http://www.citizeninsane.eu/interviews/ed_05.mp3

Then there’s a section I’m not uploading about sessions in 1993. He basically just says that there are 3 different sessions. One with Coke Babies and Yes I Am, which was the earliest and I guess has to be from 1992 already. Then a demo session at Courtyard where they recorded High & Dry, and other songs. I told him about the 4 studio demos we have (Banana Co, The Bends, Pop Is Dead, Nice Dream) and he confirmed that those songs were recorded along with High & Dry. He wondered how we could get those demos, and I couldn’t really tell him… That bit was something I was curious about, but I guess most people can’t be bothered about it…

Then I was going back to older unreleased songs. The segment covers Innocent Civilians, Dogwander, Say The Word (it’s not Worry Wort!), Jonny Scott Walker Song, I Froze Up, and then (just cause it fits) I also ask about Treefingers. Then there’s also Lift and the organ outro of the early Paranoid Android comes up as well (unintended like many things). I guess this section of the interview will be the favourite of many people who like those old unreleased songs:

http://www.citizeninsane.eu/interviews/ed_06.mp3

Next is a section where I ask about the orchestral version of Arpeggi (just cause so many people wanted to know), and then pick up random stuff from my papers about recording In Rainbows (Down Is The New Up, All I Need, Bangers And Mash). I had much more, but at that point it was clear that there was no way I could throw all of it at him. So I had to make quick decisions…

http://www.citizeninsane.eu/interviews/ed_07.mp3

Next section is a long one, which I don’t upload as it wasn’t very succesfull all in all (and there’s terrible background noise in parts anyway). I’d had to abandon my original concept and started to pick out things that caught my eye on the papers. And in hindsight they were the wrong things for Ed in that situation…
It starts about the bonus disc. He just says that those tracks could all have made the album. He sees Mk1 and Mk2 as proper tracks, Mk1 was to be connected with Videotape (not suprising), Mk2 was supposed to be an intro for 4 Minute Warning. And Mk2 is not a mellotron, it was done with an AS synth. I quickly mention that DITNU is almost too good for a b-side and he says that b-sides have never really been throwaway and that there’s a tradition for Radiohead of having strong b-sides that could have been album tracks.
I tell him that the Amnesiac b-sides are definite fan favourites and make perhaps the biggest mistake of the interview by pulling out a second list (the first one had the blackboard song titles, ok that went well), which had the titles of the Amnesiac songs and the b-sides. I wanted to know which of those tracks were finished along with Kid A already, and which were done at later, additional sessions. I should have known better by that point… Not much came out of that. The only valuable info is that the Amnesiac version of Morning Bell was actually recorded AFTER the Kid A one (Kid A is Copenhagen, Amnesiac is Batsford). Don’t worry, I didn’t torture him by going through it all, I quickly aborted that. I should have asked about Jonny not being allowed to play banjo or something like that instead. YES I KNOW IT WAS STUPID. No need to go on about it…
I ask who wrote Arpeggi, it was both Jonny and Thom, but I get the impression that most of it was Jonny. But definitely a collaborative effort between the two.
Then an almost vain attempt (but not quite) to get some info about the Stent sessions. Nothing spectacular or terribly unexpected, and not what I was hoping for. You can read it in transcript.
Quite unsuccessful was my attempt to talk about the HTTT demos. He only says that There There was his favourite. But he didn’t even know that it was released as a b-side on the 2+2=5 single! So I also aborted that. I sort of regret this whole section quite a bit…
I mentioned that I think many songs on HTTT have their roots in the Kid A period, and he sort of had a problem with that idea. Asking about specific songs he said that Myxomatosis, Sit Down Stand Up, We Suck Young Blood were not recorded during the Kid A sessions. But then he didn’t remember that The Gloaming and Backdrifts are based on recordings from the Kid A period, so I’m not sure if he’s very reliable there…
At any rate he made his point very clear that HTTT is not in any way a continuation of Kid A/Amnesiac, and especially not the third part of a 3 album series. I didn’t remind him that he himself said exactly that at the end of the HTTT tour, that so far their abums seem to have come in cycles of 3 each, and that Kid A/Amnesiac/HTTT would be one such group. I actually agree with that and wanted to ask about connections between Kid A/Amnesiac and HTTT, both lyrically and musically, but he seemed a bit unnerved and I decided to skip yet another topic.
It’s really not a very exciting part of the interview, all this. Some small but nice info at the end, though, when he says that Gagging Order comes from the HTTT rehearsals in spring 2002 and I Am A Wicked Child being recorded on tour in France (I guess on the Amnesiac tour, he didn’t say when exactly, and I doubt he would have been able to). So far there were very strong arguments that these two tracks are actually Kid A session recordings, but they’re not.

You might wonder, why is he typing up all this instead of just uploading it. See, this is the part of the interview that gave me a really bad feeling afterwards. The second half was a mistake on my behalf. I didn’t realize how inappropriate those questions were… not generally, but in that particular situation, that was my big mistake. And I don’t think it needs aural exposure. You’ll get a transcript. I’m glad it got better at the very end:

http://www.citizeninsane.eu/interviews/ed_08.mp3

Starts horrible with the way he says "Last question Michael" (you can hear how bloody exhausted he is), but it gets lighter talking about his song writing, solo efforts by Phil, Big Boots being a Bond song and things like that. I think I got quite a bit out of the "last question".
At the end he’s standing at the elevator waiting for it to come down and we briefly chat about the setlist for the next day (they didn’t play "Myxo", but well it was a great gig nonetheless!) and then we say bye… I walk out into the sunlight feeling like I’m sinking into the ground and I press "stop".

And that’s all. I did my best, so did Ed. Both of us weren’t quite prepared for the actual thing, even though I have thought a lot about it beforehand and he has done loads of interviews in his time. But I haven’t done interviews before and he was not prepared for the questions, and then he was also tired and exhausted…. still, we got a good amount of concrete information out of this. Shitloads compared to almost every other single interview that was done before.