. Writing and rehearsing together was a pleasure; walking back into a studio froze them again.