A few Coldplay interviews

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

BRIT POP

Theory: Everything British turns to gold when it comes to pop culture. Proof: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Oasis and now COLDPLAY. Reporter Zach Feldberg talks to one of Coldplay's strapping blokes to find out more about the magic touch.

Zach Feldberg

Wanna buy a ceramic Oasis logo?" asks a grinning pigtailed girl. She's attempting to sell a red- and blue-tiled object to a few dozen concertgoers at Toronto's Molson Amphitheatre who are waiting to see the British band. Some look on with interest, while others turn away, chuckling. The tiled "logo" after all, is nothing more than a footlong Union Jack. The "Oasis" stamp is nowhere to be seen. The girl is selling a souvenir flag.

It's no surprise, though, is it? That famous emblem that once represented heraldry and the Commonwealth has been an icon of popular culture since the early 1960s when the Beatles' 'Love Me Do' first crossed the Atlantic and incited the British Invasion. The Union Jack's enduring power is a product of the influential culture that has pumped out of the United Kingdom ever since. Think of punk rock, mods and the Mini. Their tastes become our tastes. Their trends become our trends. Their biggest bands also become our biggest bands. And right now, Coldplay is their biggest band.

The four gents who make up Coldplay - Chris Martin, Jon Buckland, Will Champion, and Guy Berryman - met at the University College of London and started the band in 1998. Originally called Starfish, the foursome formed to have fun and fool around on acoustic guitars. The strapping blokes, all from working class families around the UK, got along well very early on. Shortly after forming, they realized that they wanted to have more than just fun - they wanted success.

But success would become an underrated term to describe their achievements. After a small indie deal, the band was picked up by Parlophone, a UK label, and was given a chance to strut their stuff on a much larger scale. What resulted was Blue Room (1999), a 5-song EP that introduced the band to British audiences. While this record was elegant, it didn't cause the stir that surrounded the year-later release of Parachutes, the band's first full-length. The dazzling collection of hauntingly emotive gems boasted a strong pair of commercial singles in 'Yellow' and 'Trouble.' The bleary acoustics, fragile vocals and dissonant guitars proved an irresistible package, and music lovers took note. Parachutes saw Coldplay rise to extraordinary heights.

After that release, the band members got involved with Make Trade Fair, an anti-globalization group that promotes trying to end world poverty instead of Western wealth in the international trade game. And then, somehow, after exhaustive touring, legitimate break-up rumours, and a seemingly endless stream of press, Coldplay headed back into the studio.

This October they released their latest full-length offering, A Rush Of Blood To The Head. Its 11 songs are every bit as endearing as the ones that make up Parachutes, but offer even more sincerity. The album works because the songs are believable. They are the songs of a band that strongly considered splitting up only a year ago. They are the songs of four guys from working-class roots who still yearn to create music that's unique and passionate. Despite those artistic goals, A Rush Of Blood avoids sounding forced; it's a wholly natural album that washes over its audience instantly.

"We were desperate to go in and prove ourselves again," admits guitarist Jon Buckland in a telephone interview during a tour stop in Los Angeles. "There was no fear of selling less records or anything like that. Actually, I didn't really start worrying about it until we'd finished it. But we always feel like we've got stuff to prove, y'know. We're almost proving to ourselves that we're any good. That we deserve any kind of attention!"

Fortunately for Buckland and his band-mates, there's nothing to worry about. The leadoff single, 'In My Place,' has shot the band back into the epicentre of the pop music spotlight once again. In this song alone, Buckland's hypnotizing guitar lines and Martin's signature falsetto are stronger than ever, and the rhythm sec-tion - bassist Berryman and drummer Champion - provides a thundering backbone. It's a fantastic first single. Critics and fans have reacted warmly, and the record shot straight to No. 1 soon after its release. Even the notoriously fickle British press is on the Coldplay bandwagon these days, despite an initial backlash that occurred when the band started to really soar in 2001.

"It's been really good," says Buckland about the band's coverage in the UK. "But when enough people say they think you're good, it provokes people into saying they think you're [crap]. It's fair enough because not everyone likes you, and if too many nice things are written about someone, you need something to bring them back down to earth - especially if you don't like them. So I'm expecting a second backlash in about three months."

The scrutiny of the UK music publications is just one of many unavoidable facts of being in a popular band from England. Another such reality is the tendency for bands from that country to be lumped in with other British bands on the basis of geography.

"None of us are particularly nationalistic about England, says Buckland. "Once people hear [the band], it doesn't really matter."

When it comes right down to it, he's absolutely right. The music is all that matters - not the country that happens to produce it. And as long as the UK breeds wonders such as Coldplay, who are we to complain? Whatever the reason is behind North America's love for British music - actual or nostalgic - at least we know what we like. After all, the ballads don't write themselves.

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

With Guy

Coldplay are putting the finishing touches the follow-up to their breakthrough debut, Parachutes. Currently working in George Martin's Air Studios in London, the group is once again using the production skills of Ken Nelson. The album is scheduled for released in June, but bass player Guy Berryman isn't sure that will allow the band enough time to complete it.

"It's panic stations at the moment because we've got a deadline we're trying to meet," Berryman says. "And I don't think we're going to meet it. We've got a lot of pressure on us. We're trying our best, but if we think we haven't done it justice, then we're going to have to spend longer. Whenever we deliver it, it will mean it's finished. I'd hate to rush the end of the record, rush the mixes because we have to get it in on time."

The album's lead single -- tentatively titled "In My Place" -- is scheduled to hit radio in two weeks. Like the rest of the new album, it combines the same recipe of shimmering guitars and emotional outpourings that garnered Coldplay heavy radio and video rotation with their past singles "Yellow" and "Trouble."

"It sounds like Coldplay," Berryman says of the album as whole. "You'll recognize it as being us, but it's more energetic and upbeat, more confident. We've grown as people and musicians and we're quite confident we're going to deliver a record that meets all our fans' expectations. I think we've come up with a good follow-up."

The group's success hasn't had much of an effect on the songwriting process, according to Berryman, who points out eighty-five of the new album was written while on tour. "I don't think we've been influenced massively by our success and by our travels," he says. "The lyrics [singer Chris Martin] writes are more basic than that, more basic, emotional ideas rather than life experiences. There's probably a few lines in there which reflect what's happened in the last year or so, but it's hard to say."

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

Coldplay get ready to rumble

Coldplay's 2000 debut album Parachutes -- featuring their breakout hit "Yellow" -- garnered them various awards and made them internationally famous, but they were determined for their story not to end there. Eager to beat the sophomore slump, the British rockers recorded a batch of songs earlier this year as soon as they finished touring. Two months into a mixing session in Liverpool, Coldplay realized that something wasn't quite right. That hunch led to a songwriting spurt that yielded the epic guitar rockers -- and the gorgeous piano ballad "The Scientist" -- that make up the band's appropriately named new album A Rush of Blood to the Head. So does Rush live up to the expectations set by Parachutes? Frontman Chris Martin has no idea.

The debut record blew up in a big way. What was that experience like for you?

For a while it amused me and I couldn't understand it, and then that was overcome by the fact that I live for being in Coldplay. I would be upset if it didn't blow up. It's two polar opposites inside our heads because on one hand, we think, "Shit, all these people are listening to us," and on the other hand we think, "Why aren't more people listening to us?" Especially when we came to America last summer for a few months -- that was so cool for us because everybody started to enjoy the fact that people were buying the record, and it gave us amazing freedom on our new record to do exactly what we wanted.

How did you guys deal with some of the criticism you got for the last record, for instance the comments of people like [Creation Records founder] Alan McGee, who called you "bedwetters"?

We get praised and criticized in pretty much equal measure. For every person that likes us there's probably ten people that hate us, but only one of them is brave enough to say it. For a while that really frightened us but then we watched [the documentary When We Were Kings] where Mohammad Ali trains for the George Foreman fight by getting hit in the face repeatedly, and that's the way we try to deal with criticism now. We just try take it on the cheek and get on with it.

How do you feel you've progressed as a band since Parachutes?

