The Guardian newspaper was the first media source to review last night's Coldplay Crisis gig at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool last night - and it appears it went down well with them, who once famously labelled Coldplay with having the prize for the silliest wardrobe in mainstream rock. Here is their review...

"If anyone's here for the pantomime I'm afraid you're gonna have a shit evening," quips Chris Martin, kicking off the first of two gigs for homeless charity Crisis, in "intimate" venues. "Intimate", of course, is a relative concept, but a 1,000-capacity theatre is a small gig for a group who've shifted 50m albums and treat the venue like an arena. The drum sound alone seems to come via the Mersey tunnel.

Coldplay's last album, Viva la Vida, suggests they may now be the world's biggest-selling band, and while U2 and the Stones may still be ahead in tour receipts, Martin's troops are a formidable live act. The £50 tickets (unfortunately touted for 15 times as much) get you a set of greatest hits and songs they haven't played in years, and an evening somewhere between Echo & the Bunnymen, Elton John and Anfield. In My Place raises hands in the air within 30 seconds; the crowd bellow Yellow so loudly Martin can barely get a word in.

Wearing unfeasibly tight trousers and a carnation, the thirtysomething singer is part consummate frontman, part someone stumbling on stage at a wedding party. On record, he can be overearnest; live, he is a hoot, smashing mic stands, accidentally headbutting the microphone, claiming to be listening to Radio 4 through his headphones, and insisting the band are too embarrassed to play anything from their forthcoming fifth album because it is "atrocious". However, they can unleash considerable emotion, not least when the crowd form a hushed choir as Fix You unshowily but poignantly captures the point of the evening.

Martin may wish to come over like a hapless Mr Bean, but he clearly has powers beyond even the average rock god. "If only the pantomime genie could magic up the greatest songwriter in Britain," he sighs, and lo and behold on walks Take That's Gary Barlow for a version of Back for Good, which generates such hysteria you fear for the building. The surreal cast is then joined by Peter Kay, hurling sweets, and no fewer than three Elvises, playing violins.

But perhaps the most significant moment came earlier, when the Choir With No Name – singers of varying ability drawn from "the fringes of society" – brought cheers to the rafters with their heroic, moving renditions of Christmas classics. Meanwhile, the £250,000 raised by these gigs has already established a Crisis centre in Liverpool: while governments do nothing, or worse, it seems that extraordinary events such as this can make a real difference to struggling people's lives.

More photos of Coldplay's Crisis gig at Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool (19th December 2010):

Pictures courtesy of Filippo L'Astorina on Facebook.

One of the most open and intriguing LP5 articles has emerged this morning, courtesy of BBC. They have been speaking to the band about the recent recording sessions, and according to BBC it has taken Coldplay four albums and 10 years to get around to it, but the band have confirmed they are finally on the verge of releasing their "concept" album. Read the full article below, and more discussion and a new poll is at the Coldplay forum here now [thanks IneedYou23]

The as-yet-untitled record is being produced by Brian Eno and Marcus Dravs - the same team behind the band's last album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends - the best selling album of 2008. "It's from the point of view of two people who are a bit lost," Coldplay frontman Chris Martin says. "Two like-minded outsiders who meet in a very difficult environment and therefore have a journey together."

Viva La Vida was seen by critics as a return to form after a more muted response for their previous effort - the equally commercially successful X&Y. While Viva La Vida explored grander sweeping themes of love and war, Martin said the new album will be more intimate by comparison. "It's a concept album but it's supposed to be very personal within a big framework. Does that make sense?"

Much of Viva La Vida's musical experimentation came from producer Brian Eno, who began his career with Roxy Music and has produced artists including David Bowie and Talking Head's David Byrne. "Brian is the sower of seeds and ideas and experimenting, which is very liberating. Then Marcus's job is to come in after all that's been done and try and sculpt it into some kind of releasable format. They're like a tag team," says Martin.

The chaotic recording sessions left them with a lot of half-formed and half-completed tracks, he adds. "We spent a year making a lot of noise. You know those things in a fairground where you have bran in a tub and in there are some hidden prizes? That's sort of where we are at," says Martin. "Like a lucky dip?," clarifies his bandmate, guitarist Jonny Buckland. "Yeah, a lucky dip," Martin agrees.

While the music remains a collaborative effort between musicians and producers, the songwriting is still very much up to Martin. The singer admits bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion can be brutal in their assessment of his new lyrics. "Jonny's delightful, he's the easiest to convince," he smiles. "It's when you have to take a verse to Guy or Will that things become very tearful.

"I think Guy isn't too savage with your lyrics, it's Will really," adds Buckland. "He's savage."

Yet internal squabbles over lyrics aside, Martin insists he is grateful for such candour. "I'm so lucky that we have that group, in as much as there are a lot of people who don't like us in the world, but there would be a lot more without this filtering system. Think of the rubbish that doesn't get out, if you don't like the stuff that does."

Later this month, Coldplay will play two sold-out gigs for UK homeless charity Crisis - a cause long-supported by the band. "I think it will be good for us to get our gig feet on for a couple of days because sometimes you can get very institutionalised in the studio," says Martin. "There's a danger that you forget that you're going to have to play this for people and that's when music can become a little bit silly."

Buckland agrees that the months the four-piece have spent in the studio have taken their toll: "You can forget that there are other people in the world, you can become so focused on the small group that's around you. "It's very much like I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here in our studio," says Martin. "A lot of difficult tasks and people that you find it hard to get along with, i.e. me."

Martin and Buckland say they don't have a definite date for release of the new album but add dryly that it will be "some time in the future".

Rather too self-deprecatingly given their past chart success, Martin suggests that he would like to avoid a potential battle with another big UK band. "Preferably not the same week Take That are doing anything. Nowadays, if Gary says he might be possibly playing piano on a certain day, we just say, 'Ok we'll go and work in Germany that day, there's no point in us being here.'"

Coldplay perform Christmas Lights on Top Of The Pops, BBC Studios, London (8th December 2010):

Pictures by dylan86

Pictures by coldplay.com

Director of Coldplay's Christmas Lights video, Mat Whitecross, has been speaking to website PromoNews.tv about working on the set on the South Bank of the Thames. He talked about the ideas involved, and the different incarnations the filming could have taken before they decided on a waterside location with a boat full of Coldplayers... [thanks mimixxx]

"Every Coldplay shoot involves a leap of faith," explains Whitecross. "The band are always intuitive and overflowing with great ideas. My job is to try and compress as many of them as humanly possible into a four minute track. Chris and Phil approached me three weeks ago to do a simple low budget video for their Christmas single. Just me, the band and a handycam, walking down Oxford Street at midnight..."

"A week later we’d narrowed the location down to their studio, a music hall, a central London rooftop, or possibly even Marble Arch. But finally we found ourselves on the banks of the Thames, building a huge stage, spraying confetti and setting off fireworks in front of a boatful of a hundred fans. The band are the most generous, trusting and loyal friends you could ever hope for. Working with them is like making a family video on a Hollywood budget. It doesn’t get any better than this."

Coldplay, Christmas Lights (Parlophone)

Director: Mat Whitecross

Producer: Hannah Clark

Production Company: Between The Eyes @ Pulse

Exec. Producer: Ben Pugh

Representation: OBmanagement

DP: Robbie Ryan

Production Designer: Misty Buckley

Construction: Steel Monkey

Production Manager: Natalie Bayle

Balloons: iLoom

Post Production: Marc Knapton @ Brewery FX

TK: Simone Grattarola @ Rushes

Commissioner: James Hackett

Chris Martin with Mat Whitecross film during premiere of film 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' earlier this year:

The transcript of a recent interview with Brian Eno conducted by a German radio station has been issued by his press people. The interview refers to the making of Eno’s new album, Small Craft On A Milk Sea, his decision to sign with Warp Records, and his ongoing interest in minimalism, and more interestingly, some new information that came to light about Coldplay's recording sessions during the Viva era, including the first introduction of Jon Hopkins to the Bakery recording process.

We're not sure yet as to the authenticity or timing of this article, or to what radio station it was sourced from, but below is the Coldplay exerpt - with an important brief introductory outline. More discussion on this article is at the Coldplay forum now.

