Phil Selway recalls drumming on a Smiths song with Johnny Marr

The first time Phil Selway played music outside Radiohead was in April 2001, when Neil Finn gathered musicians in Auckland for the first 7 Worlds Collide. Ed O'Brien was going, and Selway went too, and found himself drumming on “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” with Johnny Marr, who he believes was playing Smiths songs again for the first time. At the second 7 Worlds Collide, at the end of 2008, Finn heard Selway's songs and told him to go and record them. That, he says, gave him the confidence to make his first album, Familial.

Chris DeVille spoke to him by video from his London home last month for “We've Got A File On You”, Stereogum's series on what musicians do away from their main bands, a couple of weeks after Strange Dance came out on Bella Union. Selway meant to drum on his third album himself. A day and a half into the sessions it was not working: he had spent his time getting the songs ready rather than playing. Marta Salogni, who produced and mixed the record, suggested Valentina Magaletti, and only bits of his own drumming survive. The title song is the oldest thing on it, a guitar piece he wrote about 20 years ago and put away, which turned into a piano ballad in the sessions.

Selway's life outside the band goes back to 1986, the year he properly joined On a Friday. At the start of his degree in Liverpool he picked up a Samaritans leaflet and trained as a listening volunteer. He is an ambassador for the charity now, and its volunteers came to each of his Independent Venue Week shows the week before the interview.

He saw The Smile for the first time about a year ago, at the London shows they streamed, and loved it. Tom Skinner is an incredible drummer, he says, and with Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood in it there are bound to be things he recognises, but the band has a life of its own. Radiohead still very much exist, and get together quite often to talk about what they might do next (he said much the same in January); The Smile are not holding anything up.

What Radiohead does is very much the pole that's holding up the umbrella, but all these other projects come underneath it as well.

Philip Selway¹