Radiohead explain the In Rainbows release to Columbia's student paper

Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and their manager Bryce Edge have answered questions by email for Logan Light of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student paper of Columbia University in New York. Most of the answers are signed by the band as a whole. The point of the In Rainbows download, they say, was speed: to get the songs to fans as soon as they were finished, and to everyone on the same day, which only a download could do. Letting buyers name the price came second. The one thing that went wrong on 10 October was taking card payments from around the world, when the security checks clogged the site at its busiest.

Edge does not recommend it to anyone else. It is not a solution for anyone else, just a way of releasing music that might work for Radiohead.¹ Asked how he hopes the release will be remembered, Colin Greenwood is less diplomatic. I hope we put some excitement back into music; it's all becoming horribly predictable.¹

O'Brien picks “Bodysnatchers” as the song that will always take the band back to Tottenham House, the run-down Wiltshire mansion where they recorded part of the album. This track reflects the weird energy of the house.¹ Family life, the band say, made time precious and the gang hard to keep together, which is why the record took so long.

The last question is a list of fans' theories: Kid A played in overlapping copies 17 seconds apart, “Fitter Happier” sitting at the golden ratio of OK Computer. Jonny Greenwood answers with another one, the claim that OK Computer runs in step with The Matrix. Strange how culture throws up coincidences ... or is it?¹