Two interviews at different locations, one with Thom, the other with Thom and Jonny, are collected in this page. Judging from Thom's clothes and hairdo they were apparently held on the same day. Only brief excerpts from both interviews, which were used in a documentary from 1998, are currently available. As seen in the two screenshots with Thom and Jonny, the documentary gave both december 12th and 14th as the date for this interview. Radiohead played the Spectrum in Montreal, which seems to be the location for this interview, on the 13th.
[recording starts here]
DJ: I had an impression that you're on of the few bands that was not pigeonholed, and was not put in one category, and you know, where the labels stick to it for the whole tour.
Jonny: Well we've sort of got a new label every month, which is encouraging.
Thom: That's right.
Jonny: Yeah, we've gone from Mott the Hoople to Queen to U2 to REM by way of Nick Drake, you know, Pink Floyd, so all or any of those is fine as long as they're different every month, we don't really mind.
DJ: How important was Lucky? The video and the song, especially.
Thom: Well, a lot of, I mean, the opportunity to do it, and the chance to get involved in that, we thought we were really lucky to even be asked, and I think that it was really one of the few positive things to come out of the British music thing that was happening at that particular moment. And for us we were just sort of really... I think what often happens when you finish a record there's always like one or two songs that spring out on the back of it immediately, and Lucky was one of those. It was sort of just kicking around as soon as we started touring. So we were itching to actually record it anyway. So the song for us was, I mean personally, I mean, you know it's the rule of thumb that the last thing that you've ever done is the thing that you're most proud of, but that song is definitely the song that I'm most proud of. I mean, I think it's much, much better than "Creep."
DJ: You've been rehearsing songs also for an upcoming record, would you say that it would go in the same path as The Bends?
Thom: I would say not likely at all. I hope not. Creatively there wouldn't be much point, I think.
Jonny: But we would like to earn a reputation of doing very good albums, rather than get the single pop hit radio song and sell an album off the back of it, like happened with our first album.
Thom: I'd rather the next record is a celebration of things, really. I think, I personally am getting very bored with complaint as an artform.
[recording starts here]
DJ: Oh hi Thom!
Thom: Sorry! Are we on? Sorry! Ja! Ah! Alright, alright. Hi! How are you doing?
DJ: OK. Among the albums that you've picked, Bjork's, have you ever heard Bjork's first two albums? She recorded a jazz album which I've never heard in my life-
Thom: What, before Sugarcubes?
DJ: Yeah, yeah. At 12 she recorded an album for children, and Gling-Gló, I think it's called, when she was like 16 or 18, maybe during Sugarcubes times, you've never heard that?
Thom: Wow, how about that.
DJ: You live in England, I'm sure you can find the imports.
Thom: I'm very envious, I mean, at the age of 12 I wish someone had given me a tape recorder and asked me to make album. I wouldn't have liked anything better in the whole world.
DJ: What do you like about Bjork?
Thom: I think simply because I just think she's really inspiring. She is the only pop artist I think at the moment for me I find inspiring.
DJ: Really?
Thom: I mean, her and Michael Stipe, still, and REM, and... that's really it. It's sort of people who aren't involved in white commercial rock.
DJ: What do you admire in her? Is it her creativity? Her voice is totally unique, too.
Thom: Yeah, creativity, and the fact that she's been doing it so long and gets better and better and there's not many people that do that, I don't think, and she's one of them, and that's it really. She said hello to me last week.
DJ: You personally know Bjork, yeah?
Thom: No, I don't. We did some TV show together and she said hello to me.
DJ: So she loves you, too.
Thom: No, she just said hello, but, yeah. She's being civil. She's being nice.
[laughs]
Thom: Anyway, yes. But I wouldn't know what to say to her anyway. I didn't say anything.
DJ: And particularly that Debut album.
Thom: Particularly that, because, erm, I really like Post as well, but it's a bit, you know, here and there, which I think is fine, you know, but as album I put on and turn up really loud in my house and put up shelves, it would be Debut.
DJ: Something totally different, Miles Davis, Bitches Brew.
