Phil Selway on BBC 6 Music

Phil Selway, completing Matt Everitt's First Time interviews with all five members of Radiohead on 6 Music, confirms the story that at the band's first rehearsal, early in 1986, Thom Yorke turned to him and said, “can't you play any faster”. More than 30 years on, it still rankles.

His first musical memory is “Spanish Flea”, at two or three. At eight he went out for an Elvis Presley record, couldn't afford it and came home with an early Beatles record made with Tony Sheridan. His first album was U2's Boy, first heard drifting down from one of his sisters' rooms; he wore it out and had to buy a second copy. His first gig was Altered Images at Oxford Polytechnic in 1982, and from 14 a snare drum and a wicker chair standing in for a cymbal were his kit, until a full one at 16. Stephen Morris of Joy Division and New Order is the drummer he aims at, for “the ability to be metronomic and to be precise but also feel human at the same time”.

The Bends came in two halves. The first session, at RAK, left them unsure of themselves, though “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Planet Telex” came out of it; after a tour they went to the Manor with their confidence back. Going back into the OK Computer archive for the reissue reminded him how prolific that year was. “Lift”, “Man of War” and “I Promise” did not feel right for the record, though plenty of people expected them to be singles. As for the story that Yorke loaded the guitars and drums into a van before Kid A, saying they would not need them, “possibly it took us a little while to all get on the same page about it”.

Every record ends in the same row, over the running order, when the arguments everyone has been sitting on finally come out. He began writing songs when he started drumming, came back to it in his mid-30s and made his first solo record as 40 approached; stepping a few feet forward from the kit was immense. What keeps five quite different people together, he thinks, is that “we're not all doppelgangers”.