Fran Healy recalls hearing OK Computer on Colin Greenwood's tape in 1997

Fran Healy of Travis tells Ed Power of The Irish Times that the two bands have known each other since 1997, when Colin Greenwood came to a Travis gig in a tiny bar and asked them back to his place for a cup of tea. He said, 'We've just finished our new record. Do you want to hear it?' And he put on a tape, and it was OK Computer.² Travis thought it was quite good.

He and Thom Yorke were friendly but distant for years. Healy felt Yorke saw Travis from afar as the band of “Why Does It Always Rain on Me?”, not an art-school band. That changed one night when Healy turned up at a pub where Yorke and Nigel Godrich, who co-produced OK Computer, were drinking, and Godrich told him afterwards that Yorke thought he was really cool. Healy calls Yorke one of Travis's heroes.

Godrich produced Travis's The Man Who (1999) and The Invisible Band (2001). Healy had never heard the story that Yorke fell out with Godrich over The Invisible Band, but he says Godrich came to Travis straight from Kid A and found the change hard, and so did the band. Nigel had come off doing Kid A, which was an intense record, and coming into our world, which was the absolutely opposite of it.²