Philip Selway backs a fund for mental-health support on small tours

Philip Selway is one of the founding funders of the Pay It Forward Fund, launched on 8 September by the Music Industry Therapist Collective (MITC), a group of therapists who specialise in the music industry. The fund pays for mental-health support for musicians and crew on small and mid-scale tours. In a piece told to Dave Simpson for The Guardian today, Selway explains why, and starts with the night in 1993 when his drumming came apart.

At one show on that year's US tour, Radiohead were opening for Tears for Fears on a bill with another band whose drummer was Blondie's Clem Burke. Clem was my absolute drummer hero but I just hit peak overwhelm, and my drumming went off a cliff.⁶ Each of his limbs seemed to move at its own speed, and pressing the kick drum was like shoving at a heavy door.

It was the band's second long tour of 1993. They had been signed after five or six years of playing almost nowhere but Oxford, and spent 1992 driving a van between small venues. Selway had withdrawn into himself and felt far from home, an impostor in America, and the anxiety came out in his drumming, where for other people it comes out as drink or drugs. He could talk to his wife only on very expensive phone calls. By the end of the tour it showed, and afterwards one of Radiohead's managers asked him for a chat and raised it gently, which he calls invaluable. He watched how other bands coped, and James, and later R.E.M., both of whom Radiohead supported, became mentors of a kind.

On their European tour last autumn, Radiohead's touring party had confidential access to MITC's therapists: introductory sessions during rehearsals and the production build, then drop-in therapy for anyone on the tour. Even though we're a cohesive, well-resourced and very experienced touring party, we knew that you can still never completely guard against the trip hazards of touring.¹ He says nothing like it exists for bands in the small venues where Radiohead began. There is no margin there, and the band load the gear and drive themselves. I'd have really appreciated something like the Pay It Forward Fund back in Radiohead's early days, so that's the kind of space I hope it can provide.⁶

The fund raised £272,000 at launch, enough for 50 touring teams a year over a three-year pilot, each getting ten confidential online check-ins with a qualified practitioner, open to anyone on the tour.

Selway joined the Samaritans as a student and was a listening volunteer for 15 years before becoming an ambassador. Samaritans volunteers were at each of Radiohead's four nights at the O2 last November. On Bluesky yesterday, around World Suicide Prevention Day, he marked 40 years since he first trained as a listening volunteer. He gave the Samaritans number, 116 123, and wrote that suicidal thoughts can be interrupted and that a small act of care can save a life.