[recording starts]

Wendy Rollins: "Now you have been ranked as one of Rolling Stone's greatest guitarists of all time..

Ed O'Brien: (laughs)

Wendy: "But a lot of people don't realise... hey don't worry, I'm digging that up, huh? (laughs)

Ed: (laughs) Yeah... yeah, ok

Wendy: "Now, a lot of people don't realise that you do a lot of work as a drummer as well, and some of your work was actually on Hail To The Thief, so...

Ed: "Well, I wouldn't want to take too much credit for much drumming, in fact... (laughs), I mean there's one track on Hail To The Thief that we did some drumming on...

Wendy: "Right

Ed: "And we play it live, but that is about it, I mean I like a bit of percussion as... I'm a bit of a... we have what we call the "Conga Four" in Radiohead, which is all the members minus Thom...

Wendy: "Uh huh

Ed: "And we play percussion, ensemble, so I like play a bit of tambourine and stuff on the record, I play on Reckoner, I play tambourine and shaker, so yeah, I like playing percussion. I'm not good on the drums though, I think Phil..Phil's got that pretty well licked. Thom's a pretty mean drummer, Jonny likes to try and Colin has his moments too...

Wendy: "Likes to try! You're putting that nicely (laughs)

Ed: "Yeah, yeah

Wendy: "Well which do you... do you prefer, like if you had your choice to just on your own time, what do you like to work with as an instrument?

Ed: "Guitar

Wendy: "Guitar

Ed: "I love the guitar...

Wendy: "I figured

Ed: "You know, I mean Thom and Jonny... Jonny's a sort of multi-instrumentalist, Thom's very good on the piano as well, but I just... I've always loved the guitar, I don't know what it is about it, I just... ..you know, I love the feel of a new guitar, or I love the feel... if you get a great guitar it just, you know, I love it, there's something very... there's something just profound there going on, I don't know what it is

Wendy: "Well, now let me ask you this... Thom Yorke recently stated that In Rainbows was Radiohead's classic album. Now what are your thoughts on that? Do you feel the same? Do you feel like there's more coming from the band, I mean just you personally

Ed: "I... I mean, I definitely think that what we were trying to do was make a classic record in a way that we were trying to regain that kind of ground that we maybe have lost through a bit of experimentational... you know when we did... after... partly with Kid A was all about making songs that were... that didn't have necessarily verse-chorus structures, traditional structures, and there's a lot of sound stuff, and that was really fun, but the thing about that, when you do that for about seven or eight years, which is what we did...

Wendy: "Right

Ed: "You have to... you kind of lose that ability to... that initial thing that you had, writing songs quite succinctly, and I think we wanted to sort of reclaim that territory, and it was hard at first, it's hard being direct, it's hard pruning your songs, you know, you're used to these songs that sprawled on for five or six minutes, and we were like "no, three and a half, four minutes, it's got to be more direct", so yeah, we were trying to do that, and who knows whether it will be seen as a classic record, I mean those things can only be... will only be revealed by the test of time, so we'll just see, we'll just see.

Wendy: "Ok, I'll take that answer. Now, also on the subject of In Rainbows, this was the one where you guys decided to let you listeners name their price...

Ed: "Yeah

Wendy: "So it was kind of an experimental idea. Did it come out like you expected it to? Better? Worse? I mean, or did you guys just say "we're going to do this and see what happens"?

Ed: "Well, it's interesting, because it was an experiment, first and foremost, and you know, how you feel people will pay for it is based entirely on gut feelings, so... and they tend to be how you view humanity, so I kind of... personally speaking I felt that... I thought that it was a great idea, and I thought, you know at least two thirds of the people will pay money. Well, that wasn't the case (WR laughs), and it's interesting, we've just had the breakdown country by country...

Wendy: "Right

Ed: "And it's interesting, because there are definite trends, like Italy were the most generous, I think seventy-five percent of people who downloaded it paid something for it

Wendy: "Really?!

Ed: "Yep. The UK were the next most generous, and I think over about sixty percent of people, sixty-five percent of people in this country in our country paid for it, and you know, some places like I think America was like forty-five percent of the people...

Wendy: (laughs) Those damned Americans!

Ed: "Well, no, but you see you have... but when you break that down, you have to understand it, you go like "there are a lot of students out there", and what we hear about you know, friends who are like students on campuses... and America... you know, students don't have CD players any more, they've got hard drives...