That's a tough question because somebody might listen to it and think we've regressed, that we've gotten worse. The only common thread between the two records is that we've been obsessed with the idea of melody and emotion and making a song as passionate as possible. I really hate trying to analyze our own records. To me, it's like being asked to mark your own examination papers. I'm not very good at it. And however hard I try, it's always going to be biased one way or another. Some days I wake up and I think, "Shit, we're better than the Beatles," and the next day I wake up and think, "Oh dear!" It's a very strange time when you're waiting for a record to come out because you don't know what anyone's going to think of it. In a sense, our job is a bit like fishing: We can do our best to get all the equipment but you just never know whether there are going to be fish there. And it's the same with songs. When you get a big song, it's just mad because you don't feel you can take any credit for it.

What did you feel was wrong with the initial recording sessions for the album?

To us, it sounded OK, but it was just sounding a bit like a band who had loads of money and could afford to make any expensive record, and it didn't really have any passion or soul. And that's what we wanted to get, so we moved out of London and went to a tiny studio in Liverpool with basic equipment. You have to rely on the tunes and the emotions, rather than the heavy technology. There's a song on the record called "The Scientist," which arrived from nowhere and we don't know where it came from, except I know we'd been listening to George Harrison in the weeks before that. And when that song came out, it gave us this amazing freedom and we thought maybe we can allow some new songs to come along. We don't have to stick to our plan. We can let the songs take over. That was the real turning point. I, like lots of people, have the capacity to overanalyze things that are going well and hence destroy them, and that's what it's about. It was written because my friend had just broken up with his girlfriend, and I'm always having disasters with girls, and it was just about me and him always messing it up, just by trying to complicate things too much.

I heard Ian McCulloch dropped by the studio in Liverpool.

He was around a bit. It was really nice and we sort of became friends with him, because he's from Liverpool obviously, and we used to see him in the studio occasionally. He wasn't there telling us what to do, but it was nice to have him around sometimes as a voicing board. We took loads and loads from the [Echo and the] Bunnymen certainly in terms of being inspired, so you know, we'd already stolen all his ideas.

You recently went to Haiti and the Dominican Republic on behalf of Oxfam. How did you get involved with that?

We were asked to get involved with this Web site called http://www.maketradefair.com, which is basically an online community that will hopefully grow enough to put pressure on politicians to address some of the issues of world trade. At the moment it's grossly unbalanced in favor of Britain and America. I went to Haiti, just to see what happens when people aren't paid enough for their goods or when they're forced to work for hardly anything for big clothes manufacturers or food manufacturers, and it's the most disgusting exploitation on such a massive level by big companies and by the trade laws themselves. All this open market stuff is just frightening because the smaller and poorer countries just get squashed with really cheap imports and stuff. My job is just to promote the Web site. The reason we got involved is that we kept getting asked to do commercials and advertisements, and we just didn't want to do any of them because everybody sells out. You look at the new Austin Powers movie and it's just sort of product placement, and that stuff makes us really angry. We really wanted to advertise something that we actually cared about -- and we do care about issues of trade -- so we're prepared to risk looking stupid to talk about it.

Coldplay tour dates:

9/4: Seattle, Paramount Theater

9/6: Berkeley, CA, Greek

9/7: Las Vegas, The Joint

9/9: San Diego, CA, Open Air Theater

9/10: Los Angeles, Greek Theater

9/14: Atlanta, Masquerade

9/16: Baltimore, MD, Pier Six Concert Pavilion

9/17: Boston, Fleet Boston Pavilion

9/19: Wantagh, NY, Jones Beach Amphitheater

9/21: Toronto, Ontario, Air Canada Center

9/24: Chicago, UIC Pavilion

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

Q Magazine

Coldplay's Chris Martin: he just wants to tell Radiohead he's sorry.

Hello, where are you?

In bed.

It's our round, what are you having?

Lemonade with orange juice with bits in it, no ice, pint glass.

Can you remember what you were doing 15 years ago?

I was at school. You weren't allowed to wear trousers until you were five foot tall, so I'd have been trying to grow.

What was the worst thing about being 15?

I was the unhappiest I've ever been.

Did anything happen to you when you were 15?

I told my music teacher I was going to be in a band. I knew and he knew.

What do you wish you knew then that you know now?

I don't wish I knew anything different. I was nine so I'm glad I knew about Transformers. I knew nothing about pleasuring a lady.

What's your worst fashion faux pas of the last 15 years?

Whe I was in my teens I thought wearing trousers made in India was the coolest thing.

What's the best record of the last 15 years?

Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet.

If you weren't a musician, what would you be?

Trying to be one.

What music are you listening to now?

Ron Sexsmith. It pisses me off that you don't get Ron Sexsmith in the charts, but you get Coldplay.

What's been the highlight of the last 15 years?

Everything's a highlight when you get up and the hardest thing you have to do every day is say the word "yellow" eight times.

What's your personal motto?

Never give in. I love the whole preparation for battle thing.

What was the last time you heard Parachutes?

I don't listen to it because it's impossible for me to like it now.

Have you ever smashed up a guitar?

No, I'm cheesy. I think there's some guy in the audience who can't even afford a guitar and I'm about to smash one, so I don't do it.

Where do you see yourself in 15 years' time?

I suppose I'll be the singer in a Coldplay tribute band.

What do you think of Radiohead?

When we won best band at the Brit Awards the first thing I did was apologize to Ed O'Brien. They're amazing.

Can you sum up the last 15 years in one word?

No.

What's next?

We're going to a pub quiz with this funny, famous lady. Sorry, I can't tell you who it is.

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

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Q Magazine, August 2002

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In August 2001, Chris Martin decided he was going to forget self-doubt and paranoia and flex his newfound rock star cojones by inviting Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia on a date. He had, he says, "fancied her for ages", and was in a position to wow her with a considerable flourish of his new cachet: Coldplay were supporting U2 at Dublin's Slane Castle, and would she like to come along?

It augured well for love; Coldplay received a repturous reception and then, in the middle of U2's set, Bono segued into a few admiring bars of Yellow. The Irish roared. Admiring Bambi eyes turned Martin's way.

"Fame is bullshit," he says today. "But that was a moment where even I thought, You lucky bastard. Enjoy it!"

Martin declines to say how the relationship developed afterwards, though we may guess from the rueful floorward glance and the observation, "Actually, I behaved like a twat", that it wasn't all it might have been.

Yet, in a way, it was a perfectly satisfactory Coldplay evening. For in order to make new Coldplay album A Rush Of Blood To The Head the rollicking collection of regret, sorrow, and paranoia that it is, Martin says he maintains three constants in his life: 1) a turbulent relationship with women, 2) a fear that he might soon die, and 3) a preoccupation with hair loss. The evening at Slane Castle clearly provided fresh material on 1) but also heartening news on item 3), he notes.

"I'm 25 and I'm really worried I'll be bald by next year. But someone famous, someone who knows, told me Bono's had a hair transplant. Cand you believe it? Bono? Some of those tufts have been stitched in. So there's hope for me yet."

Q meets Martin, bassist Guy Berryman, guitarist Jonathan Buckland and drummer Will Champion in a North London photo studio. With an album's worth of "the best music we've ever written", not to mention reassuring "Bono's syrup" news, the mood is decidedly up. For Berryman, Buckland and Champion this means they smoke cigarettes and mumble amiably. For Martin it means he zings round the room like a child buzzing on too many food additives.

"I'm excited. There's so much to tell you. But I'm nervous too. What if I fuck it up?" he muses before approaching to inspect Q's hairline.

"I'm worried mine's going. And worrying makes it go quicker!" he trills.

Martin admits to being nervous around journalists and from one moment to another can be guarded and extravagantly entertaining.

"How can I be normal with you watching?" he asks before deciding he won't be and launching into a barrage of Alan Partridge-style jokes and indiscretions.

"We're not Travis, OK? We've just been doing horse off a hooker's back," he deadpans before archly narrowing an eyelid.

