Thom Yorke answers Melody Maker by fax as Radiohead preview OK Computer

Thom Yorke, unhappy with how he had been portrayed, would not do a one-to-one with Melody Maker for its OK Computer preview, and Mark Sutherland ended up talking to the other four at the Oxfordshire farmhouse where the band rehearse and record. On the day Yorke joined a jam, played up for Tom Sheehan's camera, then got in his car and drove off without saying goodbye. A few days later he sent some answers by fax.

Phil Selway calls The Bends the band's Star Wars and OK Computer their The Empire Strikes Back, more ambitious, more complex, with more loose ends, and better. Our next album won't be 'Return Of The Jedi' though. Because that was rubbish.¹

“Paranoid Android”, nearly seven minutes long, is the first single and on Radio 1's playlist. Colin Greenwood says the A&R man called it the single the moment he heard it, and that hearing Radio 1 play it so much feels like a victory. In public the label is billing the album as the one to take Radiohead into stadiums, but Melody Maker reports that its internal sales forecast was cut once the American side of the company heard it. Colin worries that fans of The Bends may be lost, and thinks the album will be hard going for anyone new to the band.

Selway remembers the label fearing that The Bends had no single on it, and the band got five Top 30 hits from it. It has sold over two million copies worldwide. Ed O'Brien recalls that Alanis Morissette played “Fake Plastic Trees” every night until Radiohead joined her American tour, then dropped it out of respect.

In his fax Yorke says the media spotlight is bad if it affects his work or holds back what he wants to say. On this album the outside world became all there was, because he had sorted out what was going on inside. He likens the lyrics to Polaroids of things moving too fast around him. I am an airhead on this record.¹ He has an answer for Britpop, too. Britpop was a party to which we weren't invited? Well, now we're not having a party, so no one's invited.¹