Wendy: "Right

Ed: "And these hard drives and they're downloading music for free, and that's how they get their music. I'm not saying that's wrong, that's just how they do it, as Quincy Jones said about it, he said that the genie is out of the bottle, these... you know, there's no going back, there's a whole generation out there who don't expect to pay

Wendy: "Well put. Right

Ed: "It's true, they don't and you can't criminalise them, that's just... you know record companies have been slightly late in on the show, if the truth be... you know, they tried to fight all these people and they go "oh it's brilliant we'll actually sell records through this way", so it's, you know... there's a whole generation out there, so it's very interesting... it was... and we've just literally in the last two days had a breakdown of... we've got a fantastic accountant, Adrian Bullock, and he breaks... he loves like his graphs and these things, and he's broken it down country by country throughout the whole world of percentages, who downloaded what, what the average price was, but it's fantastic reading, it's very interesting, and the Italians come out top

Wendy: "Really?

Ed: "Ciao!

Wendy: (laughs) "Indeed!

Ed: "Ciao, thank you

Wendy: "Well, alright, now let me ask you this, what do you feel like people don't know about Radiohead as a band or as individual people?

Ed: "Erm... I think the initial thing that I always think is that people always think that we've very highbrow, serious people

Wendy: "I think you're exactly right

Ed: "Yep, and what we've been trying to desperately do on these webcasts (Wendy laughs), is to get over the lighter side of... I mean, a lot of what we do, I mean we do spend a lot of time laughing, I mean it's a very important thing. We've been together now... we've been friends since we were sixteen, so we are like brothers, so, you know, there's a lot of laughs. I mean, I think the... I think certainly we presented it that way, I mean when we started, well who did we want to be, well the coolest band as far as we were concerned were Massive Attack, you know...

Wendy: "Oh, yeah

Ed: "And their image was dark and foreboding and hard and cool and urban, and you know, we were never going to be hard, cool and urban coming from Oxford, but we were... we could present a dour face, and, you know, and also we could choose to highlight the things in our lives that were maybe not as good as they might have been, and I think that... it's probably a better thing as well for a band as well, let's be honest, from an early day, if a band is perceived to be serious and highbrow, it's much better than if a band's perceived to be larking around and japing. We're not like japesters, you know, we're not like... we don't have whoopee cushion jokes (WR laughs) or you know, fart gags or something, but we like a laugh, and we're big into our comedy, and our humour and stuff, yeah

Wendy: "And I think that's something that has shown up on the videos as well for people who keep an eye on your website and some of the stuff that you guys have even just posted is funny...

Ed: "Yeah

Wendy: "And I think that people are coming around to the idea that you guys do have a sense of humour, especially Thom Yorke, people are like "oh, that guy's so moody", you know...

Ed: "No, man

Wendy: "And it's just like, yeah he's moody, but, you know, everybody's moody, and one of those is that he does laugh, he does have a sense of humour

Ed: "He's... Thom has got the best laugh, I'm telling you. When you do something that makes him laugh, and he cracks up, it's just... it's brilliant, it's one of the most rewarding things you can do, is to make Thom laugh and hear him laugh, because he's really... there's a sort of old comedian called Sid James who used to act in these films called... there were these British films called the Carry On films, and they were sort of bawdy farces, and Thom's got a laugh like Sid James (laughs)

Wendy: "Oh, really? Ok, I have to dig this up now

Ed: "Yeah, man, it's great

Wendy: "I have to dig this up.

Ed: "Yeah

Wendy: "Real quick, my last question is a lot of people have cited you all as an influence, Radiohead being continually an influence on a lot of bands. Who would you say you guys are influenced by?

Ed: "Ah, well, I mean the list is long, I mean it starts... you know it starts with The Beatles, it goes through The Smiths, it goes through Velvet Underground, it goes through Talking Heads, it goes through,,,,you know Eric B and Rakim, it goes through early techno, it goes through Massive Attack, it goes through MIA, it goes, you know (sighs), I mean The Pixies, I mean we could...

Wendy: "It's a good list

Ed: "Yeah, it's just about... I think it's about people who've made good music and have done it differently and put emotion into it, connected with people and done their thing and NWA, I mean just, you know music transcends genre, you know...

Wendy: "Right, right

Ed: "That's what it does. Good music transcends genre

Wendy: "As long as they're passionate about their craft

Ed: "Yeah, passionate about their craft and what they're doing and they're working hard and they're doing something different, and they're... they're uplifting people's lives and touching people, that's what it's about

Wendy: "Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for your time, Ed

Ed: "It's a pleasure. Good luck and I hope you're dried out and, you know...

Wendy: (laughs) I'll be good, thank you

Ed: "Alright

Wendy: "Alright, have a good day. Bye bye

Ed: "You too. Bye

[recording ends]