Song · Live covers
After the Gold Rush
Thom Yorke used it, on more than one tour, as the way into “Everything in Its Right Place”.
1970
silver spaceships
Neil Young wrote it for the album of the same name. In his 2012 autobiography he traced it to an unproduced screenplay by Dean Stockwell and Herb Bermann in which California is destroyed by a flood, though Dolly Parton, who recorded it with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, has said Young himself does not know what it is about.
Its three verses move forward in time, from a medieval scene to the singer lying in a burned-out basement to chosen people leaving the Earth in silver spaceships. Young has updated the line about Mother Nature on the run in concert, and for years now she has been on the run in the 21st century.
2002
the bridge school
Thom Yorke played two solo sets at the Bridge School Benefit, the concert Neil and Pegi Young held each year for the school, at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View in October 2002. He closed the first of them, on 26 October, with this, the only Young song he sang that weekend. Four years later the recording turned up on The Bridge School Collection, Vol. 1, a collection of live tracks from the benefits that iTunes put out in November 2006, with the money going to the school.
2003
into the right place
The band played it in a session broadcast from Electric Lady Studios in New York on 4 June 2003. That summer Yorke made it the way into “Everything in Its Right Place”, singing Young's opening lines first, at the Beacon Theatre in New York on 5 June, the Arènes de Nîmes on 14 July and the UMB Bank Pavilion outside St Louis on 24 August.
He was still doing it at Coachella in April 2012, late in the band's headline set, and OC Weekly says he sang it unaccompanied.
the video
Their Neil Young cover.· formengrwatch on youtube →
the record(2)
on stage(1)
Live history
| Times played | 4 shows · 1 of them Thom Yorke solo show |
|---|---|
| Live debut | by Thom Yorke, solo, Saturday 26 October 2002 · Mountain View |
| Last played | Sunday 24 August 2003 · Maryland Heights |
Thom Yorke, solo 26 October 2002 Mountain View
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. Thom Yorke’s solo nights are counted and marked as his; the openers, closers, longest absence and chart are Radiohead’s own. All setlist stats →
sources5
- Neil Young, Waging Heavy Peace, 2012.
- Nick Hasted, “The story behind the song: Neil Young, ‘After the Gold Rush’”, Louder, 12 November 2016.
- NME, “Thom Yorke covers Neil Young for charity”, 5 December 2006, for the Bridge School set and the iTunes release.
- “Coachella: Radiohead's Weekend 1 Set, No Alarms and No Surprises”, OC Weekly, 15 April 2012, and Michael Bonner, Uncut, 15 April 2012, for Coachella.
- Performance dates from this site's own setlist archive: setlist.fm, and the 2003 site's hand logs for the nights it led into “Everything in Its Right Place”.