Song · Hail to the Thief era (2003–04)
There There
Two drummers, and a mix that made Thom Yorke cry with relief.
Hail to the Thiefalbum- 2003released
- 5:23length
2000–02
can, and a lot of drums
Radiohead had it as far back as the Kid A sessions. What it became owes something to Can, the Pixies and Siouxsie and the Banshees: a song built on layered percussion that climbs towards one loud release. Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood both put down their guitars to drum on it.
On the opening night of the try-out run at the Coliseu dos Recreios in Lisbon on 22 July 2002 it led off eight new songs, with O'Brien and Jonny on two big tom-toms. Colin Greenwood told NME afterwards that the band had worried two drummers might be cheesy, and decided it was cool.
The full title is “There, There (The Boney King of Nowhere.)”, taken from Bagpuss, which Thom Yorke was watching with his young son. The words, he said, are “supposed to be comforting: ‘It's alright, you're just imagining it.’”
2002
the version they lost
They recorded it at Ocean Way in Los Angeles that September and hated what they got. Jonny's complaint was that a band playing together in a studio has none of the volume of a concert.
That just doesn't really work coming out of speakers in your front room… It just sounded a bit like we were trying to make a worthy ‘live band playing together’ recording.
jonny greenwood · parlophone interview cd, april 2003
Yorke thought the song was gone. They went home and cut it again in their own Oxfordshire studio, and when Nigel Godrich played him the mix, Yorke cried with relief.
But you've not been standing there with a hammer and trying to beat it out of the desk or your guitar, it's not necessary. It's just there one day.
thom yorke · parlophone interview cd, april 2003
A demo ended up as a B-side of “2 + 2 = 5”.
26 may 2003
the single and the video
It was the first single from Hail to the Thief, out in Britain on 26 May 2003, two weeks before the album, and went to number four there and to number one in Canada and Portugal.
Yorke wanted Oliver Postgate, who made Bagpuss, to do the video. Postgate was retired and said no, so the job went to Chris Hopewell, with a brief that pointed at the Brothers Grimm and the Czech animator Jan Švankmajer. Hopewell called his own result “fifties East European genre animation, overlaboured and naive”. It had its premiere on the Jumbotron in Times Square on 20 May, ran hourly on MTV2 that day, and won Best Art Direction at the VMAs. In 2020 Jonny named it the band's best video.
2000–2025
four drummers
The archive first has it in Oxford on 10 February 2000, three years before the record, and it has opened 57 shows since, both nights at Shepherd's Bush Empire in May 2003 among them. At Red Rocks that August O'Brien, Jonny and Phil Selway started it as a three-way drum part, and the rock walls threw it back at them before Colin and Yorke came in.
When the band came back after seven years away, at the Movistar Arena in Madrid on 4 November 2025, they brought a second drummer, Chris Vatalaro, and for “There There” in the encore Jonny and O'Brien each sat down at a kit of their own. Four men were drumming at once.
the video
The promo, directed by Chris Hopewell.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
the record(2)
on stage(10)
Live history
| Times played | 297 shows · 2 of them Thom Yorke solo shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Thursday 10 February 2000 · Oxford |
| Last played | Tuesday 16 December 2025 · Copenhagen |
| Opened the night | 57 times |
| Closed the night | 9 times |
| Longest absence | 7 years · back on Tuesday 4 November 2025 · Madrid |
First played live in 2000, 3 years before it was released.
Thom Yorke, solo 26 October 2002 Mountain View, 19 July 2009 Southwold
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 →
sources13
- “Radiohead Hail to the Thief” interview CD, Parlophone, 22 April 2003, for both pull quotes and the mix (as cited by Wikipedia, “There There (song)”).
- John Robinson, “Bagpuss, ex-lax, and the angriest thing we've ever written”, NME, 10 May 2003.
- Michael Odell, “Silence! Genius at work”, Q, July 2003.
- Craig McLean, “OK, no computers”, The Daily Telegraph, 16 May 2003.
- “Thom Yorke on Hail to the Thief”, Xfm London, 2 July 2003.
- Brad Osborn, Everything in its Right Place: Analyzing Radiohead, Oxford University Press.
- Johnny Davis, feature on the Lisbon shows, NME, 3 August 2002, for the tom-toms and Colin Greenwood on two drummers.
- The site's news stories “Radiohead open at Shepherd's Bush Empire with ‘There There’”, 24 May 2003, and “Radiohead end their club tour with Thom Yorke alone on ‘True Love Waits’”, 25 May 2003, for the two Shepherd's Bush nights.
- The site's news stories on the Ocean Way sessions, September 2002, for the month.
- “Radiohead's ‘There There’ enters the UK chart at number four”, the site's news story of 1 June 2003, for the release date and chart place.
- Robin A. Rothman, report from Red Rocks, Rolling Stone, 27 August 2003, and the site's news story on the night, for the three-way drum part.
- Angie Martoccio, review of the Madrid opening night, Rolling Stone, 4 November 2025, and the site's news story on the night, for the four drummers.
- Performance dates from this site's own setlist archive.