Radiohead's second album is finished and due in January

Radiohead's second album is finished, has no title yet and will not be out until the end of January, so that it can be released all over the world on the same day. Colin Greenwood tells Alison Freebairn and Charlie Bravo of the fanzine Sun Zoom Spark that this lets the band do one world tour instead of lots of small ones, and that it explains the long gap since Pablo Honey.

Thom Yorke calls the success of “Creep” the most paralysing thing that could have happened to the band, and Pablo Honey patchy, recorded too early, with consequences they have suffered ever since. Asked how the song took off in America, he is blunter. Well, we kissed a lot of arse and that helped, and also we had a good song.¹

The first album was bashed out in three weeks, Greenwood says. This time the five worked out arrangements together in January, which he thinks did everyone good, and recorded much of the album with John Leckie in February, March and April. They finished it in June, back from Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. The sessions began tense because the band tried to record the first couple of singles in the first couple of weeks. Greenwood calls that stupid; they should have made the whole album and chosen the singles from it.

They recorded more than 20 tracks with Leckie, and “My Iron Lung” is the only song from the recent EPs that will be on the album. “The Trickster”, “Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong”, “Lozenge of Love”, “Lewis (Mistreated)” and “You Never Wash Up After Yourself” went out on the My Iron Lung EPs on 26 September. Yorke says they were slightly too diverse for the album's flow, and are there for the people who bought the earlier records and have been waiting a long time.

The British press take so much of Yorke's energy that he would rather not think about them, though he will talk to them if they want to talk to him. I've always seen them as the school bullies.¹ Greenwood admits the band are upset by a press that has broken its promises to them, but every time they play, they sell more records.

Every fan letter gets a handwritten reply. When one is disturbing, Greenwood says, Yorke answers it privately and tells the writer he is not a counsellor, only someone saying how he feels. We've realised that we are doing music for ourselves. We're not doing it for EMI or anyone else.¹ On the tour with Belly, he remembers, the band raised their drinks to “The Kids”, half as a joke and completely seriously.