"I'm incredibly excited by what we've done," he beams later. "The danger was we'd make a half-arsed, shitty, bargain bin, average follow-up record with songs not half as good as Yellow. I'm not interested in, Here are some off-cuts of the first album and I've got loads of money and coke and I'm in OK! magazine. That's bullshit."

"Yeah. That's our next album," says Buckland, looking up from his evening paper. A Rush Of Blood To The Head is all the more eagerly expected because it almost never happened at all.

"After we'd recorded Parachutes we had one song left--In My Place," recalls Martin. "Apart from that I was dry. And I thought, That's it, we're done. But when Jonny played me the guitar for In My Place I thought, Well we have to record that. It's the best thing we've ever written. And that was the song that saved us."

It's been worth the wait. On the new album, the intimate, soul baring of Parachutes has evolved into the monumental world jitters of Politik and the menacing darkness of the title track.

Politik was written on 13 September last year; the day the band were supposed to fly to America. The portentous clattering of guitars and Martin's falsetto cry of "Open up your eyes!" make it the best, most daring thing the band have ever recorded.

Meanwhile, a new consultative role for Ian McCulloch lends Clocks and Daylight a beautifully stark touch of The Cutter-era Echo & The Bunnymen. And, of course, Martin's anti-Casanova talents mean the relationship autopsies so beloved of Parachutes recur on the lovely Warning Sign, The Scientist, and In My Place.

"It's tremendously exciting to be in our band because you hear something you like, learn how to do it and steal it," beams Martin. "It's like stealing cars and welding them together. We've stolen the Bunnymen's cars, The Cure's car, the Stones' car...Everyone!"

Q waits for the disclaiming wink from Martin, but it never comes. Instead, just like last time, he urges the world to make the most of Coldplay while it lasts.

"We're empty again now. Drained of ideas. Who knows if we'll do it again?" he says.

"I honestly can't tell you where another one would come from," agrees Buckland.

It's barely two years since Coldplay released their debut album, Parachutes. Quickly embraced as a gothic Travis, worthy successors to the guitar territory newly vacated by a weirded-out Radiohead, they have spent a good part of that time threatening to implode.

Formed in autumn '96 by Buckland and Martin during their first week of term at London's University College, they recruited bass guitarist Berryman after he confronted them in a student bar and demanded to be in their band ("We couldn't really say no," says Buckland.)

Early influences were resolutely uncool: Sting and Simon & Garfunkel. Even so, they'd soon written 10 songs, including an early prototype of Don't Panic, while recruiting a drummer. "We knew of a good drummer," remembers berryman. "We played him Panic and he said, No. We just couldn't believe it. Even then there was a feeling of, But what we're doing is great. Why wouldn't you want to be part of it?"

Will Champion was in the UCL hockey team with Martin. Champion suggested his roommate as a drummer. At the appointed hour he set up his kit but then went to the pub and didn't return. Champion, an aspiring guitarist, agreed to keep time for the rehearsal and The Coldplay were born. Their name was borrowed from another UCL band who had discarded it. Their first gig at Camden pub The Laurel Tree followed soon afterwards.

"There was no Plan B," says Martin. "Meeting Jonny was like falling in love. He could make all the ideas work and we were writing two song a night sometimes. And I was starting to get more of a musical education, Jeff Buckley and Radiohead."

Berryman is more circumspect. "We were more than capable of producing shit. But the longer we went on, you could tell Chris had the magic. I'd given up my engineering course because I hated it and started a degree in architecture. I gave that up as well."

Initially, the omens weren't great. A&R man Dan Keeling hadn't ben working for Parlophone long when he saw the band, now simply Coldplay, at Cairo Jack's, an Egyptian-themed pub in central London in December 1998.

"I wasn't really that enamoured," says Keeling. "I thought Chris had something. He was quite charismaic. But the sound wasn't there."

By March 1999, Keeling had received the Safety EP--500 copies of which had been funded by Martin's old schoolfriend--and now Coldplay's manager--Phil Harvey.

"I spent £1500 pressing them up," says Harvey.

The EP contained Bigger Stronger and No More Keeping My Feet ON The Ground. The latter impressed Keeling.

It just overwhelmed me. I wanted to stay cool but I could only hold off calling until Saturday morning. I met Phil, but Chris couldn't come because he was doing his exams."

In the exam room Coldplay performed with smarty-pants ease. Martin got a first in Ancient Worl Studies; Buckland a 2:1 in Astronomy; Champion a 2:1 in Anthropology. 1999 should have been a summer of excitement, but it almost ended in disaster.

Coldplay entered the studio to record their major label debut, The Blue Room EP. Suddenly, overawed by the pressure and consumed by the idea that they must now become "more professional", Chris Martin turned on the band--and on Will Champion in particular.

"Things were going wrong in the studio and I told Will it was his fault," says Martin. "He'd be out of time once and I'd be telling him he was shit."

Champion walked out.

"It was an awful time. For a week Coldplay didn't exist," continues Martin. "And it was all my fault. I thought to myself, You fucking twat. I was so nervous of us fucking up our chance I'd become obsessed with whether we were a technically good band or not. I apologised, but I felt I had to pay, so I got drunk."

In a strange act of penance, Martin forced himself to drink beer, then vodka and Ribena at Berryman's flat. Berryman left him alone to go and meet his girlfriend, and returned to find Martin begging for mercy in his toilet.

"He's not been drunk since," says Berryman. "Chris brings quite enough spice to our lives without alcohol being involved. When his energy is up he's brilliant. Creatively he's great. But when his energy is down, it makes things tough. That was a horrible time which I could never go through again."

But perhaps the crisis was the making of Coldplay. With Champion back on board, it was decided the band would only survive as a fully democratic outfit. Though Martin initiates all the songs and writes the lyrics, it was decided all members would be credited equally and royalties should be split four ways. And if one member left, they would all call it a day.

"I don't want all the fucking money," spits Martin. "I don't want any more than the others. Do I really want to spend two weeks in court some way down the line arguing with my closest mates about who wrote what? Not all bands work that way and I've got into arguments with some about it. but going through that experience made me realise that our chemistry is special. I can't do it without them--all of them--and vice versa."

It also meant that Martin's evangelical leadership was toned down. A band rule dictating that anyone doing cocaine would be sacked was also downgraded.

"We're not a druggy band," says Berryman. "But basically there was a time when Chris was following Thom Yorke very closely and he read something he said and suddenly it was, If anyone does coke they're out."

"The cocaine thing is less strict now," says Martin. "That was me. I was being sensationalist. I just get these passions about things."

Though their internal rift was solved, the fledgling band was still learning to deal with outsiders. Dan Keeling had booked Coldplay into Rockfield Studios in Wales to record Shiver. Confident they could organise themselves he was shocked when the first demo arrived at his desk in London.

"It didn't have any of their passion, their energy. It was just limp. I drove straight down to Wales and had a very tense meeting. Chris didn't like what we had to say, which was basically, Do it again. They're a close unit and they don't like people sticking their noses in."

To this day however, Coldplay remain a far more fractious group than you'd expect. They're clearly close--Martin and Buckland especially--but they're frank about the battles over the new album. Berryman still doesn't like the folky Green Eyes and Champion has been ever harder to please when it comes to new material.

"Will's the only one I have to ipress," smiles Martin. "If he goes, Ugh, then I have to acknowledge it's no good. That's one of my great hobbies in life...trying to convince Will that my songs are any good."

On the release of Parachutes in July 2000, Keeling believed sales of 40,000 would prove a respectable platform from which to build on his relatively modest investment. The album sold five million copes and Coldplay found themselves woozy with the sudden altitude of fame. "I hate bands who moan, but there was no learning curve. It was a vertical gradient," says Berryman.

"I can remember meeting Sylvester Stallone in LA because he wanted to use Trouble on the soundtrack for his film," adds Buckland. "We said no, but we were a student band being back-slapped by Sylvester Stallone. We thought, How the fuck did we get here?"

In February 2001, with thoughts turning to a new album, Coldplay felt they could just about fit in another crisis. On tour in America, Martin lost his voice and the rest of the band succumbed to 'flu. Again they decided they'd had enough.

