Philip Selway has an urgent message for some friends across the water. “This is going out in The Irish Times. If Bono, The Edge or Adam are reading – I know all Larry’s parts.”
He’s joking – we think – about U2′s drumming woes, which will see Larry Mullen jnr skipping the group’s recently announced residency in Las Vegas. Mullen is due to undergo back surgery. Selway, who has tended the drum kit with Radiohead since Britain’s moodiest art-rockers went as On a Friday and rehearsed during their lunch break at school, sends his best.
“Larry Mullen has such a distinctive musical voice. He’s been one of my go-to drummers,” says Selway (55). “That puts a real hallmark on a band. It’s the same with Bill Berry [in REM], Charlie Watts, Ringo... Tony Allen with Fela Kuti. They all bring so much to it.”
He pauses, to reflect: “I didn’t know that about Larry Mullen. I didn’t know that about the Vegas shows either.”
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With groups as big as Radiohead or U2, a drummer is never simply a drummer. Selway started out writing songs in his Oxfordshire bedroom and across the past decade or so has gone back to that original love with a series of well-received solo albums. His latest, Strange Dance, is perhaps his finest yet and will appeal to fans who appreciate Radiohead’s quieter, more spectral side. If Pyramid Song brings out goosebumps, you’ll love the latest phase of Selway’s career.
Radiohead weren’t on his radar when he started writing the material, however. The band extended their ongoing hiatus when the pandemic kicked in, leaving Selway alone with his thoughts. From that period of reflection have come tracks such as Picking Up Pieces, a shivery dirge that descends into whirlpools of paranoia via lines such as “I’m on the outside/ I’m on the outside looking in.”
“My reference points musically – it wasn’t a reaction to Radiohead. Nor are they the elements of Radiohead I wanted to draw on. My reference points were the musical relationships I’ve been building across the past decade in my solo work.”
He namechecks collaborators such as percussionist Valentina Magaletti, cellist and vocalist Laura Moody and Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley. All helped Selway take inward-looking lyrics and expand them outwards into songs of empathy and humanity.
That’s also the quality that typifies his drumming on Radiohead songs such as The National Anthem and Airbag. Epic yet delicate, these are compositions that demand careful handling. As a percussionist, Selway brings something essential. He layers in a muscular jitteriness that stops the material from collapsing into a pudding of misery.
“When I started wanting to be in a band when I was about 14 or 15, songwriting and drumming went hand in hand,” he says. “I was learning my first few chords so I could write songs. I had my first guitar before my first drum kit. Then, towards the end of school, I joined On a Friday, which became Radiohead. There are already enough guitarists in that band. So I took up the drumsticks.
Radiohead are nobody’s idea of badly behaved rock stars. They are, however, serial rule breakers. In addition to filling stadiums while looking rather joyless, one of their most remarkable achievements has been to recalibrate what it means to be a big band. The group has become a mothership – from which its members can leave and depart according to mood and without threatening the integrity of the project.
It can be infantilising. Within the natural pattern of my life, family is important to me [he is married with three sons and a daughter]. That is my focus. That mindset, which you can flip into on tour, is totally inappropriate in that context. Fun to step into that from time to time. Not a place to live
— Selway on being pampered on tour
This has been evident throughout the past two years. While Selway worked on Strange Dance and guitarist Ed O’Brien put out a solo album, singer Thom Yorke and lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood started the jazz-infused The Smile with Sons of Kemet co-founder and drummer Tom Skinner. And yet nobody is suggesting Radiohead are defunct – or that they won’t eventually regroup.
“We learned a lot of what we did from watching other bands close up,” says Selway. “Like when we went out touring with REM in the mid-1990s – seeing how a band like that functioned. And how they maintained that integrity to what they were doing. You do look to other bands. If there’s an aspect of what we’ve done that works for other bands, great.”
Radiohead famously never cracked a smile when conquering the world. That despite the fact that OK Computer, from 1997, is regarded by many as perhaps the finest album of its decade. Many will similarly make the case for follow-up Kid A as the greatest long player of the 21st century. At no point did anyone involved let on that they were enjoying any of it.
Quite the opposite. Thom York famously had a mild breakdown after a 1997 concert at the RDS in Dublin. Retreating to his suite at the Clarence Hotel, he poured out his angst on to the page. Or, as he sang on How to Disappear Completely, the song he wrote in that miserabilist fever, “I float down the Liffey/ I’m not here/ This Isn’t Happening.”
“It certainly wasn’t without its intensity,” says Selway of those years. “Any situation, any creative relationship or situation where you are going through these fairly... I guess extreme experiences together. That is going to be intense. I remember around OK Computer, we did a film, Meeting People Is Easy, which was great. But that presented a very particular side of how we worked – and how it probably looked from the outside as well.”
If Meeting People Is Easy had a failing, he elaborates, it was that it showed just one side of their experiences.
“I do remember watching it at the time and thinking, ‘Oh, we left out the fun bits’,” he says. “Probably for a very good reason: it made for a much better film. I don’t think we could have continued as long as we have without there being some kind of relief [from the misery].”
Selway never appreciated the starrier aspects of headlining stadiums and travelling the world. The pampering, that sense of living in a bubble where every whim is catered for – he always saw it as an unhealthy illusion. It is instructive to observe from the sidelines. You wouldn’t want it to be your everyday existence.
“It can be infantilising. Within the natural pattern of my life, family is important to me [he is married with three sons and a daughter]. That is my focus. That mindset, which you can flip into on tour, is totally inappropriate in that context. Fun to step into that from time to time. Not a place to live.”
Radiohead will always be his life’s work. Still, if happy behind the drum kit, he acknowledges part of him must enjoy the spotlight. Which is why he’s here, talking about his solo career and joking about parachuting in as emergency U2 drummer.
“It [being a drummer] felt like a good dynamic in Radiohead. I was happy with that. Thom has always been a very captivating and natural frontman. That’s always felt like the appropriate way for Radiohead to go.” A pause. “But there’s an element of me that must want to be a bit more centre stage.”
Strange Dance is released on February 24th
