Song · In Rainbows era (2007–09)
Faust Arp
Thom Yorke once forgot its words on stage, laughed, and slid into a Neil Young song instead.
In Rainbowsalbum- 2007released
- 2:09length
2007
pages and pages
Thom Yorke carries notebooks everywhere. Jonny Greenwood told Mojo he is always filling them, and Yorke admitted to the same magazine that about 95 per cent of what goes into them is never used. Talking to Mark Paytress about how he writes, he brought up Neil Young, who says he never goes back to a lyric because it only gets worse, and said that frightened him. This song went the other way, page after page of lines until the good ones stuck.
Faust Arp is the exact opposite of that, pages and pages
thom yorke · mojo, february 2008
What survived the notebooks sits on fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a string arrangement by Greenwood. Mark Pytlik in Pitchfork found the strings syrupy and heard the Beatles' sweetest two-minute interludes in them. David Ehrlich, in Rolling Stone, thought the 130-second song too often written off as filler between “All I Need” and “Reckoner”; he heard taxidermy and resentment in the words, and gave Greenwood's guitar the credit for letting Yorke get away with them.
2007–10
two acoustic guitars
It was first heard in the webcasts the band put out from Oxford in November 2007, a month after In Rainbows came out, played out of doors on top of a hill. On tour it became a duet for Yorke and Jonny on two acoustic guitars, with the rest of the band off stage, and 47 of its 53 nights are in 2008.
At White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, Washington, on 20 August 2008 Yorke forgot the words, laughed, and slid into Neil Young's “Tell Me Why” instead. He and Greenwood could not get through that either, and went back and played “Faust Arp” properly. Five nights later, at the second of two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, “Tell Me Why” came in the same place, straight after the duet, and this time they played it to the end.
The duo opened the night with it at the Music Box at the Fonda in Los Angeles on 24 January 2010, a benefit for Haiti, and brought it out again at the Sferisterio in Macerata on 20 August 2017, for the towns of Le Marche hit by the earthquakes.
the title
faust, not goethe
Radiohead named it for Faust, the German band behind The Faust Tapes and Faust IV. At the Daydream festival in Barcelona on 12 June 2008 Faust had played the festival that afternoon, and Yorke dedicated the song to them, saying he thought they would like it. Alexis Petridis, interviewing Faust for the Guardian in 2021, counted Radiohead among their admirers and the title as the tribute.
The other Faust got the attention in 2007. Readers of the Observer Music Monthly sent in the theory that In Rainbows was built on Goethe, pointing at the Mephistopheles line in “Videotape”. Yorke told Craig McLean he vaguely knew the story, had not taken it off the shelf and would have to look it up.
that sounds suitably pretentious. We live in Oxford, after all.
thom yorke · observer music monthly, 9 december 2007
the video
The official promo, from Scotch Mist.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(7)
Live history
| Times played | 53 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Monday 17 December 2007 · Oxford |
| Last played | Sunday 24 January 2010 · Los Angeles |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
sources12
- Mark Paytress, “Chasing Rainbows”, Mojo, February 2008, for the notebooks, Neil Young and Greenwood's strings.
- Mark Pytlik, “Radiohead: In Rainbows”, Pitchfork, 15 October 2007.
- David Ehrlich, “Radiohead: 20 Insanely Great Songs Only Hardcore Fans Know”, Rolling Stone.
- NME, “Radiohead parody Brad Pitt movie in ‘Thumbs Down’ webcast”, and Vulture, “Radiohead Angle for YouTube Fame With Their New Viral Hit ‘Head in a Box’”, November 2007, for the hilltop.
- Spin, report and photographs from São Paulo, March 2009, for the duo on two acoustic guitars.
- Uncut, “Watch Radiohead Cover Classic Neil Young Song”, 27 August 2008, and Amrit Singh, Stereogum, 26 August 2008, for Auburn and the Hollywood Bowl.
- Clash, “Radiohead Hit Los Angeles”, 25 January 2010, and Spin, “Radiohead Perform Haiti Benefit in L.A.”, 25 January 2010, for the Fonda.
- Rolling Stone Italia, report on the Sferisterio recital, 21 August 2017, for Macerata.
- Europa Press, “Radiohead, colorista e intimo, presenta ‘In Rainbows’ en Barcelona”, June 2008, for the dedication to Faust.
- Alexis Petridis, “Krautrock legends Faust: ‘We were naked and stoned a lot – and we ate dog food’”, The Guardian, 18 October 2021, for the tribute in the title.
- Craig McLean, Observer Music Monthly, 9 December 2007, for the Goethe theory.
- The site's live archive, for the nights.