"We were fucking desperate," says Martin. "It just felt wrong. We had to decide whether we were a bunch of students who got lucky or were we going to admit that we are really fucking good? Actually it was me. Was I going to admit we are one of the best bands in the world? I thought, I might die at ny moment and I've been given this amazing opportunity with my best friends. And at that point we were doing ridiculous things--hanging out with U2--and I thought, I wouldn't want to be in U2, I am actually already in one of the best bands in the world."

Buckland had a suggestion: why didn't Martin stop apologising to people, audiences in particular, about not being good enough?

"That's the riddle," says Martin. "I think I'm crap, which derives me. But I also think we're brilliant. Once we'd decided we had the chance of a lifetime we worked harder than we ever have in our lives."

With the work done Coldplay are enjoying a brief lull. Q is invited to watch the Argentina vs England World Cup game with them in a suite at the Leonard Hotel near London's Hyde Park. Room 14 benefits from high ceilings, fine cornicing and teak furnishings: an ideal setting for board meetings or shouting at a television.

Band, crew and two beautiful American females currently staying with Martin have joined us. One of the women used to work on the influential US TV show Saturday Night Live and has been in touch with the singer since Coldplay were guests last year. However, it is Buckland who has become close to her during the visit.

Expectantly arrayed on a sofa at kick-off, Coldplay look a bit like a University Challenge team. The whistle blows and they enthusiastically clap positive England moves. But as the game gathers pace and the beer flows, Chapion reveals an inner laddishness--backing defender Wayne Bridge (from Champion's native Southampton) with cries of "Bridgey!"

But Chris Martin seems fretful during the game: moving from sofa to floor to a chair by the window. When England defend their 1-0 lead during the last fraught 15 minutes, there is loose talk from Berryman of "the next round". Martin sounds charged with frustration when he says: "You're talking it up. Don't talk it up! It might not happen!"

"God! Calm down, Chris," says his American pal, eyes rolling.

When England win, there's a champagne toast. Martin sips an orange juice in lonely abstinence.

"I just don't like what drink does to me," he says. "Sorry if I seem grumpy."

An hour later Q is chatting to Berryman next door. Martin enters the room boggle-eyed with excitement and says, "Do you wanna go to Iceland? Let's go!"

It turns out Buckland also has a girlfriend in Reykjavik and Martin's puppyish enthusiasm has become focused on a surprise visit. But first he sets ground rules for Q: "Please use your discretion. There is a strong possibility I will act like an utter twat." Sadly, Q never learns what this might mean. The flights are full and Martin's mood sours.

"If we just sit down and do an interview we'll do public school, Yellow, paranoia and my hair--and that's it. We should do something active."

He suggests Alton Towers, Chessington World Of Adventures, his 15-year-old brother's school sports day in Bath and, finally, kite-flying.

"I've got two good ones. It's terrific fun."

On a grey Saturday lunchtime the new Belsize Park home of Chris Martin resounds to Echo & The Bunnymen's Nothing Ever Lasts Forever. Tomorrow he'll sing the song with the band's Ian McCulloch at a show in London's Finsbury Park.

Having clinched the harmonies, Martin takes a break and walks Q to a cafe. He frets about being late, about being nervous and the mental list of important things he wants to say. These turn out to be 1) he thinks The Streets album is brilliant and 2)imminent death and hair loss are not unreasonable neuroses because "I might well die and I will certainly lose my hair". Such concerns are he admits "reverse rock 'n' roll".

But despite the nerves and apologies, there is a concealed steeliness. At times he can sound like Prince Philip bearing down on a line of workers during a visit to a cake factory.

"Have you worked there terribly long?" he asks Q with a distint clip in his voice. But generally he sounds reconstructed by his "rock" environment: "Radiohead, man! They are just so fucking on it!" he exclaims.

Martin is clearly a regular at the cafe. A French waiter recognises him and makes operatic arrangements for us to have a quiet table. People glance but don't approach.

"I do enjoy getting asked for autographs," says Martin. "I might try and act cool but it does feel good. People's enthusiasm gives me a real buzz."

And so, after ordering us two of his favourite vanilla milkshakes, he sets about unravelling his unlikely rock star apprenticeship.

The eldest child of a chartered accountant and teacher, Martin formed his first band at prep school before going to Sherbourne public school. Here he met future manager Phil Harvey when he was 14 and together they expressed their love of music by buying U2's Zooropa.

His life at Sherbourne sounds by turns idyllic and terrifying. On the one hand there were encouraging teachers and time and space to write music. On the other hand Martin spent his early teens concealing a fear that he might be gay.

"You hide your vulnerabilities aged 14 because people will use them against you. And being gay at public school is all you'd imagine it to be--a fucking nightmare. I was 16 when I finally felt confident I wasn't. But the homophobia can be pretty intense."

At this stage, becoming a rock star was the furthest thing from his mind. Especially after a performance by his next band, The Rockin' Honkies, was met with open derision and Martin was booed off stage.

"The boys could be mean," recalls Phil Harvey. "And there was an attitude from teachers that Sherbornians shouldn't get involved in the pop music business."

However, two things changed his life. The first was an encouraging music teacher called Mr Skinner who approved of pop music. Second was the emergence of Radiohead.

"Radiohead gave me hope," says Martin. "They were the band who gave me permission. I'm a public schoolboy from Devon and I'm not supposed to be in a band. Well they proved I could. I thought, I'm a bit like them. Jonny was OK because he's northern and so is Guy. I hate apologising because as far as I'm concerned it was a privilege to have an amazing education. I had some incredible teachers, great facilities. What a privilege! But so what? Does anyone give a shit?"

Clearly some people do, and it irks. Along with Travis and Starsailor, Coldplay are often cited as infidel careerists in the unofficial rock wars. Former Creation Records mogul Alan McGee famously derided Coldplay as "bedwetters"--middle class, sensitive and lacking in essential 'tude. By contrast The Strokes, The Hives et al are touted as real punky rebels who "mean it". Martin is not convinced.

"Julian Casablancas is as much a geek as me!" he exclaims. "OK, he's a better-looking geek, but he's a geek! And you know what? I would like to shake Alan McGee by the hand. Quite right of him to give us a kick up the arse. I say, bring it on, because it makes me think, I'll show you. it's like Rocky IV. He's trying to hurt me so I go away and train like a monkey and do incredible press-ups and listen to loads of music and write songs that are better than The Hives. And then I'll say to Alan McGee, Thanks a lot, man.

"I don't like feeling inferior to anyone, so there are loads of Dragos--Thom Yorke's one. I don't wanna feel there's a guy out there who's better than me. I'm treading dangerously close to saying something really stupid but...he and McGee drive me. Anyway, the Gallaghers said to me, Don't worry 'bout fookin' McGee. We like ya. And if McGee doesn't like the new album then we really are shit."

"We aren't that nice," Buckland told Q earlier. "But it pisses me off that it's such a terrible thing to be. We can be arseholes but most of the time we're alright. On balance I'd take nice over being called a cunt any day."

Chris Martin's upbringing is less interesting for spurious reasons of credibility and more because you can hear his personal conflicts in Coldplay's music. As well as the all-male hot-housing of Sherbourne, Martin grew up around his mother's strong Christian faith. He didn't inherit it wholesale, but his doubts and conflicts about love and life underpin his band's best moment.

"There's a dichotomy between the wannabe rock star in me and the son of my mother," he says. "I think girls are amazing but I also feel really guilty about doing stuff with someone that you don't really like. I don't believe there is such a thing as casual sex. Someone always gets hurt. And I hate that feeling. One thing about girls is that I get scared. I get scared of my feelings being in the hands of another person. I know that feeling of waiting for a girl to call. That's scary.

"My mum always said to me she doesn't believe in sleeping with people before marriage. She's not being prissy. She's very rock 'n' roll--it means doing what you feel and damn everyone else--and she reckons waiting and committing leads to great sex. I didn't agree entirely, but I haven't slept with many people. I didn't lost my virginity until two years ago. If I was good with women I'd go and enjoy it. But also I'm obsessed with the band, so I refuse to commit to a relationship...I'm an ambitious little tosser."

