Thom Yorke on Neil Young and Making Art

If you’re interested in either Yorke or Young, then this is a must watch, all thirty minutes. But it’s still interesting, and at times riveting, even without that, for, as Thom Yorke talks about Neil Young, he's talking about what he values in art in general, in helpful ways. 

On artistic obstinacy:  “In order to survive and stay true to what you’re doing you have to be completely obstinate and you also have to be fiercely protective of whatever the force is that makes you write. It’s not something you can buy.  It’s something that’s fairly intimate and unexplainable.”

He’s also very good on the topic of being lost in the moment, where the whole becomes more than its parts:  “I once watched him [Neil Young] play ‘Cortez the Killer’ with the Pearl Jam band  . . . and there was probably the most sustained wind—I can’t think of another way of putting it—but this wind was coming off the stage as he was playing his solo and it just did not stop, it was just like this force of nature coming off the stage.  It was extraordinary, because if you sat down and analyzed or listened to the bits, you know, there was nothing sort of special necessarily in the elements, but something happens and it all comes together: boom. The idea is to be a channel of what is going on.  And that’s what you should be doing.”