Brian Eno on the creative process for the (Small Craft On A Milk Sea) new album: "The nice thing about working with a group of people is that, they do things that you wouldn’t do. They don’t have the same taste as you for a start so you, you either have to reject it or you have to embrace it somehow...

Groups always surprise you; they’re kind of randomizers really. That’s why groups that have been together a very long time sort-of stop surprising each other, because they know each other’s moves – that’s why they employ me. So I become the randomizer, the random element that throws the thing into a different pattern. Um, but with particular group of players, Leo is a musician I met I guess 10 or 12 years ago. I saw him... there used to be a shop up on Notting Hill Gate that sold second hand musical equipment and, you’d always go in there and there’d be people, you know, playing Stairway to Heaven or something like that… and so I went in one day and sitting in a dark corner of the store was a rather gentle looking person playing the most beautiful, quiet, guitar; which is already a revolution in a guitar shop: that anyone would ever play quietly.

“So I, I just listened to it for a bit and I thought: I love the way he’s playing. So I went up to him and said: ‘Could I have your number do you think, you know I might need a guitar at some point...’ And then, I didn’t for about six months and I called him – finally – and he came over. And I’d been working with a nice guitar sound; I’d been creating this guitar sound that morning – but I can’t play guitar you know – and I always tune guitar in a strange way, I don’t have a normal tuning so I’m always…[plays a demonstration] basically an open chord. But that day I had an even odder tuning it was a, I had changed two of the strings. So I had this song up and I said: ‘Do you fancy trying to play along with this?’ He took the guitar – which was tuned in this very weird tuning – and just ‘computered’… he just played along with it! Without re-tuning the guitar and, got everything right you know, I thought: ‘Wow, that’s rather impressive.’ And later I talked to him about it, I said: ‘Do you know that tuning?’ he said: ‘No no, it was really difficult’. I said: ‘Why didn’t you re-tune the guitar?’ and he said: ‘Oh, I thought it was a test!’ So anyway, I was impressed by the fact that first of all he’s a very tasteful player and he’s very interested in sound; that’s what I’m interested in you know, not just in notes and chords and that sort-of thing, but in creating worlds of sound. Some of his guitar playing sounds nothing like guitar… it sounds like huge sheets of ice breaking or, enormous orchestras all playing right at the top of their instruments or something like that.

“Anyway, so we worked together a bit and one day I said: ‘I need a keyboard player, can you think of any?’ and he said: ‘well I went to school with this guy called Jon Hopkins.’ Jon Hopkins came along, another sort-of genius player, who did a very very impressive thing. I thought it would be interesting for Jon to work on the Coldplay album, the last Coldplay album.

So I took him out there one day and they were working on a… Chris, from Coldplay, writes songs with very full and difficult chords, he always plays with ten fingers you know; in fact one of the things I often do is say: ‘Don’t use your left hand please.’

Or I make him wear gloves so he can’t play as many notes! So he’s working on this song – with these big thick complicated chords – and he said to Jon: ‘I don’t know what these chords are, shall I write them down for you?’ and Jon said: ‘Oh no that’s fine, I heard them’ and he just duplicated them all, and it was astonishing; and Chris said: ‘Can you do that with any chords?’

And there were two keyboards in the room, and there was an isolation screen between them so Jon couldn’t see what Chris’ hands were doing… so Chris is just doing really weird chords like that [demonstrates] and Jon goes: ‘Yeah yeah, that’s…’ So he has a very interesting ear, he’s an extraordinary player. In fact we used that… I did these concerts recently called ‘Pure Scenius’ where there’s seven people on stage. And one of the pieces – which we did in every one of the concerts, ’cos it was always such a success – is the Australian guy Chris Abrahams, playing something on the keyboard and Jon Hopkins echoes it.

And gradually Chris gets more and more complex in what he’s playing and Jon echoes it. And sometime if the chord is really complicated, there’ll be a slightly longer delay in the echo before Jon works it out! And sometime he gets, sometimes, not very often, he gets one note wrong and it’s incredibly fantastic when he does; it’s like a moment of huge drama when the echo is slightly off from the original. It’s a beautiful piece that, actually; we’ve done it now six times that piece.”

Pictures of Coldplay with fans in North London (1st November 2010): [thanks Lily Isabella]

Pictures by Lily Isabella

Coldplay are looking after their studio engineer and making him eat breakfast with them, as he doesn't allow himself time to take a break during the day, reports ContactMusic this morning, in an article that follows on from Roadie #42's latest blog last week. Bit harsh, ContactMusic?!

The article continues by saying - the band have become concerned about the state of Rik Simpson - who is manning music composition program Pro Tools at the Beehive studio where the band is preparing their fifth album - that they are forcing him to eat - as he doesn't appear to have time to eat properly or drink cups of hot tea, prompting guitarist Will Champion to take on a fatherly role over him.

A post on the band's blog at coldplay.com explained: "Not a lot gets past Mr. Champion. He's clearly twigged how hard Rik's been working and has figured that if Rik isn't going to look after himself, then he'll do it for him. Will stands behind Rik as he continues to fiddle in the Pro Tools screen. It's a lot like watching a parent trying to pull their child away from the X-box. I imagine Will has come straight in from the family breakfast table at home. Perhaps he's still in the transition from 'parent mode' to 'work mode'. Perhaps he's just nice. Either way, Rik starts the day with a healthy breakfast."

The budding engineer has also gained a nickname, due to the fact he never finishes a single cup of tea made for him. The blog post continued: "True to form though, his brew is still two thirds full come lunch time. I'm led to believe that in a previous studio, Rik was referred to by the name 'Coldcup' for this practice of continually being too busy to get his brew while it was still hot."

The name 'Coldcup' is a play on the name of pioneering British dance music duo, Coldcut. Coldplay's fifth and as-yet-untitled album does not have a scheduled release date at present.

Coldplaying Christmas Secret Santa 2010 - add your name to the list and vote yes in the poll!

Nomination stage voting is now open in the Coldplaying Awards 2010! (Click the banner):

If we take out of the equation some of the pretty droll and one sided articles written by The Telegraph and MTV for example, about Chris Martin's surprise performance at the Apple Keynote convention on Wednesday, there are actually some interesting reads about the use of technology and the link to the music industry. Following the convention it appears that Coldplay's Ping social network account has gone viral, and there is this article by the Irish Times, who suggest that EMI Music chiefs might be looking on as technology appears to be leaving them behind... not good when arguably their biggest artist, Coldplay, link up with the market leader in mobile consumer electronics, Apple. Here is the article:

There were probably a few EMI Music executives who choked on their spuds on Wednesday, as they watched a prize asset, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, play for Apple boss Steve Jobs and an audience of millions. Martin performed a new song, Wedding Bells , at the latest Apple extravaganza to launch new stuff, an event that will receive more coverage than the release of most EMI albums this year...

It should come as no surprise to see Martin playing nice with Jobs. A smart lad, he knows that the traction is now with the technology companies, and that labels such as EMI are just trying to keep up. There was nothing earth-shattering about Apple’s latest announcements – rejigged iPods, a relaunched Apple TV device and an iTunes-linked social-media network called Ping – with no sign of the much anticipated launch of an Apple streaming service.

Yet for all this, no one is disputing Apple’s importance to the music business. Jobs is, after all, the white knight in a black polo neck who gave the industry a viable, credible solution to download piracy in the shape of the iTunes music store. That Jobs was only ever interested in music to help shift Apple products is something the industry realised when the deal was done. All attempts by the record industry to get alternatives to iTunes up and running have come to nothing because none of these “me too” solutions are as good as the original.

And, while there are plenty of decent streaming services out there to connect you with your music in the cloud, you can bet that Apple’s version, when it comes, will be better. No wonder Martin is happy to play for Jobs – he who pays the piano player calls the tune.