Thom: Ah, yeah, wow.
DJ: When did you discover Miles Davis?
Thom: That was sort of about, well, Jonny bought it for me 2 years ago, and I listened to it once and thought, no, no, don't like this.
DJ: Really?
Thom: You know like you do with certain albums, you're just like, I can't cope with this. And then I listened to it again, really, really stoned in an airport and thought it was amazing. And then another sort of, I don't know, 6 months went by, and I've just recently started listening to it properly, on headphones, really loud. Um, and I didn't know before but it's like there's 3 drum kits going on, there's 2 people playing Fender Rhodes pianos, and he's sort of mixing it all up and down, and if you describe that to someone they'd say, my god, that sounds like it's going to be awful. But there's something about it, that personally, at the moment, that's the most inspiring record I have. I can just put that on and I'm just buzzing for the whole day.
DJ: But have you bought other Miles Davis recordings, or that's the only one?
Thom: Um, that's the only one. Jonny bought be Kind of Blue as well, and I didn't really like that. I kind of thought that it was a bit, um... there's this Cecil Taylor record where he sounds like he's just, this is some piano player and it sounds like he's got the cat, and the cat's jumping up and down on the piano, and the drum's out of time, and there's something about it.
DJ: Have you seen documentaries on Miles Davis?
Thom: I haven't, no, Jonny is an obsessive Miles Davis-
DJ: Because he had really a punk attitude towards his art.
Thom: What freaks me out is, I was in a record shop in Paris, for some reason it was Paris, and the Miles Davis section is like a whole block, and they're all different, and it's like, eh? How'd he do that? He must have had a tape recorder going his whole life.
DJ: REM, now, you've toured with REM, but I'm sure you're ah- You've picked Lifes Rich Pageant.
Thom: Lifes Rich Pageant because... when I was at school, I was really into, I was total New Romantic.
DJ: Really?
Thom: Yeah, Japan freak. I was totally into Japan. And one of my friends, and I'd really gone off of guitar music, and rock music, I was just not into it at all. And Lifes Rich Pageant, Begin the Begin, was the record that got me back into electric guitar. Which of course, when I told Peter Buck that he thought it was really funny.
DJ: But they can still make strong albums, you know, after they've been working for 10 years.
Thom: Yeah, that's frightening really. But I think really the reason they can do that is that they don't have that fundamental belief that they're wonderful, you know. They're hypercritical of everything they do. And they seem to have a sense of humor about what they do. I mean, I think their next record is going to be amazing because of what's going on between the four of them at the moment. You know, sometimes you can just sort of feel it.
DJ: Talking Heads' Remain in Light.
Thom: Um, because it's- two things, Remain in Light because I've never heard anything like it. I actually did hear on a radio station back at home on the weekend they played one thing, one sort of really obscure Jamaican track, which sounded a bit like some of Remain in Light, because it was all sort of, you know, all the rhythms were cycling round and round and round and there wasn't much going on except this guy uttering rubbish. But it was really sort of, Wow! You know, I think Remain in Light is one of those albums, I put it on and I cannot work out where, how he did it. How, I just can't work it out. You know, if I ever met David Byrne, I would just sort of pin him down and say, How did you make that record? It's impossible!
DJ: DJ Krush. Who is he?
Thom: He's on Mo'Wax, which is James Lavelle's dance label in Britain. It's probably through Sony here, actually. Um. DJ Krush. I think he's Japanese, I don't know anything about him.
DJ: You know nothing about him?
Thom: I bought his first album called Turntablized because I liked the cover, which was done by 3D of Massive Attack.
DJ: OK.
Thom: And I've just bought the new one which is Meiso, and it's just more DJ Krush, it's really brilliant, and he's got people singing and rapping on it this time and the first one was instrumental. But he's sort of, he's just basically doing drum breaks, and he's basically using turntables, and virtually nothing else, and I really just admire it. He's just really really good at what he does. They're the best sort of drum breaks I've heard in a long time.
DJ: And that's what you discovered listening to DJ Krush.
