"The people I saw that night were just like demons from another planet," says Yorke, now safely ensconced in a New York hotel. "Everyone was trying to get something out of me. I felt like my own self was collapsing in the presence of it, but I also felt completely, utterly part of it, like it was all going to come crashing down any minute."

That night inspired "Paranoid Android," a song that sums up OK Computer's claustrophobic blend of melancholic beauty and nerve-rattling aggression. Surging through ethereal acoustic passages and punkish, guitar-mauled explosions, the song ends with a choir that seems a plea for heavenly forgiveness.

"It's about being exposed to God, I dunno," says Yorke. "It was that one night, really. We'd been rehearsing the song for months, but the lyrics came to me at five o'clock that morning. I was trying to sleep when I literally heard these voices that wouldn't leave me alone. They were the voices of the people I'd heard in the bar. It turned out to be a notorious, coke-fiend place. But I didn't know that. Basically it's just about chaos, chaos, utter fucking chaos."

Accompanied by mostly silent guitarist Jonny Greenwood--a gaunt figure who often plays in a cast to stabilize his arm--Yorke sits patiently, but sometimes acts like nervous little boy. Covering his head with his hands or pulling his sweater up to hide his face, Yorke talks (and writes) in disguise. Unsure of the American press machine, he remains guarded while alluding to fears of travel, emotional release and self-immolation--core themes of OK Computer.

"I didn't want to deal with personal stuff this time," he explains. "It seemed really offensive for some middle-class white boy to talk about how miserable his personal life is. And I was a different person than the guy who got really drunk on the back of the bus and wrote the lyrics to The Bends. [So] if this sounds despondent, it's not me. I'm just absorbing what was around me."

When the Generation X, slacker anthem "Creep" rocketed the band to fame in the early '90s, Radiohead were viewed as one-hit wonders attaching themselves to the American penchant for self-loathing. So it was no surprise when The Bends met with early disinterest. But with cathartic, intimate songs like "High And Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees" (and a Radiohead spot opening for R.E.M.), the album went gold worldwide and landed on most critics' year-end lists. Still, all was not well in the Radiohead camp.

"Our little microcosm blew to smithereens," recalls Yorke. "We made a record we thought was okay; as time went on it got its own momentum and things became more exciting. Touring with R.E.M. was a mind-blowing experience. I was just watching it all happen, just lost in space hurtling around in the energy of it sometimes, then being utterly terrified at other times. Nothing was in our control. All the stuff in 'Paranoid Android' terrified me. The voices and the peoples' faces changing shape. And ambition. That's in my head, this feeling that it's all going to come absolutely crashing down."

Too diverse to tie into a single concept, save Yorke's emotional rollercoaster ride, OK Computer touches upon everything from UFOs and aliens ("Subterranean Homesick Alien") to sobering allusions to suicide ("Climbing Up The Walls"). Lest anyone think Radiohead lack a sense of humor, OK Computer offers "Fitter, Happier," in which a computer recites a litany of desirable personality traits ("still cries at a good film, still kisses with saliva"), the Kinks-like "Karma Police" and the sweeping "No Surprises," which Yorke insists is a "fucked-up nursery rhyme. A desperate bid to try and get back to normalcy and failing miserably. It stems from my unhealthy obsession of what to do with plastic boxes and plastic bottles. You can't throw them all away. Then I got into landfills and general household things. I find landfills really curious. All this stuff is getting buried, the debris of our lives. It doesn't rot, it just stays there. That's how we deal, that's how I deal with stuff, I bury it."

And while "Paranoid Android" ponders alien isolation, "Subterranean Homesick Alien" actually longs for extraterrestrial contact, describing aliens "who makes home movies for the folks back home" over a ringing scape of Pink Floyd-like production. The song finds Yorke daydreaming, leaving his troubles behind as he floats through the galaxy in an alien craft. "I'm like most people; I'd love to be abducted," says Yorke. "Then they'd have something for the rest of their lives. It's the ultimate madness. So many people go loopy when they're abducted, whether you believe it or not. But if you take away the word 'alien' and replace it with the word 'ghost,' it becomes less hysterical. Everyone believes in ghosts. Surely that is more significant than little green men, isn't it?"

But as with much of the album, concerns soon return to the feeling of powerlessness many feel in an age dominated by computers, global conglomerates and media-induced shallowness. "Exit Music" is a suicide tale, "Let Down" tells of "disappointed people...crushed like a bug on the ground," while "Airbag" seems to describe an alien crash-landing to earth. "To actually start singing about aliens is a very charged image," says Yorke, pausing to stare out the window into Manhattan rush hour traffic. "For me, all the crap TV shows, like X-Files, are symptomatic of people trying to find angels. The crash thing is me obsessing about the idea that when we get in a car or a plane we don't know if we're going to get out again. You're constantly aware of your own death, man. [laughs] It represents the emotional, psychological limbo that we're in all the time. You get in a car thinking you're safe, yet you're this far away from hurtling around a corner and having a juggernaut slam into you."

			"Paranoid Android"
			"Subterranean Homesick Alien"
			"Exit Music (For A Film)"

Recorded in a renovated apple-shed called Canned Applause, Radiohead--including Phil Selway (drums), Ed O'Brien (guitar) and Colin Greenwood (bass)--experimented with classic tape-looping techniques to create the album's ominous collection of whirs and buzzes, often spinning tape reels around the studio rather than use trendy samplers. "Tape loops sound better cause they're more elastic," spouts up Jonny, who is responsible for much of the album's sonic delirium. "The Bee Gees used to do all their dance tracks by actually measuring every drum beat so it was exactly the right length. Then they'd make a loop. That's why it sounds so good. That was our guide." The band also used an ancient Mellotron for its eerie choirs and dreamily oceanic rumbles, preferring organic sources to computer-controlled sterility.

Self-sufficiency is a Radiohead trademark, reflecting their stubborn, rebellious attitude towards the powers-that-be, those shadowy entities that slowly slime their way into our everyday lives, causing an impotent miasma in the masses. "I think people are less aware that their voice can actually count for anything now," says Yorke. "I've grown up with my friends believing that we could never genuinely change anything. That's the total opposite of the '60s. There's not a chance we can change a thing. It's all over. It's in the hands of people who own your credit rating and all the computer data."

So with its cynical stabs and alien episodes, is OK Computer ultimately an uplifting work?