Mojo prints Thom Yorke's 2008 interview on Neil Young

Thom Yorke's 2008 interview about Neil Young is in Mojo's November issue, which has Young on the cover, and went online in full on 5 October. Mark Cooper, then head of music on BBC television, filmed it in February 2008 for a documentary profile of Young. When the film, Don't Be Denied, kept to Young's direct collaborators, Yorke was cut, and only a fragment reached the BBC's web page.

In 2002 Yorke played the Bridge School Benefit, Young's charity concert in California. At an evening at Young's house the night before, he asked if he could play “After the Gold Rush”. The grand piano Young mostly writes on stood on a slant with a broken leg, and Young told him to play the song on the piano it was written on, his old upright. At the concert Young stood at the side of the stage while Yorke played it, the song that closed his first night there.

That was the most in awe I've ever been of anybody, really, I think. I was so nervous.

Thom Yorke¹

Yorke remembers Young watching almost everyone's set from the side of that stage, and once watched him play “Cortez the Killer” there with Pearl Jam as his band.

Yorke first heard of Young at 15 or 16, when a magazine he had sent a demo tape to said he sounded like him. He bought After the Gold Rush and identified with Young's voice straight away; he has this soft vibrato that nobody else does¹, he says. When Radiohead were starting to gig, Young's live album Weld was one of their big records.

All through what's happened with [Radiohead], I've always ended up falling back on a Neil Young record. It didn't really matter which one.

Thom Yorke¹