Philip Selway says Radiohead played seven or eight gigs before signing

Radiohead had played only a handful of shows when they signed their deal, Philip Selway has told Niamh Robinson of Dirty Sunbeams. By the time we signed, which was at the end of 1991, I think we'd played a total of about seven, maybe eight shows. That was over the course of six years.¹ He had never sat at a full drum kit before his first gig and decided he could manage it; music, he says, gave him a bit more confidence. Oxford had plenty of bands then, but not so many that it felt crowded, and they seemed to be working towards the same thing.

They talked before his show at Halifax Minster last month, on Friday 18 October, part of the Halifax Town Festival. According to the review in Even the Stars, Selway opened the night with a half-hour solo set on piano and guitar, from “The Heart of It All” to “There'll Be Better Days”, both from his 2023 album Strange Dance, and joked that his drum kit, already on stage, would be jealous. He then played it with the headliners, Lanterns on the Lake, the band he drummed for on their 2023 album Versions of Us.

Developing artists had far more support when Radiohead signed, Selway thinks. He has worked with the Music Venue Trust, the charity for grassroots venues, and praises the Grayston Unity, a small Halifax venue he played on an earlier visit. The community of those venues is incredibly important.¹