He insists a little too strongly that "being a twat" has held him back. Apart from Imbruglia there was a widely publicised flirtation with Nelly Furtado, though Martin now says he's not sure if they are "still mates".

Whoever his last lover was, their demise is portrayed on the mournful track The Scientist--an agonised goodbye to his lost love. But what's most extraordinary is that the romantic self-flagellation which drives Martin's songwriting is intentional, even planned.

"I know I'm going to get shit for saying this," he says, "but yeah, I don't want to be too happy. To write I have to feel slightly sorry for myself. You have to be in a slightly self-obsessed state of mind to sit at a piano for six hours and not worry about meeting someone for a date. My best songs come when I have that feeling that I've left the party early. And the other reason our songs are all about struggling and worrying and being beleaguered is my dad. He's a terrible worrier. He's always after the next thing. And I am too. Luckily the other members are more relaxed. Three other members like me and we'd go nuts."

With a higher profile, the conflicts are more profound. Martin seems torn between what he could easily enjoy as a young millionaire rock star and a sense of Higher Purpose as embodied by the likes of such politicised figureheads as Bono and Thom Yorke.

He says he likes being recognised and signing autographs. He's enjoying doing up his new home three streets down from Finley Quaye and Travis's Dougie Payne. But last night, on the advice of Ash's Tim Wheeler, Martin watched the Sex Pistols documentary The Filth & The Fury and it all began to pall.

"John Lydon completely understood the farcicality of the western world," he says. "The media closs, the advertising and all that shit. We come up against it, but at the centre of the corporate evil there are four friends. We are all part of this horrible minster and we're trying to deal with success in a way that lets us sleep at night."

In the last year, Coldplay have turned down £4 million for the use of their songs in TV advertising. American sports drink Gatorade wanted Yellow, while Diet Coke and Gap have pitched for Trouble and Don't Panic. The band have asked Phil Harvey not to even refer such offers to them because "a discussion might lead to compromise."

"We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves if we sold the song's meanings like that," says Martin. "I'm not superhuman. That's money for nothing. But we're not even going to think about it."

Earlier this year he travelled to Haiti to promote the work of Fair Trade, an organisation committed to improving the trading conditions of Third World producers. He was angered by what he saw. Experiences like this have given him a sombre outlook.

"Of course it's rock star conscience. I mean, I am loaded! And I love my life! And I'm selfish. I flick through OK! magazine and look at pretty girls and I worry about my reviews and, yes, it's a cosy, cocooned existence. But I've woken up to the shit underneath. When you realise that there are rules keeping people in poverty because they're not allowed to trade, you wake up.

"And I think, Is it chance? How did I have the luck to be born here and meet Jonny and get signed and get success? I reckon there must be something higher. It feels like it was given to me and that's why I get scared I'll die before we make the most of it."

The bext day Martin steps onto the stage at Finsbury Park with Ian McCulloch to sing Nothing Ever Lasts Forever--a return favour for McCulloch's backing vocals on parts of the new albm. Guy Berryman braves the rain but Buckland has finally left for Reykjavik and Champion is at his girlfriend's birthday party where he will unveil a specially written Coldplay song performed for her on video.

After the show Martin invites Q to meet McCulloch in his spartan Portakabin where Scouse pop royalty are in attendance, which effectively means 24 Hour Party People actor John Simm and Lightning Seed Ian Broudie hovering near a plastic bin of lager.

Martin was five years old when, in 1982, Echo & The Bunnymen were in the charts with The Back Of Love. Since meeting during the new Coldplay album sessions in Liverpool, McCulloch has become a mentor to the younger musicians.

"I did the vocals to In My Place wearing Mac's coat and with him sitting next to me in the booth," says Martin.

Performing with him today was more difficult, though.

"I felt like the little boy at the school disco not knowing what to do," he adds. "I mean, you can't try and upstage him can you?"

McCulloch, though "bevvied", manages a fulsome tribute to the band he "would most like to be in today".

"He's got it. I want to hate them but they're so good. He's too much of a perfectionist. He should relax. I never enjoyed that level of success and I think they should just try and enjoy it."

And You Are?

Meet the other three in Coldplay.

Jonathan Mark Buckland

Age: 24

Height: 6ft 2ins

Weight: 12.5 stone

Favourite colour: Green

Favourite band/musicion: Jethro Tull ("That was a lie").

One thing you wished Chris wouldn't say or do: "I didn't like it when he apologised all the time when we played. Thankfully he's stopped now."

William Champion

Age: 23

Height: 6ft

Weight: 14 stone

Favourite colour: Blue

Favourite band/musicion: Tom Waits

One thing you wished Chris wouldn't say or do: "He should learn to cook. He has two meals in his repertoire---both highly dangerous."

Guy Rupert Berryman

Age: 24

Height: 5ft 10in

Weight: 9.5 stone

Favourite colour: Don't have one. Not yellow.

Favourite band/musicion: James Brown One thing you wished Chris wouldn't say or do: "We're not making another album."

Politik

"Look at Earth from outer space," implores our cosmically inclined frontman. Comes on with a guitar/drum tattoo, rat-tat-tatting away like a persistant woodpecker. Coldplay's piano is back too: chiming spookily in the studio attic.

In My Place

The first singe and another of those bittersweet but empowering anthems: simple Jonny Buckland guitar figure destined to promp arms-aloft, bare-boobs-on-the-video-screen action at a stadium gig sometime soon - much to the band's probable despair.

God Put A Smile On Your Face

Brisk tempo shift driven by Will Champion's metronomic drums and chock full of Chris Martin's lyrical dysfunction. "Where do we go? Nobody knows." Another dazzling guitar fill from superstar Jonny Buckland.

The Scientist

"Nobody said it was easy. It's such a shame for us to part." Trouble with girls Christopher? Lilting balladry with a sing-song Martin vocal. Would have sat perfectly on Parachutes.

Clocks

Possible future single and further evidence of Martin's obsession with death. Splendidly pompous piano hook that should have been played on a harpsichord for that full-on Rock Me Amadeus effect.

Daylight

Wobbly Eastern guitar intro - think Love-era Cult, Porcupine-era Echo & The Bunnyment. Another burrowing hook that fleshes itself out as the song progresses.

Green Eyes

Romantic strumalong that's already divided opinion within the Coldplay camp. Generall ballpark: Wild Honey on U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, minus the cowboy campfire vibe.

Warning Sign

Mid-tempo soft-shoe shuffle boosted by a charming Martin vocal. "The truth is I miss you" guaranteed to thaw the iciest of male listeners hearts. He'd make someone a lovely husband one day.

A Whisper

One of the album's highlights. Starts with a woozy, pounding tempo (senior readers may be reminded of Pink Floyds One Of These Days) before sussumbing to a tuneful, jagged chorus.

A Rush of Blood To The Head

"I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war if you can find something worth fighting for" announces the perma-troubles singer on another Pink Floyd-a-like strum. Understated chorus, big widescreen chorus: how very David Gilmour.

Amsterdam

Piano-and-voice playout. Imagine: Martin hunched over the ivories, offering tooth declaration that "time, time is on your side now." Nice, downplayed harmonies from the rest of the gang. Goes full-on kitchen-sink rock at the end.

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

piccies wiv this interview

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

HAVE YOU NEVER BEEN YELLOW?

Coldplay gets ready to prove itself all over again

It's not easy getting hold of Chris Martin. Coldplay's frontman has been booked up for weeks doing concerts and press throughout Europe for the London quartet's new album, A Rush of Blood to the Head (Capitol), and interview time with him has been scarce. Then, when arrangements have finally been set, the unexpected happens: His grandmother dies.

Now, instead of merely flying home from a concert in Oslo, Norway, Martin has to prepare for a funeral. Gabs with music scribes are likely to be postponed.

But that's not how it turns out. At the appointed hour, Martin is on his cell phone, ready to field questions. He will hold off family business for a few hours. "No, no, it's absolutely cool all 'round," he explains to an interviewer who has offered to reschedule. "It's all a happy occasion, really, because she lived a good, long life. I think if you get to 84 or something, that's a great thing to get to."

