Phil Selway on The John Fugelsang Podcast

Philip Selway talks to John Fugelsang about Strange Dance, for SiriusXM and The John Fugelsang Podcast.

The record began as a fantasy in which Carole King made an album with Daphne Oram, one of Britain's electronic pioneers, and invited him to drum on it. In practice he drummed for a day, it was not happening, and he sent himself packing. Valentina Magaletti built the percussion instead, in six or seven takes a song. The producer, Marta Salogni, kept tape machines running with long loops of his guitar round the studio. Radiohead had planned 2020 off before the pandemic, so lockdown barely changed his year, except that all the children moved back home.

He came to Nick Drake late, in the mid-90s, and asked to cover “Fly” for a tribute album because of a home demo with birdsong in the background; the yes brought a sense of responsibility with it. He puts three things in one year: starting with On a Friday, the band that became Radiohead, going to Liverpool for his degree and meeting his future wife, and first volunteering for the Samaritans, which gave him “some sanity in a very mad period” once Radiohead took off.

Fugelsang tells him OK Computer was the only record Paul McCartney talked about backstage at a TV special in 1997, which Selway had never heard. R.E.M. were mentors on the Bends tour. He spent the “Pyramid Song” session feeling useless until he and Thom Yorke played it over and over and a pattern came from following Yorke's pushes and pulls. “Let Down” is a very simple part and a guarded performance, and one of his favourite Radiohead tracks, though the band probably disagree. Their last show was in Philadelphia in 2018, and he is not sure the songs are still in his muscle memory.