HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY (5:56)
available on kid a
this also song featured in the documentary 'meeting people is easy' a.k.a. 'how to disappear completely and never be found'

notes:Premiered in Los Angeles, USA, 01-04-1998. Dedicated to Nigel Godrich and all the bootleggers. played with Thom on acoustic guitar, Jonny on the Rhodes keyboard. Played live the song is about seven minutes long and was then dedicated to Nigel Godrich and all the bootleggers. this song also featured in the documentary 'meeting people is easy'.

Thom: "That song is about the whole period of time that OK Computer was happening. We did the Glastonbury Festival and this thing in Ireland. Something snapped in me. I just said, “That’s it. I can’t take it anymore.” And more than a year later, we were still on the road. I hadn’t had time to address things. The lyrics came from something Michael Stipe said to me. I rang him and said, “I cannot cope with this.” And he said, “Pull the shutters down and keep saying, “I’m not here, this is not happening.”

"When Jonny did the strings on “How to Disappear Completely,” that was absolutely his thing. Nigel [co-producer Godrich] helped him, and that was it. The rest of that were not involved in that at all".

notes from ed's diary: phil is presently putting down drums on 'how to disappear' - we're doing a demo of the song to present the song to an 'orchestral fella'. we've kind of shirked away from strings in the past as they seem to have been recorded in the same manner for the last 30 years (ever since the beatles).(1-12-99)

more work on 'how to disappear'... after phil did his drums last night, jonny came up with an outrageous martenot part - multitracked it sounds like the string section from mars. jonny has this uncanny ability to bring in weird chords, that at first distract you but after a couple of listens completely make sense...it's just a matter of getting on his planet. brilliant. coz and i tied up our respective bits and it's sounding fairly complete. not bad for a demo. thom was immersed in protools/cubase land in the other studio. the song now has a really strong arrangement and the rhythm track is pumping (2-12-99)

so had what seemed like a pretty unfruitful day on 'how to disappear'.......try and get it away from that band thing with an acoustic guitar, which may have been alright when we were making the bends, but let's face it has been done to death by both us and every tom, dick and harry guitar band. went down a few cul-de-sacs.........all part of the process. today however has been a quite different affair. still on the same song. jonny found the one chord thing; it's to be played by the strings(to be recorded soon).....thom has this evening just done a wonderful vocal and the song is beginning to go another way. bad day, good day, good cop, bad cop (25-01-00)