Martin says that his grandmother was ailing for some time and that her suffering was now over, thus the happy aspect of what is usually a somber occasion. There will be time to grieve later.

Right now, he is ready to talk about A Rush of Blood to the Head, the follow-up to Coldplay's million-selling 2000 debut Parachutes. While Martin feels good about the new record, doubts still surface. "We're far too close to it," he says. "You might think you've made War and Peace, but you might have just written some trashy novel, you know? It's difficult to judge from our perspective."

He needn't worry. A Rush of Blood to the Head is strong and confident, revealing a new and improved Coldplay right from the pounding opening chords of "Politik," a song that states its intentions clearly. "Give me time and give me space/ Give me real don't give me fake," croons Martin before segueing into the rousing chorus, "And open up your eyes." Unlike the cozy "We live in a beautiful world" lyrical sentiments of Parachutes' opener, "Don't Panic," "Politik" is dark and ominous, suited for a world that, at the moment, doesn't look so beautiful.

After "In My Place," which is reminiscent of Parachutes in its tuneful melancholy, A Rush of Blood to the Head continues to explore new frontiers. "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" adds drive and urgency to Coldplay's piano atmospherics, while "The Scientist" is one of the strongest examples yet of the band's ability to strip a song down to bare emotions. The most radical departure is "Daylight," with a hypnotic string riff that recalls the more exotic moments of Echo and the Bunnymen. There's even a rave-up of sorts called "A Whisper." A Rush of Blood to the Head has what all second albums should have: a stretching of previously set boundaries, memorable songs and passion.

It didn't come easily, of course.

Coldplay--Martin, guitarist Jon Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion--acquired a lot of life experience between Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head. Suddenly, the four friends who met at University College London and formed a band were touring around the world, meeting celebrities and being paid handsomely. But the traveling took a toll, and at one point, a frazzled Martin lost his voice. The band canceled some shows and regrouped.

"We were just learning and confused, and we needed to have a bit of time out to have some singing lessons, and to understand that people weren't joking when they said they wanted us to play," Martin says with a laugh.

Singing lessons? "Lots of them, yeah. That's a big thing for me because it's really made me much more confident and much more excited about playing in front of lots of people. I mean, if Pavarotti still has singing lessons, then I certainly should." Opera's a bit different, isn't it? "I know, but have you tried singing 'Yellow' every night?"

A little rest cured the road fatigue, but making the follow-up to Parachutes proved a greater challenge. Coldplay recorded 10 songs in a London studio in the fall of 2001 before traveling to the U.S. for a tour. On a Christmas break back home, the band listened with fresh ears to the songs. "They weren't as good as we thought they were," says drummer Will Champion in a separate interview. "We could have released what we had at Christmas and it would have been average and we wouldn't have felt that we'd fulfilled our potential."

The band decided to leave London and its many distractions and head north to Liverpool's Parr Street Studios, where Parachutes co-producer Ken Nelson lives. "We just went to this tiny room where we did a lot of the first record and which seems to be a really good room for us," Martin says. "It's a really cheap studio, so there's no pressure."

Once settled, Coldplay began re-recording the songs that had been found lacking. And an inspired Martin began writing new ones at a prolific clip.

"We'd be working on something and Chris would go in the other room and just bash out something on the piano and come and say, like, 'Guys, I've got this. What do you think?'" Champion recalls. "And we'd put [the track we were working on] down and then start working on it straight away, so it was really a spontaneous thing."

Not everything came easily. "In My Place," which sounds effortless, was anything but. "That's probably the most problematic song on the album," Champion says. "About 100 different versions have been done and eventually we settled on the one that's on the record." Ironically, it's the song on A Rush of Blood that most closely resembles Parachutes, since it was written two years ago.

Champion hears a difference, though. "It's a lot more confident, I think, than anything on Parachutes," he says. "Even songs like 'Yellow' that were apparently 'up' songs and big songs had a bit of fragility to it, I think, and in my mind, 'In My Place' was the first step toward the whole album ... it kind of was the first coming out of our shell a bit, and a bit more bold, a bit more confident."

The confidence was earned. At the time Parachutes was taking off, the four seemed shy, as if they were feeling their way through the stardom thing without wanting to step on anybody's toes. They always said the right things in interviews, and no tales of backstage brawls or bratty behavior made the papers. Concerts seemed like a kind of coming-of-age experience, with Martin a charming but sensitive frontman, apologizing profusely to the growing audiences for every perceived mistake. (Berryman, Buckland and Champion finally took him aside and asked him to stop.)

But even the band's nice-guy reputation rubbed some people the wrong way. Alan McGee, the Creation Records founder who discovered Oasis and a man with cachet in Britain, dismissed Coldplay as "bedwetters." Martin shrugs. "It's good to know what people are thinking; although it doesn't really affect what you think, it does drive you on. It's like Rocky IV or something. You've got to have your enemy to focus on and then it makes you train hard and work hard and eventually win the boxing match."

The band got some praise, too, from Oasis and U2 (the latter's Bono even joined Coldplay onstage in Ireland for "Yellow"). After a chance meeting with Liverpool native Ian McCulloch during the recording of A Rush of Blood to the Head, the frontman of Echo and the Bunnymen offered suggestions and lent his famous pipes to a few backing vocal tracks. Such endorsements mean a lot to Coldplay.

"Sometimes it takes a lot to convince me that someone actually likes us," Martin admits. "A lot of shit bands sell lots of records and a lot of great bands don't. We're not kidding ourselves. We always feel like everyone's having a giggle at us, and someone's going to turn around and say, 'Actually, you really are shit and we were just joking.'"

A bit of bravado enters his voice. "Don't get me wrong because I think the thing within every singer, certainly every singer worth their salt, is a mix of incredible arrogance and incredible paranoia," he says. "I get up in the morning and I think, 'Right. I'm in the best band in the world, what are we going to do today?' And then, also, I'm convinced that no one else agrees with me. So it's a mixture of offensive and defensive.

"We haven't done anything yet, you know? If I die tomorrow, I'd still have to be the one to be impressed to meet John Lennon in the afterlife, and I'd like it if we could meet on equal terms. And if I could say, 'You know, I'm in Coldplay,' and he said, 'Well, I'm in the Beatles,' and, you know, 'Let's have a drink.' And argue about who was the best." His grin is almost visible over the phone line. "And that would be great."

Coldplay enjoyed its coming-out party and learned much during its extended travels. "The last two years of touring around Parachutes had been just like being a cultural sponge," Martin says. "We've just discovered so much new music and new places and new people and new friends, and we just wanted to sort of spew some of that out, you know? Everything from Johnny Cash to the Streets to Echo and the Bunnymen and all these things, then meeting people like P.J. Harvey and everyone from Fred Durst to Bono ... And it all just goes in your head, and we really, really, really were desperate to do something different."

It's hard to imagine Coldplay listening to the Man in Black. "For a long time, I always felt slightly afraid of listening to things I thought were too different to what I was supposed to like," Martin says. "Then suddenly I realized that's absolute nonsense. And you can listen to anything."

Coldplay is a democracy, with the four splitting songwriting credits and royalties equally, but Martin usually comes up with the initial songs, even if it's just a riff. Then Berryman, Buckland and Champion roll up their sleeves. "It's always what they put on that makes it, to me, special," says Martin. "'Cause I was writing songs on my own since I was 11, and they were always OK, but without them, they would be nothing. Without any one of the four of us, it would be a total waste of time."

The rhythm section is in charge of quality control, as Martin sees it. "If you come in with a shit song, Guy and Will, they just won't want to play on it." And guitarist Buckland conjures the piercing melodies that define Coldplay's music. "When I come in with something, he always then comes up with the best melody. It's always better than the singing melody. That's why we have so many rest bits. He's like Johnny Marr or something in my head. If you think the singer's good, wait till you hear the guitarist sort of thing."

Martin relishes the friendly competition with Buckland. "For some reason, I'm convinced that the main relationship that I was destined to be in was with Jonny. When it comes to girls, I just behave like an idiot ... I'm very good at maintaining my relationship with Jonny, though. If we had sex, though, it would ruin everything," he quips.

