‘That was the record after OK Computer, yes* – I hate jewel cases, as I’ve said, and I took one to bits and was looking at it and I realised there was this tiny gap and thought, “You could put something in there …”
They had to hand-pack them, apparently – it couldn’t be done by a machine. So I think that annoyed the record label … again.
That was really tough, that record; really tough for everyone. It was forced out, really.’
You took a lot of people with you, though, with Kid A and what followed.
‘Not a purposeful thing.’
What do you remember of that time?
‘The time? Um, I kind of … I don’t really remember it in the same way I remember childhood or something. I think it was over the course of about two years but In Rainbows was about two years and that was bliss compared to that.
I was not very happy, I don’t think.
OK Computer had been so successful, everything a band could want – number one record, good reviews, lots of sales, blahdy blah … I think they were worried about turning into U2 or something. You know, doing another OK Computer and turning into a huge, Simple Minds-esque stadium rock band – the weight of success hung extremely heavy.’
For you as well? Did you feel that?
‘Um, no. No, because I was even more anonymous then than I am now but … (thinks for a minute) I really can’t remember it too well – it was just fucking hard.
(Brightening) I’m very proud of it. In fact, it’s difficult to choose my favourite but I think, because it was such hard work, I think that was a really good one – and I really liked the music as well, that was when I really connected with them, musically, although that started with OK Computer.’
What was it about OK Computer?
‘I remember Thom screaming in an outhouse … they were recording out in this stately home, the first stately home of many, and he was screaming in a shed in the middle of nowhere with a mic and a line running all the way from that little shed, all the way into this impromptu recording studio; I thought, “That’s it.”’
Do you work with a sense of ‘I need to make an album cover’?
‘No, I don’t really. With all the albums I’ve done, the cover has been the very last thing – usually, almost a snap decision. The cover for Hail to the Thief was a big painting, a metre and a half square, and it was hanging up in the studio and it was not even going to be a part of the record artwork. It was the first one I did in that style and size and, because it hadn’t got words from the record on it, it was sort of outside of it all.
We were just sitting down and saying, “Which one should we put on the cover?”
“Why don’t we use that one?”
And suddenly it was obvious that it was the cover. The same with Kid A. The night before we had to decide I did loads and loads of printouts and stuck them round the kitchen with tape. There were loads of different titles as well. Loads of different titles. And we had them all up. Stuck onto all the cupboards in the kitchen. “Okay, there’s a cover in the kitchen somewhere, you’ve gotta find it.” (Laughs)
And luckily they chose that one and, I mean, this is my memory, but I think partly the title was because it looked so brilliant in that typeface – BD Plakatbau.
We had other titles with different typefaces.’
You seem to strive to avoid a recognisable style with your work.
‘Yes, I wouldn’t want to do the same thing twice anyway. I think that would be boring.
Someone like Vaughan Oliver, who did all the sleeves for 4AD* – Cocteau Twins, Pixies – and they were all different but they were all his, and I’ve always wanted to work in a way where you couldn’t tell it was the same person doing it.
I had a fantastic compliment with In Rainbows when someone said, “Oh, did you do that?” Which was great! It’s so totally unlike what I’ve done before; all abstract … and lovely in its way. Pretty. I became very interested in velocity – ink and velocity, paint and velocity and what happens when you throw or squirt pigment at a surface. I was squirting stuff out of needles and I found them quite frightening to use, needles, they’re very spiky … and this was a direct response to the music after that strict architectural drawing, and what happened was that I was working in this decaying stately home and I knocked over a candle and it poured a load of molten wax onto a piece of paper and I was really taken with this, and it was at the same time I was working with these needles so I began to work with these ideas of spurting and dripping and melting which seemed to fit very much, for me, with what the music was. I found that record an extremely sexual record, very sensual.’
They’d been threatening it for years.
‘Exactly. (Deadpan) It’s the long-awaited happy album.’
It was pretty chipper.
‘Yeah! Molten wax, squirting stuff out of needles, spattering …’
It’s all there, for goodness sake! It’s all there!
‘There it is!’ (Laughter)
So is the new thing always the most exciting thing?
‘Yes. To do the same thing you’ve done before … why would you do it again?
There’s no point in repeating yourself. I mean, in a way, what I’ve been doing recently with Hartmann the Anarchist* is repeating myself. I’ve done that, but I haven’t illustrated a book before and I love a bit of lino, I do. I love the physicality of carving it out, but I don’t want to do the same artwork I’ve done before … it’s easy to draw the same picture you’ve drawn before.
If I tried to draw an OK Computer-style picture now it would be really easy; and I could do it better than before, you know, “better” in inverted commas but … it’s horrible to look back on stuff. It gets easier after a while, when it becomes history.’
The recent past isn’t any good?
‘No. There’s a difference between memory and history, isn’t there – the difference between, “Oh yeah, I was just doing that a little while ago, I remember that … oh God!” and when it becomes history and you can look at it in a more even way. I can look back at most of my stuff when it’s got into its history phase and quite like it. It’s alright … but maybe that’s to do with working in this periodic way with capsules and projects because of the Radiohead thing. “Here’s the record – Phoosh!” It’s clearly delineated between one record and the next.’
Do you think you’d work like that if you didn’t work with the band?
‘No idea. I’ve been working with them since I was twenty … four? And I’m forty now … but, you know, I’ll still wake up at night and think, “I should be doing this” or “I should be doing that” or “What can I do to make that better?” I don’t like it. I’d rather not have that happen.
I always feel envious of people who have a job and when they get home they don’t think about their job any more, but maybe that doesn’t exist. I always felt envious when I was cycling back from college, seeing people in their cars driving back to their homes on a housing estate somewhere – driving their car which looks the same as everyone else’s car, parking it in front of a house that looks like everyone else’s house but somehow they know it’s theirs … they’d park their car and they’d open the door and they’d close the door of their car, “Ker-chumph”, and open the door of their house, “Kru-ch-ch”, and in they’d go in and that would be it … but I’ve always sort of known that …’
Not for you?
‘Well,