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13:26 · 2,192 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- Hail to the Thief completed a six-album contract with EMI, so after that tour the band had no obligation to make anything ever again.
▶ 00:00:41
- They were exhausted rather than inspired, sleep-deprived and ill by the last leg of the tour, and everyone scattered afterwards.
▶ 00:01:09
- The context had changed underneath them. They had started as teenagers and were now in their thirties with young children, and the band was no longer the centre of their lives.
▶ 00:01:27
- They came close to splitting during the drift, kept going because the new songs had potential, and identified two blockers: no label meant no distributor and no deadline, and they had no producer.
▶ 00:02:07
- They tried Spike Stent, known for U2 and Oasis, in December 2005, it did not help, and they parted ways.
▶ 00:02:45
- Thom Yorke was bored of being in Radiohead, and his solo record was something he felt he had to make to break the rut, which it did by restoring his nerve.
▶ 00:03:07
- The fix was touring the half-finished songs through the 2006 festival season, where nobody was self-conscious because they were not in a studio.
▶ 00:03:25
- Nude had been attempted on tape for close to a decade before these sessions finally captured it.
▶ 00:04:48
- The pay-what-you-want release came from their managers, after the band had turned down multi-million dollar major label offers, and it was announced with only ten days' notice.
▶ 00:04:48
- The results: a survey found over 60 percent paid nothing while the rest averaged about six dollars, and Yorke said by December that digital sales had already beaten the digital sales of every previous Radiohead album combined.
▶ 00:10:09