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MTV got the wrong end of the stick today by suggesting that Coldplay's new song was a subconscious way of telling the media of the current state of Chris Martin's marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow. In their online article, they suggested that it points to an "imminent split" and that Chris is "goofing on the press". Wedding Bells was first heard live on the South Bank Show last September and the couple are still together. One could argue that the article is just another cheap shot at an easy target. Read on for their missive. Meanwhile back on planet Earth you can discuss here what you think Wedding Bells is really about and how it fits into the Coldplay and LP5 story.

It's the bane of any celebrity couple's public existence: The near-constant barrage of tabloid stories proclaiming that one or both of the famous duo are cheating, about to file for divorce, have a wandering eye, are pregnant or refuse to have children.

In the case of Coldplay singer Chris Martin and actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who have two children together and have been married for seven years, allegations of marital strife have dogged them for years. And while neither have deemed it necessary to respond to the persistent drumbeat of break-up rumors, their silence and the rarity of paparazzi spotting them together has helped stoke the tabloid press speculation...

On Wednesday (September 1), Martin may have inadvertently (or perhaps not) done more than anyone to throw fuel on the fire by performing a new, unreleased Coldplay song called "Wedding Bells" at an Apple computers event announcing new iPods and a social networking site called Ping. Martin suggested he was playing the somber lament-for-love-lost tune for the first, and possibly last, time ever. One listen to the lyrics and anyone inclined to believe the rumors might take them as proof positive of an imminent split, or, perhaps as a wry comment on their absurdity. Or both. Or neither.

The urgent piano ballad opens with the ominous lines, "Those wedding bells are ringing up upon that hill/ And I don't want to swallow such a bitter pill/ You keep on moving, but I stay still/ But I always loved you and I always will," before diving into even deeper territory. "Days of no sleeping caked in mud/ All kinds of poison in my blood/ I lost the only thing I ever loved/ oh oh oh oh/ I heard them ringing procession by/ Umbrellas in their clear blue sky/ And saw you swimming in that sea of white/ Oh oh oh oh/ If everything that went before didn’t matter … I always loved you and I always will."

Martin described it as the beginning of a story "that starts sadly, but that's the way these things [inaudible]."

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Music group EMI have slashed annual losses by two-thirds but said it needs millions more to stay out of the hands of lenders. Pre-tax losses at the group, whose artists include Coldplay and Katy Perry, fell 64% to £624m in the year to March 31. EMI wrote off £602m, although revenues rose 5% to £1.65bn after successes like the remastered Beatles catalogue.

Terra Firma, the private equity who bought EMI for £4.2bn in 2007, was forced to raise £105m earlier this year to meet covenant tests. EMI's annual report stated up to £26.9m was needed over the quarters to June 30, September 30 and December 31 with a further "significant shortfall" for the March 31 test.

The report said directors know further shortfalls lie ahead in respect of the covenant test periods. Stephen Alexander, chairman of EMI's holding company Maltby Capital, said the group faced more than £3bn in debt due for repayment between 2014 and 2017.

Although EMI could push for a renegotiation of its lending terms, Terra Firma is currently in a legal battle with bank, Citigroup, over the original deal three years ago before the credit crunch struck. Terra Firma alleges Citigroup "misrepresented fundamental facts" over EMI's sale, claiming that Citi falsely said there were other bidders for the record company, to prompt a higher bid. Citi denies the claims.

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More fan reviews of Coldplay roadie Matt McGinn's new book are now available online as Coldplayers finish reading their copies. The very latest discussion on the book release is at the Coldplay forum now. Thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed the book. If you want to be in with a chance of your review appearing on the main page all you have to do is write a fairly sizeable review and post it in that thread. Here are the most recent reviews...

I had a reading marathon last night. I wasn't feeling well so I went to bed early and then I made the mistake to continue reading with the book and just.couldn't.stop. Matt has a great ability to describe things from his perspective and makes you feel like you were actually there. It's cute to read he's a person who is "star-struck" easily and I loved all the little addressings to the reader like "for you anoraks still reading" etc. Matt leads you so well through time from the beginnings in a small van to the big machinery that Coldplay is now. The description of his typical day and of what has gone wrong wasn't boring it all!!! There's a story involving a cameraman which felt like the description of a movie's action scene! (It isn't life or death - but close). Oh and all his comparisons to movies made me smile more than once. What he writes is never boring and even the Glossary is soooooo funny! [thanks SueDeNimes]

Hey Everyone...kind of new to the forum but wanted to share my excitement. After getting an emailing saying my book wasn't coming till June 4th I got home from work today to find it sitting by my door!! Needless to say any plans i had were quickly thrown out the window and i have just had a marathon read of the book for the last 3 hours...It is great! A wonderful portrait of the life of a roadie inside the craziness that is Coldplay. And Guy's photography is wonderful!!! So worth every penny! [thanks atheis2783]

Finished it yesterday. One word: BRILLIANT! Like everybody said, it's not a book about Coldplay but about a man who's deep passion for music has bring him where he is now: at Jonny Buckland's side. The book, thanks to Matt's talent for funny storytelling, describes well the up and downs of a roadie life and you really feel like you're with him backstage. Of course, from now and then, you have anecdotes about the band (which most of the time are as funny as touching). The book ends on the last show in Wembley, which bring me back there. Thanks Matt, you almost make me cry! Add on the this great pics from Bez and Milly and you have a MUST HAVE book for any coldplay fan or just music lovers. GREAT JOB MATT and THANK YOU! [thanks a-chan]

Hey all, I read my two weeks ago and literally finished it within a day. I said to myself I wouldnt do it and save it for my holiday but I caved. As that has all ready been mentioned this isn't a story about coldplay it is a story about Matt McGinns journey with coldplay. How in such a small space of time a band can become so big and how it affects those around them. I dont want to ruin it for any1 but it is certainly a book of laughs and you can all but picture some of the things that happen within the coldplay group. Its an emotional ending with the story of wembley and being there myself made me appreciate this anymore. This book is a must have for any aspiring roadie or coldplay fan. You do get little snippets into coldplay but just enough to have you wanting more. I think this is a good thing as it doesn't dish the dirt on the coldplay journey but rather let you have a peak inside without being too pervy about coldplay and allowing them to still have some privacy! cheers! [thanks cleeson7]

I started reading this yesterday afternoon and finished it last night. I really wanted to make it last a few days but I just couldn't put it down!! I thought it was a witty, charming, funny, entertaining read covering all the things it needed to. There was obviously Coldplay references but for the main part it was mostly about Matt's experiences over the years. Also, some of the captions below the pictures were quite funny too. [thanks karenc]

I finished reading mine. And as people said its not a book about Coldplay, ok there are some parts about the feelings between them, but its mostly about how amazing Mr. Matt's job is. I really liked it. Almost made me cry in some parts. I think that people should read it, especially if they're Coldplay fans or just music fans in general who want to know more about how one band actually works. [thanks lndnsky]

I received my book yesterday and finished reading it earlier today, and I loved it! There were definitely some very funny parts. It also had some parts that weren't so interesting but nevertheless kept me reading. I loved how he just wrote how he would speak and didn't make it all proper. The part where Guy and Chris argue during their rehearsal had me all tense at first but then got me laughing. I never knew Guy and Chris were the fighting type towards each other. I was also outraged when some American guy threw a cd at Chris. But loved how Chris, Will, Jonny,and Guy kept going and didn't give in. It really makes me proud to be a fan of Coldplay and see that they didn't let things like that get in their way. It was nice to see a view of the band from an insider rather than just on the outside. You also get a good sense of what exactly a roadie does, and how tedious the job can be. Two thumbs up to Matt McGinn and all the other roadies and staff who make every concert possible! Without them, a proper show couldn't go on. [thanks iduran20]

I just finished the book. Aww, the fact that I heard them play at Wembley Stadium 19/09/09 made the ending extra emotional. I miss that time. He didn't get his geography quite right, when he referred to the concert in Denmark being in Silkeborg, instead of Herning. Really good book. It was very entertaining to read as Matt McGinn has some funny lines, writes in a free language and tone and includes some pretty hilarious scenarios. It's a good mixture of serious things and everyday-roadie-jokes-and-fun. The book is personal and seems to get all around with many aspects of the life of a roadie. Some things I didn't understand because my English isn't advanced enough, but it's generally easy to get the meaning, I think. It's very much about being a roadie as the title implies, rather than about Coldplay, though, you get some good insights in their shows, how they work in the studio and other previously unheard/unread stories, which make the book a must-read for Coldplay fans. [thanks Clocks In My Place]

Join our fantasy leagues before the new English Barclays Premier League kicks off on 14th August 2010!

