Jonny Greenwood says Radiohead rehearsed 120 songs for the tour

Radiohead began rehearsing for the A Moon Shaped Pool tour with 120 songs, Jonny Greenwood has told Matt Everitt for BBC 6 Music's The First Time with Jonny Greenwood, which goes out on Sunday 19 June from 1pm. We started with 120. It's crazy. I mean, it's just every song we've done.² They gave that up as stupid and cut the list to 60 or 70, and they play 24 a night.

He says the point is variety. It drives the crew mad, because they never know what to do with the lights, and the band have always settled the setlist just before they go on. The tour's first nine nights, from Amsterdam to Primavera Sound in Barcelona, bear him out, with 50 different songs between them and only seven played every time. He calls it a very happy time, with the band enjoying playing together and the sound they make, and nothing to complain about.

The interview was recorded earlier this week, and the BBC, publishing excerpts ahead of the broadcast, says it is the first time any of the band has spoken about the record since it came out. The full hour also goes back to the years when they were On a Friday, the success of OK Computer in 1997 and his film scores.

“Spectre”, turned down as the theme for the new Bond film and put out on Christmas Day, wasn't right for the film, he says, probably because it was too dark, and the rejection gave the band the song back to finish as they wanted. They are really proud of it. Why be attached to an old fashioned idea of what a James Bond thing was and it being a big deal?²

On the new album, “Burn the Witch” had its strings written near the start, which is unusual for the band, and the song was left unfinished to give the London Contemporary Orchestra room. For the end of “Daydreaming” he had the cellists tune their bottom strings down about a fifth and play on, for a low growl. The orchestra plays the album's arrangements with a choir of 13.

Sessions swing between Thom Yorke at the centre getting everyone excited and long spells when nothing works. “No Surprises” was recorded three times, and the version on OK Computer is the first take.

Greenwood remembers headlining Glastonbury in 1997 as a disaster. I just remember it being very stressful and the monitors breaking and Thom walking off because he couldn't hear anything and it just being a disaster!² He asked the lighting man, Andy Watson, to light the crowd, so that the band could at least see them.