NME gives The Bends nine out of ten and talks to Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien

NME gives The Bends nine out of ten in its issue of 18 March, in a review by Mark Sutherland, and runs an interview with Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien beside it. Simon Williams met the two in a Stockholm hotel bar on the Monday of a promotional trip, while Jonny and Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway did their own rounds elsewhere in Europe.

The first sessions for the album went badly, with the band barely talking to one another, and their American record company would not commit to a second record until it had heard some of the new songs. John Leckie, producing, stood back. The thing he said all the time, Yorke recalls, was to do whatever they liked. O'Brien says the band had always expected the studio to be the hard part.

Touring was fun, but recording was always supposed to be hard work. Or so we thought

Ed O'Brien¹

Yorke says the new songs project less of himself than Pablo Honey did, and that he likes “Planet Telex”, the opening track, because its words are gibberish. Asked what got the band this far, he gives one word, bloody-mindedness, and he is just as blunt about how he would rather be seen.

I'd much rather be a miserable git than a mod

Thom Yorke¹