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As part of Coldplaying's countdown to the 10th anniversary of Coldplay's debut album, Parachutes, we look back on the reviews of the album, courtesy of NME, at a time when the music magazine used to like Coldplay, of course...

Forget trashing rooms and rent-a-quotes, just listen. It's all a question of what you want from your rock stars. The criticism most often levelled at Coldplay (certainly round these parts) is that they will never be the saviours of rock'n'roll. They will never cause front-page tabloid sensation and they really like their parents. Frankly, they're more likely to enjoy a nice cup of tea in front of the TV than throw it out the window.

But, hang on. Weren't Oasis everything we could want from a rock band once? They fought, had rock star girlfriends, slagged people off and wanted loads of cash to blow on stupid houses. Fine, but those are exactly the things that have made them an embarrassment; an endless, dull cocaine comedown. Remember the disappointment you felt after 'Be Here Now'? Coldplay will never let you down like that...

Like Travis before them, Coldplay care about what really counts. 'Parachutes' is all that matters in the world to singer Chris Martin. It only takes one listen to realise how he has poured every thought, every feeling he's had in the last two years into this record. With the focus so much on Chris' voice here, it's like reading one long, intimate love letter. It's powerful because its sentiment is so simple. And, let's face it, so easy for everyone to comprehend.

Again, in the devotional 'Yellow' ("For you, I bleed myself dry", no less) or the gorgeous regret of 'Trouble' ("I never meant to do you harm"), it's the force of feeling which counts. That's what brings the entirely favourable comparisons to Jeff Buckley, The Verve, even Radiohead. But it's far gentler than anything the latter have ever done. Unlike Thom Yorke, Chris exists in a place we can almost understand. A place that Fran Healy might have passed through, but is too happy with his girlfriend to really remember.

All told, it's incredible this is a debut album. Accomplished, yet subtle, it works perfectly as a whole in a way all the production skills in the world couldn't replicate. Forget trashing rooms and rent-a-quotes, just listen. This really is all that matters.

Let it be that simple for once. 9 out of 10.

You can look back at our countdown to the 10 year anniversary of Parachutes at the Coldplay forum - includes Ken Nelson's interview and some video interviews. More to be added in that thread soon...!

As part of the countdown to the 10th anniversary of Coldplay's debut album, Parachutes, Coldplaying looks back on the recording process, courtesy of producer Ken Nelson...

Ken Nelson favours the old school of recording, based around clean signal paths, live playing and analogue tape — but that hasn't stopped him working with some of the hottest new bands in Britain. Among them are Coldplay, whose debut Parachutes album crashed straight into the charts at number one. "I like bands who can play live," insists Ken Nelson. "That's what I've done more or less all my recording life: I try to get bands to play together. That's the way they rehearse, that's the way they play live, so why change anything when you go to the studio?"

It's an old-fashioned approach, but one that has brought Nelson considerable success, along with the opportunity to work with some of the most exciting new bands around. He made his name as engineer on Gomez's remarkable debut album Bring It On, which won the 1998 Mercury Prize, and its follow-up Liquid Skin. And if favourites Coldplay should fall foul of the notoriously fickle judging process this year, there's always the possibility that Badly Drawn Boy Damon Gough — whose Hour Of The Bewilderbeast album Nelson also worked on — might walk off with the gong. (By the time you read this, the result will already be public knowledge...)

"I've been a musician since I was 11," says Nelson. "I always wanted to be a pop star, and so I went down that route of being in bands. When I decided that I wasn't going to make it — I must have been about 26, I think — I packed in the band and decided that I wanted to be an engineer. I'd done a little bit of recording, I had a four-track, and I'd quite enjoyed it — and I'd done a lot of recording in the different bands I was in."

Most of Ken Nelson's work as an engineer, including the bulk of the Coldplay album, was done at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios, a recording venue he's known since his band-playing days. He spent several years there as a house engineer, and though now freelance, still treats it as home from home: "This studio used to be called Amazon, and the band I was in recorded at Amazon, so I came up to see the boss, because he kind of knew me — we were actually signed to his label at one time, the same label that China Crisis were signed to. I came and asked him for a job, and he said if anything came up he'd give me a ring. But he didn't, so I ended up running my own studio for a couple of years with a friend, just up the road. It was kind of in at the deep end, because I knew very little apart from what I was reading in magazines. I was doing all the engineering and my mate was running the place, and then I had a little family and I just couldn't afford to do it any more. It was great experience but we weren't ever going to make any money from it.

"I did little bits and bobs around the studios in Liverpool, and then the owner of Amazon heard some stuff I'd done, and said 'Come and work for me.' And I worked there for quite a number of years. You're always waiting for a band to come in who's going to give you your big break, and Gomez were that band. They just booked into the little room upstairs. It's basically a demo room, but it's a good studio — they call it the project studio. I've done a lot of records there. The first Gomez album was done in there completely, on 16-track. They had some demos, they'd recorded a little bit of it in the garage, and then we transferred it to the 16-track and added bits and bobs. It was just lucky that I got that job, and we got on so well. It's quite hard, 'cause it can be very poorly paid — we're all self-employed, and you don't know where your next job's coming from. You always just sort of scrape by, but since Gomez, I can charge a bit more."

The success of Gomez's debut album naturally raised Ken Nelson's profile as an engineer, and the job offers began to flow. One of them came from new band Coldplay, who had previously released only an EP and a single on indie label Fierce Panda. "Pete [Ken's manager] said 'Oh, there's this band Coldplay, they're going to be good, have a listen to this.' There's a track called 'Bigger Stronger' that's on the Blue Room EP that they did, and as soon as I heard Chris Martin's voice, I realised that he was something special, and I really loved the songs. They're probably some of the best songwriters around at the moment, Coldplay.

"The night they offered me the job, they were actually playing a gig in Liverpool with Gomez. They were being beamed out live to Radio 1, and I think they were very very uptight about it, and they rushed through the set and it was quite difficult to listen to. To me, it didn't come over very well, so I was thinking to myself 'They just need to calm down.' And in the studio, that's basically what we did. We'd go through each song and get them to learn how to play it live, get them to learn what tempo to play the song at, and so on — and I think that's why the album sounds so organic. There's a lot of life in it, and what I call 'soul'. It just has something. Because it was a co-production, we were all learning how to get along with each other, and I think that was a very important thing."

Unusually for a new band, Gomez had insisted on being their own producers, so Ken was credited as engineer; and it is central to his philosophy that even when he takes a production role, he is assisting the band in realising their own ideas, rather than imposing his own views about how the project should sound. This clearly made him an attractive choice for Coldplay: "What happened was that the band had started to record the album last year, and did an EP with another producer [Chris Allison], and it went a certain way that wasn't exactly the way they wanted it to go. They wanted a bit more control over what they were doing, and they decided to stop what they were doing and look around for somebody they could work with, rather than somebody 'producing' them. I think that was important to them. And my philosophy is that I'm not producing the band, it was a co-production. It says that on the sleeve and we talked about that early on and, to be honest, I think that's possibly what got me the job, because they could have worked with anybody.

"I've been very lucky with who I've worked with. I like the idea of working with bands who are 'green', if you like — but you do find that with magazines like SOS, people know a lot about recording, which is why the co-production thing is important. I'm not telling people what to do: they have their own ideas, I just like the idea of guiding them down the road. If somebody wants to have a tweak on the EQ, that's fine by me, and sometimes something good will come of it, even if they don't know what they're doing. Even if they don't understand how a parametric EQ works, they'll just have a go — as long as I know where it was so I can put it back! Or I might say 'I know another way you can get that and there'll be slightly less noise.' I don't keep any secrets.

