Phil Selway looks back on The Bends as it turns twenty

The Bends came out in Britain on Parlophone 20 years ago today, on 13 March 1995. Phil Selway, Radiohead's drummer, has been looking back on how it was made, in a Q&A with Chris DeVille for Stereogum.

The sessions began at RAK Studios in London early in 1994, with John Leckie producing; the band had chosen him partly for his work on the Stone Roses' album. Selway calls those first sessions a little fraught, with Leckie guiding them through. Nigel Godrich was an in-house engineer there, and one weekend, with Leckie away, someone suggested the band try some songs with him. “Black Star” came out of it, and Godrich is credited as its producer with the band. Twenty years on, he is still their producer.

The band then took the new songs on the road, to New Zealand, Australia and the European festivals. Back in the studio, at the Manor in Oxfordshire, songs such as “Bones” and “Bulletproof... I Wish I Was” found their feel, and recording ended at Abbey Road in November 1994. It felt long at the time, Selway says, but it was actually probably about four months of recording, which is not really that much actually².

The vocal at the heart of “Fake Plastic Trees” came on the evening Thom Yorke went out to see Jeff Buckley play. Yorke came back to the studio and sang it. It was Yorke, too, who suggested Stanley Donwood, whom he had studied art with, for the sleeve.

EMI grew worried that Leckie's mixing at Abbey Road was taking too long and brought in Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie, who had produced Pablo Honey. Nine of the album's 12 tracks are their mixes; Leckie's survive on “My Iron Lung”, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and part of the title track.

“Creep” did the band a lot of favours with the record company, Selway says, but the new songs came out of leaving behind material they had played for years. In America, where Capitol put the album out on 4 April 1995, it took a year to reach its Billboard 200 peak of number 88. Selway credits the R.E.M. support tour for a much wider audience, and the videos for “Just”, “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Street Spirit” for the slow build. I don't think we had any idea that it would be received as it was.²