4 Minute Warning

four minutes

The four-minute warning was the British public alert system for incoming nuclear attack: the time you were told you would have. The phrase had been in the band's world since the 1997 artwork Yorke made with Stanley Donwood around the “Karma Police” single, and the song itself had been circling since the Kid A sessions.

the neil young song

Ed O'Brien's online diary caught it first as a rehearsal-room joke: three-part harmonies on something they called “neil young #9”, with Philip Selway laughing too hard to finish because he felt like the drummer from the Eagles. Six months later it had a name.

did an interesting band version of bombers which thom has attached to what i used to call the neil young song… we may play it some time later this evening.

ed o'brien · online diary, 10–19 january 2000

The 2003 site kept a page for it as “Bombers”, a song with no recording and no words, seven years before it came out under this title.

the ending

They premiered it in Copenhagen in May 2006 and recorded it for the second disc of In Rainbows, where it closes the record: a droning ambient introduction and then something almost peaceful, sung by people who can see what is coming and have stopped running. Yorke liked its plainness.