"I do believe that co-production is the best way. I think it's actually harder in a lot of respects to co-produce than to be telling someone — to have this vision of how it should be. Trying to manage a group of four or five people can be quite difficult. There tends to be one person who is the leader, if you like. I always try to stick up for the underdog and get everyone's views across. There tends to be one person in the band who likes to push, but that's great, that inspires you. In Coldplay I'd say that person's Chris [the singer]; the others are a little more laid-back."

Precise Placement

Ken Nelson's fondness for classic recording techniques leads him to place great emphasis on proper mic placement. He explains some of the techniques used on Coldplay's album: "I tend to use quite a lot of mics on drums, although we may just use the overheads and a bass drum mic in the mix. But I'm the kind of person who'll try to cover every eventuality. I'll mic toms top and bottom, for example — obviously this causes you more problems with phase and the phase relationship between the mics, but with a little bit of time and a patient drummer, it works. For snares, it'll be an SM57 top and bottom. They have some little Sennheiser mics at Parr Street that you can actually clip on to the drum, which are handy. I can't remember the model number, but they're quite good for, say, underneath the snare drum. On hi-hats I'll use a Sennheiser 451, or we have Neumann KM84s here, which I like. Generally I'll use AKG C414s over the kit, or Neumann U87s, depending on what's around, and AKG D12 or D112, or Neumann U47 on bass drum. For toms I tend to use Sennheiser 421s, top and bottom if I've got them, and if I've got a room like the big one at Parr Street I'll have a couple of room mics — U87s, or I like B&K omnis. Also, here they have Beyerdynamic pressure-zone mics — big wooden boxes. They're really good, you just put them on the floor. "I don't like the sound of DI'd acoustic guitar. I'll usually use KM84s, again, or a U87. They're all good mics, it's just a case of placing them. What I tend to do sometimes is have something like a KM84 cardioid mic, and I'll have say a 414 set on figure-of-eight as a room mic, that way you get a bit of the room sound.

"I like to record piano with two mics as a crossed pair of cardioids, one to pick up the high end and one the low. But on 'Trouble' I just had two microphones. One was a brighter-sounding microphone, one was a fuller sound. I just wanted to keep it quite simple, and we ended up using the fuller sound in the mix. It depends on the situation — when we were recording in one room I'd possibly only use one mic, just to keep the spillage down a little, but if you're recording a piano properly you need to get the mics away from it, that's always the best way.

"Coldplay also had this little pump organ, and you had to mic it up at the back. The sound comes out at the back, but you've got to be careful because he's pumping away like mad with his feet, and there's this noise going on — but it's all part of the instrument."

Dealing With Guitar Effects

One challenge facing recording engineers working with guitarists can be persuading the guitarist that it might be more useful to record clean than via their elaborate effects rig, so as to keep more options open at the mixing stage. Ken Nelson explains how he got around this problem: "Johnny has a Fender Twin Reverb, and he has all these delays going into it, and it was quite a delayed sort of sound, and I was thinking 'How am I going to get around that?' I just wanted to have the option of a bit more dryness. They had another Twin Reverb, a slightly different version, and I said 'What would be great would be if you could use both amps, one having all your delays going into it, and one that's completely dry,' because I'm not a great one for effects. I'd rather hear a guitarist who plugs straight into his amp and gets his sound. But Johnny's quite good, he has a little Rat distortion pedal, but he uses it very subtly just to change his sound live and add a little bit of grit to it, so he'll have a fairly clean sound on the amp and then a little bit of grit from this box.

"All his effected sounds would come out of one amp, so we'd mic that up, and mic the dry one as well, so every time, we'd record both amps. I think that worked really well — both were used in the mix, and we just balanced it, and then reverb was added, 'cause his sound is fairly reverb-heavy, he likes it to be towards the back of the soundscape. There was no reverb on the amp itself; we used proper digital reverb.

"It'd go through quite a few delays. He's got a WEM Copicat, which kept sort of slowing down — the tape loop would sometimes stick, because it's quite old, and it would produce strange choruses and delays, it wasn't perfectly in time. And he has a Lexicon effects processing unit which he uses for the delays again, and the only other effects that he uses are tremelo and wah-wah."

Mixing Parachutes

Parachutes was mixed by American mix engineer Michael Brauer in New York. "Originally, what the record company wanted to do was pick the singles and just have those mixed by a mix engineer," explains Ken. "The mix engineer they wanted to use wasn't around, so they picked Michael Brauer, and I think he's done a great job. And it was a big relief for me, really, because it was such a long process recording it, to have mixed it as well — I would have lost the perspective, and also I would have been absolutely shattered.

"Some of the mixes had to be redone — a lot of the time Michael Brauer was working on his own, because we were still recording, and some of the mixes came back and they weren't quite as we wanted them. For instance, on the first mix of 'Trouble' the vocal was overcompressed and the piano was too bright — but it wasn't really his fault, it was because we weren't there to tell him."

Parachutes Track By Track

• 'DON'T PANIC': "One of my favourite tracks on the album. I love the way it's been arranged. This was a live take — acoustic guitar, vocal, drums and bass. Johnny did two takes of overdubbed guitar and we used a little bit of one, a little bit of the other. And they have this little pump organ, they don't use it live, it's a two-and-a-half octave keyboard where you have to pump with your feet — Chris plays it, and he can sing at the same time. It's on quite a few of the tracks, though it's very subtle."

• 'SHIVER': "This was one where Chris's vocals were done in one take. He recorded more than one take, but the one we picked was one take, warts and all."

• 'SPIES': "The backing track for this was recorded at Rockfield. It took a few days to get a backing track that we were all happy with, but once it was there, it was fairly easy from then on. But the difficulty is actually getting the backing track! We had Chris in one room, it was like a little cubby hole, and he was in there for about three days while we were trying to get a decent take of this. And we had Will the drummer in another room, and Guy the bass player was playing in the control room. So they were quite separate, but that was the way we decided to do it, and it just took a long time to get a really good take of it. You get to a point where each take they do will be quite good, and you know you're close to it, and you've just got to keep going. It's quite frustrating. The final take of that track is fantastic — the guitar you hear is the guide guitar that he did, and he redid the vocals. So there'll be things like spillage of the vocal onto the guitar track, but it doesn't matter. Trying to redo that guitar would've been very, very difficult — and why do it? That was part of the philosophy. Keep as much live as you can."

• 'SPARKS': "This was another one that was recorded at the same time as 'We Never Change' — basically a live take again, and then Johnny added his guitars later."

• 'YELLOW': "We started recording that one upstairs in the project studio. The problem we had with 'Yellow' was getting the tempo just right, because a beat either side of the tempo we picked didn't have the same groove. It lost the feel of it. So we got it live and then Johnny overdubbed his guitars and we did the vocals. We did the backing vocals, the falsetto 'Oohs' and 'Aahs' in the control room as we worked them out. It all sounds very easy, but it was quite intense because we recorded it two or three times until we were happy with what we got. You can imagine that if you've recorded something and put quite a lot into it, then to decide that you're going to do it again can be quite depressing.

"'Yellow' was written at Rockfield when we were there. The studio we were in is called the Quadrangle Studio — the studio is along one side of an open courtyard about 50 yards square, and we went out one night, and because there were so few lights, the stars were just amazing. And Guy just came up with the line 'Look at the stars'. And then they went away, they had some time off at Christmas, and they'd been gigging it and it was ready to record."

• 'TROUBLE': "This was recorded four times before we got the take that we wanted. The backing track was recorded, and then each time we'd add to it to see if it was working. But we decided on the first three versions that it wasn't really happening. For the last one, we got Pro Tools in, and it was recorded into Pro Tools with a shaker providing the rhythm. Will played drums and Chris played piano in the little wooden room, and that was the backing track. The bass went down quite quickly and then Johnny did his guitars."

• 'PARACHUTES': "This is just a 50-second acoustic guitar and vocal track, which again took quite a few takes to get right."

• 'HIGH SPEED': "This wasn't done by me, it was done by the other producer [Chris Allison] last summer."