Martin does a lot of joking. When asked if being a celebrity has made it difficult to walk the streets of London, he deadpans, "I dream of that day." Of Coldplay fans, he says, "Sometimes I think they should be more overzealous." But then he adds a self-deprecating note: "It's funny because sometimes, obviously, we get stopped and asked, and other times you think that the big group is coming toward you and it turns out they just want to know which direction Big Ben is. And that always keeps you on the ground."

Martin recently made a bold statement to NME.com that if Coldplay couldn't improve on A Rush of Blood to the Head, the band would call it quits. "I stand by that," he says. "It's easy to say now, but I'm sure the day will come when we'll just miss it. But every time I think about giving up, two days later I just wouldn't even think of it. So I dunno, maybe we're being slightly overdramatic. But I do hope that we never make a half-assed record. You never know when the songs are going to stop coming."

The quality control department endorses this view. "That's the only healthy way to think," Champion says. "I'd hate to think that in five years' time, our fourth album or something, and thinking, 'Ah, this is quite good; it's not as good as A Rush of Blood to the Head, but it'll do.' That's the kind of complacency that we hope to God that we never get to that point. The only kind of criteria that we judge an album on is if we really sincerely believe that it is an improvement or a progression. There's no point in just resting on our laurels and stagnating as a band. We have to keep to ourselves to keep interested and to keep other people interested."

Champion considers his words. "One of my pet hates is listening to musicians grumble about how bad their lives are, because at the end of the day we have the most amazing job in the world," he concludes. "We get to tour around the world and play music to people who want to hear us."

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

"We're not afraid of anyone"

So say a newly defiant Coldplay, who return after their breakout CD, Parachutes, to face down the naysayers who dismissed this richly melodic, superpolite British foursome as a bunch of "bedwetters"

Two years ago, when Coldplay released their debut album, Parachutes, their only concern was whether anyone would like it. But Parachutes sold 4.7 million copies worldwide, the band collected an armful of awards--and now things are rather more complicated. Hence the hot topic for today's band meeting: how to keep their sophomore effort, A Rush of Blood to the Head, off the Internet.

"I should ring up everyone who's got a copy and say, 'Please don't sell it,'" suggests singer Chris Martin. "'Or we'll fuck you up.' I could add that part on the end."

"Let's take out the whole Internet," deadpans bassist Guy Berryman. "There must be a cable we can cut."

Martin looks comically exasperated once the band has aired its options. "We should never let anyone hear it, ever," he says. "We should just release the artwork and a CD with 'Yellow' on it."

"Yellow," of course, was the huge hit off Parachutes. The song's chiming, bittersweet beauty and its compellingly minimalist video, which featured Martin strolling along a rain-lashed English beach, ensured that the London-based four-piece became one of the few British bands in recent years whose charms made it across the Atlantic intact.

What Coldplay lack, however, is the self-mythologizing bravado of their countrymen Oasis, so their persona so far has depended on a trio of well-worn facts: 1) They like Radiohead (whom they beat out for the 2002 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album); 2) They're middle-class (Oasis's former label boss, Alan McGee, famously dismissed them as "bed-wetters"); and 3) They're really nice. All three are true, but fall well short of the full story.

Today, Martin, Berryman, guitarist Jonny Buckland and drummer Will Champion, each still in his early twenties, are settling down to lunch in the restaurant of North London's House Hotel--all chandeliers, tapestries, and wine-red walls. It's not a typical choice for a group unflashily clad in jeans, but Martin stayed here for a while when Coldplay were wrapping A Rush of Blood to the Head at Ait Studios across the road. Now that it's finished, they seem shell-shocked.

"It's a weird time," Martin frets. "If no one like this, we really are fucked, because we can't think of anything else we can do."

For lunch, they're joined by their equally youthful manager, Phil Harvey, a friend of Martin's since their school days, and by Palli, an Icelandic photographer the singer met on tour and has just introduced to his parents. "They've taken care of me," Palli confirms.

Over wine and cigarettes (only Martin partakes of neither), Coldplay are relaxing company. While Buckland radiates a benign, Zen-like calm and Berryman barely says an audible word, Champion is a bottomless repository of jokes and pop-culture trivia. Martin, with wide eyes and a wide grin, is a fascinating cocktail of sincerity, neurosis, and pin-sharp wit, one minute discussing his fear of death, the next impersonating Marlon Brando or pop diva Anastacia. The foursome often finish one another's thoughts, and they've emerged from the hothouse of recording the follow-up to Parachutes with their brotherly love fully intact.

"We're lucky we've got each other, Martin says, nodding at his bandmates. "Whoever we come into contact with, we're all protected by the other three, so there's no danger."

He searches for the right simile. "We're like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers," he decides. "They're all pretty good individually, but together they make a Mighty Morpher."

The Mighty Morphers first came togehter in 1996 at University College in London--first as friends, then as bandmates. "Our first musical incarnation was probably Chris and me busking and getting moved on by the police," Champion says. "We did 'Bare Necessities' and Norwegian Wood.'"

Inheriting their name from a friend's band, they released a self-financed EP, 1998's Safety, and were quickly snapped up by Parlophone, home of the Beatles and Radiohead. Recording Parachutes was a frantic process, due to their dual insistence on perfectionsism and democract--but it was a breeze compared to coping with the somewhat premature backlash in Briatin that followed its release.

"The concept of someone not liking us hadn't really hit us,"says Martin, polishing off his tuna steak in the time it takes most people to butter a slice of bread. "Suddenly it was like, 'We all hate you.' It knocked us back for a bit." Reeling from the attention, Coldplay took to looking stern in photographs and apologizing on stage, particularly before playing the hits "Yellow" and "Trouble." They've since kicked both habits.

"If I told you what I think about our band, you'd think of me as the most arrogant man in the world," says Martin. "Because the three people I love most in the world, I'm with them. I'm not going to apologize for anything. We had a period when we thought, 'Shit, we're not going to carry on. This is terrible.' And then we thought, 'No, bollocks to that.'"

The turning point came during their inaugural American tour in February 2001. During a radio show event in Washinton, D.C., they shared the bill with several nu-metal stalwarts and were pelted with bottles by the unimpressed crowd. A few days later, though, they were headlining in Atlanta, wearing matching shirts as a show of solidarity and enjoying themselves more than they had in months. There's been no serious talk of splitting up since.

"It was weird playing in a football stadium with Linkin Park, Blink-182, and Limp Bizkit," Martin says of the D.C. show. "Completely out of place, but doing very well. It was like, 'Hang on, let's do it. Let's try to win everyone over. Everyone.' In America, we were a cool cult band. We never were [in England], and I think we quite relished being the outsiders. It did us a lot of good."

Martin's father, an accountant in the West English county of Devon, taught him to get along with everybody, and Coldplay's fraternizing over the past two years must make him proud. They've bonded with everyone from the Flaming Lips (a major influence) and Kylie Minogue to Oaisis and Rammstein's Till Linderman. "There was me, supposedly the nicest, most naive singer in the world, with supposedly the most Satan-like singer in the world, sharing throat remedies," Martin recalls of Linderman, laughing. "He sent me some candies. The note said, 'Enjoy these fucking candies.'"

Another recent Coldplay development is that after a long period of being dubbed "the new Radiohead," the band now finds itself cited as the inspiration for a host of "new Coldplays" in England, such as Starsailor and Turin Brakes. Even this, Martin insists, can be problematic.

"They never write, 'Brilliant, here's another Coldplay!'" he says. "They always go, 'Oh, for fuck's sake, not another Coldplay. One's quite enough, thank you, as Mary Poppins would say.'"

"Let's see...what's the new album about?" Martin repeats, laughing, as coffee arrives and Marlboro Lights are ignited. "What every album's about: Your fear of death, your love of girls and your anger at the shit that politicians talk." He smiles, wary of sounding too earnest. "Mainly about girls, though."

