Main Index Pablo Honey The Bends OK Computer Kid A Amnesiac Hail to the Thief The Eraser In Rainbows The King of Limbs Amok Tomorrow's Modern Boxes A Moon Shaped Pool Anima Thom Yorke Jonny Greenwood Ed O'Brien Colin Greenwood Philip Selway
The line "it comes to you begging you to stop" appears in a pdf file, titled 'mercy', taken from theeraser.net:



Transcript
The song was arranged for solo acoustic guitar while Thom was still working on the recording, and in this form it was played on its few live performances. This recording comes from the KCRW broadcast in late june 2006:
As part of the D&DA Global Student Awards 2007, Radiohead financed the creation of a finished promo for this song, with Thom giving a few instructions (under "Mandatory requirements" and "Considerations") as well. You can take a look at the briefs about the competition here:

"The Clock" Competition Paper
One song ('The Clock') began at his house, under the influence of an album of Arabian music, full of very quick, repeated guitar riffs. He made something similar, using tiny looped fragments that eventually became the ground for a gliding, droning song about losing control while pretending 'that you are still in charge'. But the piece took a manic detour when he tried to finish the lyrics by playing it on guitar.

"It sounded like this mad, Johnny Cash skiffle tune", he said, shaking his head. But another song, the bluesy 'Black Swan', actually gained from his handmade arrangement, which yielded some guitar bits that he and Godrich liked enough to include in the recorded version.
On arranging the songs for live performances:

Thom: "The real struggle was 'The Clock'. 'Cause I mean that's like.. you know, it turned into a skiffle tune. Which is kind of cool, I was into that. But I mean, on the record it's all cut up, sliced up little bits of guitar and things. So it was kind of a bit of a head masher to try and work out how to do it. But I got there in the end. I kind of like that there, 'cause you push yourself into playing the guitar in a different way. I mean, I would never ever play skiffle. Why would I play skiffle? But it sort of actually works, I think."
Q: "'The Clock' sounds closely related to 'I Might Be Wrong' from Amnesiac, for example."

Thom: "I can see why it's got that Kid A feel to it, yeah. But 'The Clock' was totally taken from this weird 'Arabian festival in the desert' record that Robert Plant did. There are a couple of tracks where these guitar players from Mali play these amazing riffs. So I copied their style and improvised for 10 minutes and then just randomly recorded bits until I captured something of what they were doing. It was all totally random. It was so wonderful discovering that the most fun I've ever had in the studio occurred when l was making no real effort whatsoever (laughs). It becomes a total laugh when you're not thinking about the process at all. Now I want to take that feeling back to us."
As his final solo performance in support of The Eraser Thom played 'The Clock' for Later... with Jools Holland on november 24th 2006:
In December 2006, a remix of 'The Clock' by Surgeon was made available by Thom temporarily as a free download on theeraser.net. A year later, on december 19th 2007, it was sold as a download before appearing on a series of three 12" vinyl remix EPs in january 2008. Later that year the Eraser remixes were also released on CD in Japan:

It took Thom three years following the release of The Eraser to put together a proper tour based on the album. Recruiting Nigel Godrich, Flea, Mauro Refosco and Joey Waronker to form the band, the group played a first set of shows in october 2009 and another in april 2010, initially under the name "?????", since Thom had not yet named the project "Atoms For Peace". The tour ended with a solitary gig in august 2010 in Japan. Each night, the main set would consist of the The Eraser played in its entirety. During this period, Thom also played the song in Cambridge at a Green Party benefit and at the 2010 Big Chill festival:
The song had its full band live debut on october 2nd 2009 at the Echoplex in Los Angeles at the first gig of Thom's then unnamed band, consisting of himself, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco: