...ON THINGS/SITUATIONS

·        [ON GOSSIPS] Buy the Guardian and there’s Jarvis Cocker telling his life story again. I find this obsession with personalities offensive. I find it offensive that I have to read about Noel and Liam’s extremely banal antics.

·       [ON THE LABEL ‘ART ROCK’] We write pop songs. As time has gone on, we’ve gotten more into pushing our material as far as it can go. But there was no intention of it being ‘art.’ It’s a reflection of all the disparate things we were listening to when we recorded it.

·        [ON TIBETAN SITUATION] In 1959, Britain was one of the countries who could have said something and didn’t, so there’s a definite moral obligation for the British people to be represented here. It’s very much a global issue, anyway. And because the Tibetan struggle is a non-violent struggle, it shames the global community’s ineffectiveness as a peacekeeping unit.

·        [ON DRUGS] Us on hard drugs? That would be horrible. We'd probably end up sounding like Bryan Adams. 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.

·        [ON BEING HAPPY] I’m happy, thanks—you cunt. If my emotional state does not please someone, then I apologise profusely. It’s easy to be miserable. Being happy is tougher—and cooler.

·        [ON COMPUTERS IN GENERAL] A lot of people think the title is a really positive statement. "The thing that worries me about the computer age is the fact that people know so much about you. It's an incredible invasion of privacy. And no matter where you are in the world people can monitor you if you're using your credit card. I heard this weird rumour on the Internet about how the military are funding this great big research project, and basically they believe that in the future, the balance of power won't be determined by who has the most nuclear weapons, but by who has all the information. I'm not afraid of being taken over by computers though, because the thing is, computers cannot resist. You can always smash them up, and they're totally defenceless. All we need are more people with hammers."

·        [ON THE IDEA OF PERFECT HAPPINESS] Making a good record and feeling that I haven’t lost my mind. And Walking.

·        [ON INTERVIEWS] I don’t blame the journalists. They’re trying to make a living. I blame the editors.

·        [ON DEBT RELIEF] It’s affected me very much, it’s affected my very deeply because I think I spent the first few years of being in Radiohead not aware of outside issues like these. I had tunnel vision but we travelled a lot and it became obvious that the wonderful west we thought it was… the trip to Mexico and Thailand made that bloody obvious. My personal experience was in some way feeling that everyone was trying to be western but it was obvious that the countries were doing this because culturally, they had been destroyed and they were at the west’s mercy. I think any artist or any writer or any creative person is more acutely aware of their surroundings which is unfortunate sometimes but it does mean sometimes it’s difficult to ignore wider issues… it’s hard to sing about “humping your baby” when you’re seeing all this other stuff. It’s difficult to live with a bad conscience.

·        [ON TIBETAN FREEDOM GIG] We’ve intended to stay away from a lot of political stuff, but I feel the Tibet cause is really important, because everyone knows what the Chinese are doing, but no one will just stand up and say “You must stop!” All the governments have their hands tied by the fucking corporations. But musicians…we can give these corporations the big “Fuck you!!”

·        [ON BOREDOM] It doesn’t exist…especially if you tour with Soul Asylum.

·        [ON THE NEW MILLENNIUM] Staying very sober and trying to keep it together.

·        [ON MIGRAINE] dark red rooms cause migraines because the eyes cannot focus on the colour properly so the brain is in constant agitation. Apparently.