Recorded in London and Liverpool over nine months, A Rush of Blood is, despite Martin's nonchalance, a considerably wiser and more sophisticated record than its predecessor, with an expansive grace redolent of U2 and, yes, Radiohead. Songs like the taut opener, "Politik," written in the week after September 11, and lines like the title cut's "I'm gonna abuy a gun and start a war/If you can tell me something worth fighting for"suggest that Coldplay have larger issues to tackle this time out.

Longtime U2 fans (they supported the Irishmen in Dublin last year), Coldplay have clearly taken a page from Bono's guidebook to being rock stars who care. They're relatively wealthy now, but have spurned several big-bucks offers to plug the Gap or Coca-Cola--instead donating songs to Red Cross ad campaigns. "The sad thing about American TV is that you can't escape consumerism," Martin says. "America has so much amazing culture, and it's buried in 15-minute segments between 10 minutes of ads."

Martin missed February's Grammy awards because he had just returned from Haiti, where he was promoting fair trade for the charity Oxfam. "After that, the concept of an awards ceremony was the most farcical thing in the world," he elaborates. "Because you see poverty, and no one gives a shit who J. Lo is. It's like a big slap in the face: 'Don't get too pleased with yourself, idiot, because you've had a lot of opportunities other people haven't had.' It's a reminder not to be a twat."

Martin's experience in Haiti intensified the feeling that fires both A Rush of Blood to the Head and Coldplay's collective reaction to their rapid ascendance: It might all end tomorrow, so make every bit count.

"To me, this band is everything, and I don't ever want to let it dow," Martin says firmly before Coldplay setp out into the late-afternoon sunshine. "We've realized, 'Shit, it's down to us.' And we're not afraid of anyone."

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003

tell me when 2 stop lol

COLDPLAY: Talk About The Passion

A shirtless Chris Martin tidies his hotel room. "Christina Aguilera was just here," he jokes, hastily kicking laundry to the corners and clearing a space on the bed to sit. He kids because he knows the press can often focus on everything but the music. It happens when you're a star. And like it or not, at 25, this sleek, energetic frontman with the flashing blue eyes is a star and Coldplay (Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion) has grown into one of the hottest tickets on the planet. It's a role all four began embracing last summer on an American tour that culminated at Radio City Music Hall where Coldplay unveiled pivotal songs from their new CD, A Rush Of Blood To The Head. In doing so, they hinted at the fitter, happier, more productive band they would become.

"We were in Atlanta having a nightmare at this big radio festival," Martin says, relating the sourest part of the long tour supporting their Grammy-winning debut Parachutes. "Fair enough, a lot of the audience wasn't there to see us, and so we got a bit of a hard time. But, after that, we thought, well, we either keep going along on this apologetic tip or we say 'Fuck it!' Some people here really like us, so let's play for them and let's try and improve for them so that we validate their belief in us. So it was like a big Rocky-style challenge for us as a band," he says making fists, invoking Philly's favorite fictional son. "We're not going to be scared of anyone anymore."

At Radio City the band held nothing back. Martin sprinted about the stage and bounded up stairs to feed off the energy of the audience. "That show was the first step," he says. "A month later, we got offered to headline the Glastonbury Festival in England. That was like Radio City times 10, because that's where we grew up. Someone showing that much confidence in us made us first of all think 'Oh, we can't do that' and then we said 'No, we can fucking do that!'"

Seizing such opportunities gave Coldplay a new kind of access, enabling them to meet, work with and be inspired by the likes of U2, Oasis and the Flaming Lips, who Martin calls the best live band on the planet. "I'm so into showing your belief in your band when you're on stage and thinking 'Fuck the people who don't like it,'" he says. "There'll always be people who'll give you a shitty review, but I refuse to hold back any passion. I'm up for the challenge of trying to get passionate music into the mainstream. That's why I'm so pleased to see U2 and Springsteen and even Dave Matthews out there. It's cool because they're all writing heartfelt stuff. And right now they're the biggest acts in America…and Eminem before them. I mean Eminem is as good as Springsteeen. They're all doing passionate stuff and that's brilliant. We just want to be part of that."

Even if emotions are pure and passionate, some grumble that Coldplay has gotten too popular. Some even cried sell-out when snippets of the Parachutes mega-hit "Yellow" was used in ABC-TV promo spots in the States. "Being popular is nothing to be ashamed of," Martin says. "I know that even our own fans will hate this new record. I'm sure you've read people on our web site about it, but I don't think anyone's complaining about the music though," he argues. "It annoys me that people get annoyed that we're getting popular. That's fine if people thought we were writing different music just to get popular or doing a Gap commercial — fair enough the ABC thing — but that's quite different than advertising for the Gap or us taking bit parts on Ally McBeal," he qualifies. "We're not doing that. I mean we slave for our music. In those 10 months of absolute blinkered focus of making a record, we're not thinking about how many people are going to buy it or where we're going to play, we're thinking about 'Is this good?' We're making it for individuals," he says, just getting warmed up. "We're not making it to be listened to in stadiums. We're making it so you can listen to it and feel like it's yours. We made this record for our fans as much as ourselves. I want some kid in Nebraska who liked our first record and took a lot of shit for it in the playground to walk around with this one and say 'See I told you!'"

For those types of fans, there are plenty of songs to boast about on A Rush Of Blood To The Head. For example, the first single, "In My Place," has the same, blissful pop uplift of "Yellow." While that might lead one to believe the new album is not a huge departure from Parachutes, there is a major new element in the mix: the sound of a more confident, more expressive band. Songs like "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face" and "Politik" are Coldplay's boldest musical statements yet, with stark, shimmering guitar work that recalls their idols U2 and Echo And The Bunnymen. "I don't know the word for it here, but at the moment I'm absolutely cacking myself about how people are going to react," Martin says of the new album. "It's not the same as the last one, except that we wanted to maintain the emphasis on melody and emotion. Apart from that, we wanted to do whatever was coming naturally. And what came naturally to us was the product of the last two years of our lives as far as all the people and the travel and relationships."

Perhaps the most significant relationships are those within the band. Rumors surfaced last year that the band was splitting or that A Rush… might be the last album. "All I said was maybe this'll be our last record," he says clarifying a spark of one of the rumors. "What I meant was, I don't care about our next record or our fifth record. None of us do. We care about this one. It's about now. Put everything into it now. My granddad always said 'Do it now,'" he adds. "Don't put things off and worry about what might happen." When it's suggested that friction between band members is not unlike like lovers arguing and that performing live is as rewarding as the make-up sex, Martin agrees. "Yeah. It is like being married," he admits. "We don't sleep together, but being on the tour bus is about as close as you can get."

Rumors and backstage stories will continue to fly, but as Coldplay takes this new album to the world they appear tight and focused. At a recent performance, in the middle of the hit "Trouble," Martin caught guitarist Buckland's gaze just as he sang the telling line "I never meant to cause you trouble." In that shared moment they both grinned. It could have meant absolutely nothing or it could have meant more than you'll ever know. While they are only on their second album, it's not overstatement to put the musical relationship between Martin and Buckland on par with that of Bono and the Edge, Michael Stipe and Peter Buck, Morrissey and Johnny Marr; duos that combine a charismatic, poetic singer with a guitarist whose brilliance often lies in his simplicity. Buckland doesn't really solo or show off, but his chiming single-note melodies, like the one that leads "In My Place," defines the song as much as anything. "When a good song comes, it just arrives quickly," Martin says, sketching out the songwriting process. "I run and I get Jonny and if he picks up his guitar then you know you're in business because he'll put something on it that makes it 50 times better and then Guy and Will will do the same. By the time it's finished, you think, 'My God am I really a part of that?' Even though you know that you've sat there for 10 hours doing it. Being inside Coldplay songs is the most exciting thing I've ever done," he says, still not believing how lucky he is. "Someone said to me the other day 'You guys are doing the hard work on stage.' And I said 'What do you mean?' I'm with my best friends playing songs I can't believe we've got and singing to all these people," he says wide-eyed. "Isn't it an amazing thing to be able to do that as your job?"

BlissfullyMuse · September 17, 2003