• 'WE NEVER CHANGE': "One of the proudest things on the Coldplay album for me. It was actually done live, the whole track, including the vocal, upstairs. It was basically straight into the mic amps, straight to tape. I remember when we got the take of it I was just sitting there thinking 'This is fantastic'. They were saying 'Let's try another', and we tried different takes of it, but I knew that take of it was great. And that track was sent off to Michael Brauer to be mixed, just to give him something to do, 'cause he was waiting, 'cause we went a little bit over time. And that mix came back, and when we put it on I was simply blown away by it."

• 'EVERYTHING'S NOT LOST': "We did a take of this at Rockfield, and it didn't quite work out, so we did it again here. And we ended up recording it in the last week of recording, it was the last thing we did.

"There's an extra hidden track on the album called 'Life Is For Living', which is a little 3/4 thing they had. It's mainly pump organ — you hear the pump organ quite clearly on that one — which was recorded upstairs, live again."

Straight To Tape

Parachutes was begun at Rockfield in Wales and at Matrix Wessex, but the bulk of it was recorded at Parr Street. The facilities at Parr Street consist of two large studios — one SSL-based and one Neve-based — and the smaller project/demo studio upstairs, which Gomez had used. Nelson and Coldplay worked in all three, and quite a lot of the album was actually tracked in the project studio.

Ken Nelson's approach to the recording process is best described as 'classic'. He prefers to record to analogue 2-inch tape, if possible bypassing the desk's mic amps and using high-quality stand-alone preamps instead. "I like different mic amps. If I haven't got any I'll hire some. The project studio at Parr Street has only got an A&H desk; the mic amps are OK, but they're not as good as some of the mic amps that I have myself. So it's quite a lot of trouble and it means a lot of leads, but I'll plug into the mic amps, and then go straight through a compressor to tape, or straight to tape. I use whatever's available in whatever studio I work in, but there has to be a certain amount of gear, like compressors, to make sure that the session's going to go smoothly.

"On the Coldplay album a lot of the stuff just went straight to tape, as clean as I could — the shorter the signal path, the better — and a lot of it wasn't compressed. It's not something I've really concentrated on before, but because we had the time, we decided that that would be a good way to do it, to get it so that what goes down on tape is what was played. When you haven't got the time, it is quicker just to compress things to make sure that you're not peaking. But we were recording to analogue anyway, so we could go a bit hot, especially as we were doing it without noise reduction. Obviously you can always compress later. I did compress the bass, and some of Johnny's guitars, but there's no compression on the drums, and the acoustic guitars were all put down without compression, and any keyboards as well. It adds more life to the track.

"As the album went on there were a couple of songs that we couldn't quite get on analogue. 'Yellow' was one of them: we tried it a few different ways, and a few different recordings of it, and we were never really happy. We ended up using Pro Tools; we got Pro Tools in to get the feel of it just right. We enjoyed using it, and once we'd got all the takes into the computer, we then put it down to the 2-inch, which I found was a great way to do it. In the future I'll work with a hard disk recorder, whether it's Pro Tools or whatever, because that suits — not so much for the editing side of it, just to get perhaps three takes, and if one bit's good from one, you can just cross over between them. And trying to maintain the live feel of the track, which I love. I'm not into sitting in front of the computer, chopping everything up and saying 'Does it look like it sounds good?' I'd rather just listen."

Healthy & Organic

Maintaining the feel of a live performance is, in Ken's eyes, crucial; a couple of the tracks on Parachutes were actually recorded completely live in the studio (see the 'Track By Track' box on page 200), and the most important backing parts on all the songs tended to be recorded live: "Most of the tracks would be laid down with an acoustic guitar or piano, depending on the song, drums, and bass. We'd tend to redo the bass, but if we could, we'd keep as much of that original first take as possible. That was the plan when we first got together: they wanted it to be as organic as possible, and I think that's a good policy.

"We tried click tracks on all of the songs, but on very few of them — I think about three of the tracks on the album — a click track was used in the end. We didn't make things easy for ourselves. You can play to a click, but if you were to listen to them playing without a click and then to a click, it would sound completely different. If you listened closely you'd hear that it ebbs and flows without the click, but obviously with one, it can't do that. So I'm not the biggest fan of clicks, I like a song to ebb and flow, and the band are the same."

You might expect that such a straightforward approach to recording would allow the album to be done quickly, but the total recording period lasted over six months. "We started in the middle of November, and it was finished towards the beginning of May, but they had two tours in the middle of that, one was for about a month, and the other about three weeks — so there were probably about nine or 10 weeks of recording."

Whereas some bands would spend this studio time recording thousands of overdubs, applying Auto-Tune to every note, or editing individual drum beats in Pro Tools, Coldplay and Ken Nelson simply took their time trying to get that elusive 'right' performance: "We recorded tracks again and again. If it wasn't exactly the way we wanted it we'd just do it again. We were just determined that we were going to get it to be a certain way.

"From the outset, we decided that we weren't going to use lots of trickery. Most of the vocals were one take. Chris has got that attitude of 'It's a great take; it's got that line there that's not great, but let's keep it as one take.' It's a brave thing to do, but it seems to have worked. There's probably one word that was Auto-Tuned on the album, where it was a great line, and there was just one word out of tune. "I just like that way of working, and I'd like to try and stick to it. But working with a hard disk recorder actually makes that easier. You'd think 'Oh, yeah, hard disk recording — all the editing and stuff' — but I don't really see it like that. I just like the idea of using the equipment to my advantage, the main thing being preserving the live take. I like singers who can sing a whole track rather than piecing it together. It does very little for me. I find I get lost in it. If you've patched it together, how do you know if it's any good? Whereas if someone's singing in there, you know whether he's singing well, you know whether it's a good take as it goes down. It's a gut instinct. "I'm very proud of the Coldplay album, because I think it's got quite a lot of that energy and soul, and I can actually listen to it. Not a lot of the work I do I can sit down and listen to, but I love that album. I love listening to it as a fan of the band, which is fantastic, considering I've been working on it for six months."

Firm Plans

At the time of writing, Ken Nelson has just finished an album for Norwegian singer-songwriters the Kings Of Convenience, and is deciding which offer to take up next. Whoever he ends up working with, one thing's for sure: Ken's not about to change his working method. "There are hundreds of producers and engineers who are prepared to sit in front of a computer screen getting it to look like it sounds good. And I'm not slagging them off, because I listen to a lot of music and I know it was done that way, but I still love it. I mean, if you listen to the David Gray album, it's been programmed to death, but the songs are great, and it's the songs that matter in the end.

I like to work with a band, or a singer/songwriter who can sit there playing an acoustic guitar and singing. I like people to play together, and I know this is the way it was done in the past, and I want to keep it going as long as I can. My heroes are the old producers like Andy Johns, who produced Free and Led Zeppelin. They were limited as to the number of tracks they had, so they had to bounce things onto one track, and those limitations make you much more creative, I think. Obviously we don't have those limits any more, but you're going to be limited by something, whether it's time, or money. I'd like to be seen as that kind of engineer and producer. I like the idea of working with bands who I know can play live and just trying to get something extra out of them. And I think it worked with Coldplay."

A new review of Coldplay roadie Matt McGinn's book has been found online. The very latest discussion on the book release is at the Coldplay forum now. Here is the most recent review, courtesy of Express Nightout below...

There's something impressive about a band that's so big even its roadie can publish a book. That band is Coldplay, and the group's roadie (and guitar tech) Matt McGinn spills tons of tales from tour in "Roadie: My Life on the Road With Coldplay" (Anova Books).

The book is an easy read; McGinn has a conversational style that he spices up with Britishisms ("knackered," "bloody" as an adverb, and so on), and the book reads as if you've caught up with him over a cold brew. It almost feels like a novel in that respect, as he recounts even disaster stories of failing equipment at a big show with a wink and an upbeat tone...

The only thing is: This is not a novel, and we all, of course, know how the Coldplay story goes, from unknown group to world-famous in the blink of an eye. And while any nonfiction book faces the same challenge, the issue with "Roadie" is that McGinn is writing from the present perspective. A reader knows where the band's going not just because of his own knowledge of the band's history, but also because McGinn is so excited to get to Coldplay's world domination phase that he nearly trips over his own feet getting there.

