Radiohead tell the story of OK Computer to Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone has published Andy Greene's oral history of OK Computer and the years around it, built from what would not fit into the magazine's cover story last month on the album's twentieth anniversary. All five members talked on the record for more than seven hours.

When the OK Computer tour ended in 1998, Thom Yorke was due to fly to New York to see Michael Stipe and the album's producer, Nigel Godrich, who were mixing R.E.M.'s Up. They went to JFK to meet him and he was not on the plane. Godrich says Yorke had decided on the way to the airport to turn round and go home, and had told no one. Asked about it now, Yorke says, I can’t even remember why I didn’t go or where I went.¹

Phil Selway says “Lift”, “Man of War” and “I Promise” were the songs the label expected to be hits. And we delivered an album that didn’t have them on there, even though they’d been recorded.¹ All three are on OKNOTOK 1997 2017, out on 23 June. Ed O'Brien remembers “Lift” going down well one night in 1996, when Radiohead were supporting Alanis Morissette and played her audience mostly new songs.

O'Brien says “Creep” meant the band broke even on their first record, so EMI left them alone to make The Bends. For OK Computer they started at Canned Applause, their rehearsal space in an apple shed near Didcot, which Godrich remembers as a cork box with no toilet. Much of the album was then made at St Catherine's Court, a house near Bath owned by the actress Jane Seymour.

Seymour says people claimed to have seen a ghost there, and séances were held in it. Yorke says he barely slept in a house he calls very haunted. I got really spooked while recording the vocals for “Exit Music.” It felt like someone was standing next to me.¹ Stanley Donwood, who made the band's artwork, says All the old houses in England are haunted. I think it’s the law.¹