Phil Selway on CBC

Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks to the psychotherapist Tamsin Embleton, editor of the book Touring and Mental Health, and Philip Selway, who contributed to it, on CBC's Commotion. Embleton came to the work after tour managing Anna Calvi on a tour supporting Grinderman, when a post-show dinner in Leipzig turned into a frank conversation about therapy with Nick Cave.

When Selway started touring, the rule was put up and shut up. He is glad to see someone like Arlo Parks able to say she is not in a good place and needs time, and thinks taking that care makes for a better artist and a fairly decent human being. Embleton describes a culture of silence on the road, where as long as nobody is a complete nightmare and the show goes on, everyone is judged to be doing their job, and what goes unsaid comes back as cliques and gossip.

Radiohead, Selway says, did not grow out of friendship at school so much as the five of them thinking they could be a good band, and the years since have made it something like a sibling bond. He and his wife have been together since before touring took over. On tours that kept him away 11 months of the year, they made sure to talk every day, even when skipping a couple of days was tempting, and he calls the marriage the most important element of his longevity in music.