Some events he describes — such as the band's headlining the first night of the Glastonbury Festival in 2002 — are huge in their own right, but instead of pausing to enjoy the moment with a "Holy cow; look how far we've gotten!," McGinn's tone almost takes on the air of, "This is cool, but you won't guess where we're going next!"

Still, there's more to "Roadie" than stories of Coldplay's ascendency; McGinn offers a chapter entitled "Gig Day" which takes readers through a typical day on tour and spells out, in his own lighthearted way, all the things that happen before fans line up at the stadium. McGinn also reveals himself as the man behind the curtain as he reminisces about playing guitar parts for the song "Yellow" for a year on tour — completely out of sight of the crowd.

"Roadie" is full of such quirky stories about the tour life, but thankfully it's not a chronological history. Likely because shows and venues and cities tend to blur together on the road, a lot of these stories seem of the "There was this one time ..." variety (even if McGinn does name the venue), but that just adds to the conversational style.

The book's release timing couldn't be better, since it is, after all, beach season. There are far worse seaside reads than a book about real people off doing real things, and McGinn's relatable behind-the-scenes perspective makes for an unusual — if still casual — read.

Viva la Vida collaborator Jon Hopkins was exclusively interviewed by Coldplayzone.it this week, in which he answers questions on working with Coldplay on their last album 'Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends'. The musician talks also about coming back to the studio, and his recent collaborations. You can discuss this latest interview here at the Coldplay forum [thanks coldpatrix]

Hello Jon! It's a real honour and a great pleasure for Coldplayzone to interview you. How are you?

Hello. Thanks very much, I'm well. I'm on my way back from a show I just had in Montreal which was very fun.

Coldplay's fans (I'm completely aware of what I'm saying, since I'm one of them) owe to you such many things, like the microcosm of ideas you developed during the production of 'Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends'. Your main music genre - electronic music – wasn't so related to the band's ideas in the early steps of their career. How much did the relationship with Brian Eno and the confidence of Chris and the rest of the band in your music skills influence the perfect fusion of such different sounds?

I think the band and Brian were looking to expand the palette of sounds they had become accustomed to using on their previous albums. They were interested in exploring different ways of working, and particularly in the idea of working with new musicians, to break up the routine of what they have become used to...

During the recording sessions, how does electronic music come into play in the raw elaboration of the songs? How much does the fusion process affect the two creative trends?

Our collaboration begun with me jamming on keys with the band while they played through the songs, which were at the time only partly formed. It's hard to say how much that influenced the further writing but it was good to see parts that I had come up with in those first sessions surviving all the way to the final mix.

In 'Viva' your contribution and your work can be seen in more features than those reported on the official booklet. In the intro of 'Life In Technicolor' and the mainstream of 'The Escapist' your own style can be noticed very clearly, but most people don't know that also the intro of 'Violet Hill' is yours (you worked on it with Davide Rossi, we'll speak about him later on in the interview), as other notes of organ, harmonium and keyboards. Which one was the hardest for you to work on?

No particular element was more difficult than any other, but I had different levels of responsibility on each song, and so probably felt different levels of pressure corresponding to that. Prospekt's March in particular, one of the ones I co-produced, was largely my responsibility in terms of sounds and arrangement, so I remember having some very late nights working on that one.

Could you tell us something more about the intro to 'Violet Hill'? How it was born? But, most importantly, what did Brian Eno think listening to it then, since the sound elements of those 34 seconds are related to the ambient music, which he was an expert of in the past?

That came about when Davide Rossi and myself were improvising together in the studio, and though we didn't know this at the time, Chris and Rik (Simpson) were listening to what we were doing and recording it. We went back into the control room to discover they were really excited about how it was sounding. I've never actually had a conversation with Brian about it though, he wasn't there at the time, I'm don't know what he thinks of it (he laughs, ndr)

The official booklet of the album tells about one particular feature you took care of: the 'colouring'. What is it exactly?

That was a word Chris and I came up with to describe those elements that I contributed which can't easily be described with a traditional credit. They would usually be atmospheric elements, or processes I added to instruments the band had played, things like that.

Coldplay allowed people to know your music, having you performing live as a 'supporting act' before their shows, 15 times at least. Which one of them was the most amazing for you? And what kind of atmosphere did you sense before and after the show?

It was a lot more times than that I think, I did two American tours, one Japanese tour and the whole UK tour. I think the Japanese tour was the most enjoyable, I'd never been there before and had always been fascinated by the difference in culture. Plus Davide Rossi came with us on that tour, to join me on stage.

With the ping-pong, the sparks, the playstation and the buttons sewing for the uniforms, every backstage must have been very chaotic and ruled by time constraints. Do you recall anything in particular that caught your attention, among those intense moments?

Not really as I tended to spend the time leading up to the show getting very nervous and getting my thoughts together - then after my show, I had to go and DJ at Front of House until the band came on. Then I would usually watch the show. Although backstage was always busy, with people running about everywhere doing stuff, the band's dressing room was always a peaceful place.

Through this happy experience, you got to know a great work colleague, Davide Rossi (who, to the Italian fans of Coldplay, is a sort of divinity). What can you tell us about him as a musician, and as a friend? How does your approach change when you two work together or by yourselves?

Dav is great fun to work with. I've rarely met anyone who works so hard and to such a high level. We've worked together on a few projects since then, and he joins me on stage at my shows whenever it's possible. When we're working on the same project we tend to work in separate rooms but frequently play eachother what we've worked on. Generally we seem to have quite an instinctive communication within music.

Give us just an adjective to describe Chris, Jon, Will and Guy...

They're all very funny guys, great to work and hang out with.

We know you have a taste for 'Politik'. Apart from the first track of 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head', which are the three songs by Coldplay of your own A-list?

Probably Death And All His Friends, Glass Of Water and Yellow.

Let's talk about you now. Jon Hopkins officially became a musician at the age of 5, when you began to plonk away on piano. Later, you attended the 'Royal College Of Music' in London. After that your learning experiences started to change. How did you get from your institutional and 'classic' training to electronic music?

The two things developed independently, at the same time - I was becoming much more interested in electronic music at the same time as learning the piano, and eventually stopped all piano training at 17 in favour of focussing on composing electronically.

Every artist has his own music influences. What about yours?

The most obvious one I guess would be Brian. I've been a fan of his for a long time now. Otherwise I'd say electronic artists such as Plaid, Four Tet, Nathan Fake, things like that.

When did you feel aware that something was changing in your work, leading you from an early and uncertain career into the success you are living now?

I guess one thing that really made me realise things were changing was when I did a week of work on the Viva album in LA with just Chris, and we worked on the electronic side of Prospekt's March and The Escapist. This was only a few months after I'd started work with the band and so it all felt pretty new and strange. Previously I'd been used to working in small studios on my own - and then suddenly I'm in LA working in an awesome studio with one of the biggest acts in the world. It felt surreal but was amazing.

How do you feel, personally, when you are composing your tracks?

Usually pretty excited. Few things beat the feeling you get when you know you've hit on something good in a new tune.

'Opalescent' and that brilliant masterpiece 'Private Universe', then 'Contact Note' dominated by the song 'Circle' that we could listen to before the shows of Coldplay and finally 'Insides' with the 'upsetting' 'The Wider Sun' and 'Vessel' on which also Davide Rossi worked on, but above all 'Light Through The Veins', the mother of 'Life In Technicolor' and its related songs. They're all albums that achieved a big success in the electronic music scene. Which one do you think is the music production that better represents your work so far?

Definitely Insides. In my opinion it has a lot more depth and contrast than the previous two albums.

What do you think about Italy and Italian people warmth? We know that you've been here many times during your career...

I love playing in Italy. I've been lucky enough to be have a lot of chances to play there over the last few months. I've always found the Italian audiences to be very warm and responsive and always look forward to going back.

You've recently created your official Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/jonhopkinsmusic) and started on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/jon_hopkins). Do you think that a social network can help to better feel the support of your fans across the world? One of them (I don't know if you had a chance to watch it) even posted a link of a YouTube video that features a remix of 'Light Trough The Veins', 'Life In Technicolor', 'Life In Technicolor ii' and 'The Escapist'...

