Colin Greenwood tells the story of the OK Computer sessions for Capitol

Colin Greenwood has written the history of the OK Computer sessions for Capitol's American press kit, dated July 1997, and signed it for the band. It begins at the end of January 1996 at Canned Applause, their rehearsal room in a roughly converted apple shed, where most of the songs were worked out before five weeks on tour in the United States and Canada in March.

By July Nigel Godrich had a mobile studio running in the shed, and four songs on the album come from it: “Subterranean Homesick Alien”, “Electioneering”, “The Tourist” and “No Surprises”, which was the first take on the first day.

After the August tour with Alanis Morissette, the band moved in September to St Catherine's Court, a house in a secluded valley outside Bath. They played in the ballroom while Godrich recorded them from the library. Thom Yorke sang “Exit Music (For a Film)” in the chilly stone entrance hall, and “Let Down” was recorded live in the ballroom at 3am. There were two month-long stays at the house, the second from November. By Christmas they had almost finished 14 songs, which were completed and mixed in London in January and February. The two that missed the album, “Polyethylene” and “A Reminder”, are B-sides of “Paranoid Android”.

The kit also reprints Rolling Stone's review of the album and Q's June feature, in which Yorke is asked whether he could step back from fame as Nirvana did.

I've got the pull-back button ready.

Thom Yorke¹