With growing sales and fans among pop's elite, Radiohead's Thom Yorke should be on top of the world . . . but he's not.
Singer Thom Yorke really didn't feel much like talking anymore.

Fortunately, most times he can hardly stop himself.

He had just endured a long interview with a Swiss writer who accused Yorke's band, Radiohead, of being nothing but a cynical marketing gambit. It was selling out _ putting Yorke's emotional songs up for sale, negating anything real or meaningful about them.

"I just kept saying 'Yeah, you're right.' Bursting the bubble occasionally is a good thing," Yorke said with a weary sigh.

"We're three minutes of MTV. We're not doing anything, really. It doesn't matter how hard you try, because eventually it just gets boiled down to that."

He paused.

"But that's OK," he said."Because at some point, you meant it." Relaxing in the bar of their Sunset Strip hotel, Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood stretched out on a couch and prepared for the final four weeks of their long tour for "The Bends," Radiohead's critically acclaimed second album. That includes a sold-out date at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday night. And for the moment, the aftertaste of the nasty Swiss writer has once again brought to the surface all of Yorke's self-doubt.

"You do sometimes get the feeling that you're just one more element in the entertainment industry's desperate attempt to distract people from the fact that their lives are (messed) up," Yorke said.

As for whatever success the band has had, "A lot of it is down to publicity. A lot of it is down to luck," Yorke said."You've got absolutely no idea that anybody's going to get it. I'm convinced that all the songs we've written at the moment, all the new songs, that nobody is going to get it. Maybe little bits, glimpses _ they might get that. But basically, they're not going to get it."

He was, of course, wrong. That night at a secret gig at the Troubadour, Yorke and the band unveiled several new songs _ "Lift," "Letdown" and one that tore the house down, "Electioneering." True to form, Yorke remarked from the stage that being an entertainer was like being a politician.

The Oxford-based Radiohead includes singer/guitarist Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, brother Colin Greenwood on bass, guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Phil Selway. They had gotten moderate notice in their homeland when, in 1993, the song "Creep" broke big after a San Francisco radio station picked up on it long after the debut album, "Pablo Honey," was out. It soon became a worldwide hit with its nihilistic chorus: "I'm a creep / I'm a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here? /I don't belong here."

Because of the timing and content, it gave the media and the public a convenient tag to put on Radiohead, the same way "Loser" was used to define folk-rock rapper Beck.

"It's a classic case like Blind Melon _ people going into record stores saying they wanted the Bee Girl, not knowing the album or the band," Jonny Greenwood said.

"We didn't feel it was a successful album. It had a successful song, but it wasn't a successful album," Yorke said.

"The Bends," on the other hand, is much more successful, with the singles "Fake Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry," as well as armloads of Album of the Year votes.

Yorke can't walk the streets anymore without drawing a crowd.

Fans have tracked down his house and started showing up at the door. The music from "Planet Telex" is used over soccer matches on the BBC.

Still, Yorke is a mass of contradictions. His music is an avenue to communicate deep personal feelings _ which he is convinced no one will get or care about. He wants to be accepted, yet scorns the notion that millions of people have found solace in his songs. One moment his work is intensely personal emotions that mean the world to him, the next it's disposable junk fit only for reruns on MTV at 2 a.m.

His frail emotional state led the British press to speculate if he might follow Kurt Cobain's example. His confidence has been boosted by his sales, the glowing reviews from critics and from his fans, who include some of the biggest names in rock, such as R.E.M.

While he still gets panic attacks _ "The Fear" is what he calls it _ Yorke is calm, focused. He's not sure what he wants. But he's getting a grip on what to avoid.

"I do get into a panic. I get really nervous that I'm not weird enough," Yorke said."And then I think, 'Hang on. This is completely ridiculous. What's the point of that? ' There are groups that expend so much time and energy proving how larger-than-life they are, especially in this town. For who? For whose benefit? If you're going to do it, prove it in your music and shut up."

The Radiohead hit "High and Dry" is exactly about that syndrome, using Evel Knievel as an example: "You'd kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop . . . you're turning into something you are not."

Mental anguish or even illness has always been a creative force in music _ everyone from Phil Spector to Brian Wilson to Cobain has been gripped by their demons. Producer Don Was once commented that it is the skewed version of reality that allows these artists to see and express things that go by the rest of us.

To a degree, Yorke agrees.

"I feel I'm in an immense position of privilege to be able to stand back and watch things happen," Yorke said."The most unhealthy thing to think is you have to prove your work outside of what you do. You don't.

"My girlfriend has this quote in her sketchbook: 'Remain orderly in your life so you can be free and chaotic in your work.' I think basically you lose it when you destroy your brain or destroy yourself emotionally or burn yourself up."

Radiohead got recharged and inspired when R.E.M. took the band on its tour last year.

"It was a big relief to find them so keyed up and writing new songs all the time . . . still finding passion in what they're doing," Jonny Greenwood said."I thought they'd be less enthusiastic after touring so much. But it was the opposite. They were so fired up and so into the music that it was encouraging."

Indeed, Radiohead's biggest fans are its fellow musicians.

Artists that Radiohead admires in turn are huge Radiohead fans.

R.E.M. insisted on having the band open its concerts in Europe and much of the U.S. _ mainly so Michael Stipe and Peter Buck could watch the band's performance themselves every night.

"It was ridiculous levels of encouragement," a pleased Greenwood said.

Chrissie Hynde has covered "Creep," and Alanis Morissette was so blown away by "Fake Plastic Trees" that she added it to her own concerts. (The less said about the Tears for Fears version of "Creep," the better.)

Having other artists embrace his work is boggling to Yorke.

"I spend 99 percent of my time worrying about what it is we're doing. For someone else to actually feel it's in any way inspiring to them . . . I just can't get my head around that," Yorke said.

"It's amazing how much confidence completely changes a band."

In contrast to other staid, controlled British bands, Radiohead loses itself in the music. Onstage, Yorke's face undergoes a series of contortions as he feels the nuances of the songs and is swept away; he is often mocked for his dramatics.

It inhibited him a bit, until R.E.M. told them to forget the critics and the coolness _ passion for the music is worth the risk.

"What R.E.M. gave us was a sense that you can be as emotional as you like in what you do. That's what it's about," Yorke said."It was extraordinarily good therapy."

And the band needs that boost of confidence from time to time.

The fragile Yorke, for one, still stings from every barb of the notoriously fickle, catty British press.

Yorke lost his voice at a German concert and had to cut the show short. England's New Musical Express, however, "said I stormed off in a tantrum rather than I'd lost my voice. The headline was 'Thommy's Temper Tantrum.' They just wanted to use the alliteration. It's so vacant, so begrudging _ I can't deal with that level of malice aimed at me personally. I'd be paralyzed by hate. I just can't read it. It's what journalists have dreamt up over their glass of lager in the afternoon."

(It should be noted, however, that the NME has also supported the band, declaring, "Somebody had to come along and remind us what greatness looks like. So thank God it's Radiohead.")

Yorke tries to shrug it all off, good and bad.

"The only answer you can do is stay true to what you were doing in the first place. If you don't, you're in trouble; you have nowhere to run," Yorke said.

Radiohead's members are building their own studio for their next album and producing it by themselves, and have told the record company they're going to take at least a year to do it.

Problem is, after only five days of recording, they've got a quarter of the album in the can, and plenty more songs ready to go.

Asked Yorke, "We don't do anything right, do we?"