The 1970 song Thom Yorke couldn’t live without: “I immediately fell in love”
Since meeting four like-minded music geeks at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire, Thom Yorke has helmed Radiohead through nearly four decades of unparalleled creative evolution.
After beginning with a grunge-derived sound at odds with the 1990s’ bustling Britpop scene, Yorke followed his nose into experimental electro styles, courtesy of Aphex Twin.
In a 2013 interview with Dazed, Yorke described the British electro-pioneer as one of his biggest influences. “He burns a heavy shadow,” he said. “Aphex opened up another world that didn’t involve my fucking electric guitar … I hated the Britpop thing and what was happening in America, but Aphex was totally beautiful, and he’s kind of my age too.”
Since Radiohead’s most electro-infused albums, Kid A and Amnesiac, Yorke has returned to his rock domain but kept strands of the modern influence with him. Before stumbling upon the likes of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Autechre, Yorke and his Radiohead colleagues were heavily inspired by Talking Heads, R.E.M. and Björk.
As their early sound might suggest, Radiohead were also informed by Neil Young, ‘The Godfather of Grunge’. However, Yorke wasn’t aware of the Canadian singer-songwriter until an exchange with the BBC in his teen years.
Young’s influence on Yorke extended far beyond vocal similarities or acoustic songwriting. What truly resonated with the Radiohead frontman was Young’s complete disregard for commercial expectations. Throughout his career, Young repeatedly swerved away from success whenever it threatened to become predictable, whether diving into abrasive, feedback-heavy rock with Crazy Horse or releasing starkly intimate acoustic records that challenged listeners rather than comforting them.
That philosophy became central to Radiohead’s own evolution. After achieving enormous mainstream success with albums like The Bends and OK Computer, the band could easily have continued refining the same emotionally charged guitar-rock formula.
Instead, Yorke and company deliberately fractured their sound on Kid A, alienating sections of their audience in pursuit of something more honest and creatively fulfilling. In that sense, Young’s fearless artistic restlessness became just as influential on Radiohead as Aphex Twin’s electronic experimentation.
As he revealed in a 2008 conversation with the BBC, Yorke recalled that, as a 16-year-old, he had sent some homemade demo recordings to the corporation hoping to gain some attention for his early songwriting exploits. “They said, ‘This guy sounds like Neil Young,'” Yorke remembered. “I was like, ‘Who is Neil Young?'”
The singer soon found himself in a record shop and thought he would see just how similar this Neil Young character was. He stumbled upon a copy of Young’s 1970 album After The Gold Rush.
“I immediately fell in love with his music,” Yorke continued. “He has that soft vibrato that nobody else has. More than that, it was his attitude toward the way he laid songs down. It’s always about laying down whatever is in your head at the time and staying completely true to that, no matter what it is.”
During the conversation, Yorke revealed that he and Young had once chatted over a few beers before a show at Bridge School Benefit. He proudly noted that Young permitted him to sing ‘After The Gold Rush’ while playing the piano it was originally recorded on.
When Yorke appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2019, the Young classic appeared among his selections. Listen to Thom Yorke’s wonderful cover of Neil Young’s ‘After the Goldrush’ below.
