Phil Selway tells Triple J he hates the drum machine, then takes it back

Triple J, Australia's national youth station, broadcast Radiohead's Glastonbury set at 5pm on Friday 24 October along with an interview Phil Selway recorded for the programme, and has put the interview up on its site as an mp3.

Asked how a drummer feels about the drum machine, Selway says he hates it, twice, then laughs that this is the wrong answer. What Radiohead use is Jonny Greenwood's modular analogue system, run from a sequencer, and playing with it is like having a second drummer, which leaves him free to do more around it.

He says the band worked through things they had left alone during Kid A and Amnesiac, came to Hail to the Thief in a much better state of mind, and were excited again by the sound of the five of them playing in a room. For him it was the first of their records that was enjoyable to make in that way, and he picks out Thom Yorke's singing on it as warm and open.

Stanley Donwood works in a room next to the studio while they record, so the artwork and the music grow up together. Yorke, who was at art college with him, is the one who works with Donwood; the rest of the band mostly tell him it's amazing and to carry on.

Radiohead had the same Glastonbury slot in 1997, in rain, floods and technical trouble, and it became one of their defining nights. Selway wondered whether this year would look pale beside it, but it was a different thing altogether, in beautiful weather at a festival he found in a very loving mood, and he hopes their set suited it better.

Bigger venues were a long-held fear, for the intimacy they might cost, but the sound crew and the light show have made rooms with notoriously bad sound work. After the American dates people told the band Madison Square Garden felt like a club show, or maybe, he says, everyone just likes telling them what they want to hear at the after-show party.

Radiohead come back to Australia in April, their first visit since the start of 1998. The band have come a long way since then and smile these days, Selway says, and he jokes that they could stage a two-day Radiohead festival in one venue.

Radiohead’s Glastonbury 2003 set· openboxwatch on youtube →