Yes I have found the Facebook page to be a very easy way to communicate directly with people who are interested in my music. I haven't heard that remix I don't think but I will check it out.

You've collaborated with great artists such as Coldplay, Brian Eno, David Holmes, Imogen Heap, and King Creosote, and have remixed Four Tet, Wild Beasts, Frou Frou and many more. Can you tell us something about your future projects? And again...are you going to be in the credits of the LP5 that the four guys are going to release sooner or later?

I have recently finished my first solo film score for a film called 'Monsters', which comes out in a few months. I'm really excited about this, it's an amazing film. Otherwise I am trying to get started on a fourth solo record. I have been asked by Chris to work on the next album but I don't know when yet.

We really thank you for you kindness and for the time you gave us for this interview. Would you like to say something to the community of Coldplayzone that got to know you through Coldplay and so learned to appreciate your music? Ok, I give you a hint: 'Life In Technicolor ii' is like an 'institution' here in Italy!

Thanks for all the support!

EMI has won a year's breathing space in its fight to avoid being taken over by its lender Citigroup after the music group received a £105m bail-out from Terra Firma, its private equity owner, according to the Financial Times today.

Guy Hands, chairman of Terra Firma, this week won the approval of 80 per cent of his investors to inject more of their money into EMI. Mr Hands bought EMI for £4.2bn in a deal that has become the poster child for the excesses of the buy-out bubble . "This is an exceptional vote of confidence in Terra Firma and in EMI," said Terra Firma.

The private equity group needed approval by three-quarters of investors to lift its stake in EMI to more than 30 per cent of the value of its last two funds.

The news shifts the focus at EMI to whether Mr Hands can persuade Citigroup to agree a restructuring of its £3.2bn of debt, or whether the Terra Firma boss can strike a deal with a rival music group to raise more cash by selling off part of the company. Citigroup has held out against reducing the debt load unless it were to receive equity in return, seeing no reason to do so until Terra Firma recognised that its equity in the record company behind Kylie Minogue and Coldplay was worthless.

Terra Firma wrote the value of its equity down to zero this year, however, and agreement about a restructuring could help to avert a lawsuit filed by Terra Firma against Citigroup in December. The high-profile case is due to go to trial on October 18. Mr Hands is still considering approaches to acquire 49 per cent of EMI's music publishing business, according to a person familiar with the group. The private equity group also plans to ask investors for a further £255m to cover shortfalls in earnings until 2015.

Classically trained musician Jon Hopkins is proof a modern composer can be esoteric and widely appealing at the same time.

A former child prodigy on piano, his first two releases were introspective, subtle and dreamlike, but over the last few years those qualities have been augmented by a deeper rhythmic expression. Hopkins attention to detailed, cinematic sonics caught the attention of Brian Eno, who introduced him to Coldplay when Eno produced 'Viva La Vida' two years ago. That led to a tour with the British band, and now Hopkins returns to North America on his own at Montreal's MUTEK festival on June 3.

Working with Coldplay came as a surprise, says Hopkins, though perhaps not a complete surprise, given Eno's golden Rolodex of experimental artists...

"I met Brian Eno about seven years ago and he took me out of the sphere I was in," Hopkins tells Spinner. "I had a day of jamming with Herbie Hancock and Squarepusher, which I'd never dreamed of. One day he told me he was going to produce the next Coldplay album and he just invited me in one day. I came along with my keyboard and started jamming with them. He'd got the band back to basics a little bit, all playing in the same room together for the first time in a long time and enjoying the feeling of playing as a band. Eno liked the idea of including someone who wasn't part of the original four to break it up for them.

"I found that their tastes were a lot more experimental than people imagined," he continues. "They're actually very forward thinking and progressive in their songwriting -- it was a million miles from anything I'd ever done before. I wasn't expecting such a long relationship with them; it's been amazing. It was very surreal to be in a band that everyone knows about and to discover that they were really great musicians."

Read the full interview between Spinner and Jon Hopkins here at their website.

Jon Hopkins

In an extraordinary article in the Times Online this week, Coldplay's Will Champion has been giving an insight into the pressures exerted on the band by EMI during the X&Y era. You can discuss this article at the Coldplay forum here onwards. The rest of the article is an interesting read as well...

Read enough reports about EMI's current tribulations and it’s all too easy to imagine that EMI’s problems began when Hands took over. But the recorded-music industry has been suffering for years from falling sales, widespread piracy and free downloads. And much of the label’s £1.75 billion debt was accrued long before Hands took over. If Coldplay’s 2005 album X&Y sounded like the work of a nervous band, who could blame them? They were a group attempting to make an album, knowing that high up above them EMI Group plc was issuing profit warnings citing “late delivery of albums by ... Coldplay and Gorillaz” as a reason for underperformance in the 2004-05 financial year...

“EMI didn’t handle it very well, as far as we were concerned,” Will Champion, the group’s drummer, remembers. “We really didn’t need [label executives] coming down to the studio and telling us what the singles should be. It got to the point where, on our website, we were going to put a little EMI share index, so you could watch it go up and down according to what we were doing.”

What do people talk about when they talk about EMI these days? According to Alan McGee, the sometime supremo of Creation Records: “They talk about debt, covenants and pension funds. What they never seem to talk about is the music. That’s the problem at the moment.”

And the solution? For a label that arouses the same feelings in music fans that Cadbury arouses in chocoholics, the worrying answer is that it may be too late for one. Even by the beleaguered imprint’s own recent standards, May was an extraordinary month. With Radiohead, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney long gone, one of EMI’s last remaining “legacy” brands, Queen — or what remains of them — decided to take their business elsewhere.

Admittedly, the label that Guy Hands’s private equity firm Terra Firma bought for far too much money in 2007 managed to secure another £105 million from his backers. However that didn’t even cover the £250 million that the pensions regulator ordered the company to cough up, in the same week, to correct a pension-fund shortfall (though EMI claimed that the shortfall was only £10 million). According to estimates, the label has enough operating funds to keep it trading until 2013.

When Terra Firma took the company into private ownership, the share price was no longer an issue. And if the only effect of Hands’s takeover had been to remove EMI from the stock market, industry insiders agree that this would have been preferable to what actually happened. “It takes years to build a roster that can attract new artists,” one long-serving label employee says, “but just a few months to undo it all — and that, effectively, is what happened.”

Quite how is a tale that has passed into music-industry folklore. One former head of department remembers a Powerpoint presentation in which Hands’s frosty reception was accentuated by the applause of “maybe four or five people at the front”. Another recalls discovering that John Birt — not known for his artist-friendliness during his time at the BBC — was being enlisted by Hands to “scope the creative strategy”. That EMI needed to make cuts was not at issue. What sent morale into freefall, however, were Hands’s press utterances, which seemed to single out the number of artists signed to the label as the source of its inefficiency. “One of the issues we will be addressing is the sheer size of our roster,” Hands said. He continued: “In the past we have followed the industry model of signing up as many artists as possible, while taking huge bets on a few.”

For onlookers at other labels, this was the moment that EMI signed its own death warrant. Between 1990 and 2000 Marc Marot was managing director at Island Records, bringing artists such as PJ Harvey, Pulp and Nine Inch Nails to the label. As the CEO of a management company, helping emerging acts to sign record deals, he says: “It’s crazy that EMI should not be top of my shopping list. But the fact is that there’s no sense that this is a label with an A&R strategy. The idea that you only sign the acts that are sure to succeed is naive. The bigger picture is vital. In the pharmaceutical industry millions of pounds are spent developing drugs that never get approved for manufacture.”

On first inspection, those loss-making minor bands might seem to be a drain on resources. As Marot points out though, more often than not they’re the groups that play a key role in attracting future Radioheads and Coldplays to any label. “When I was at Island, we were desperate to sign PJ Harvey. She was suspicious of signing to a major label, but one day when she came to see us, it just so happened that Julian Cope was due in to do some recording in the studio downstairs. From my window on the top floor I saw him approaching. He was wearing a stripy T-shirt and the bottom half of a dog outfit, complete with tail. I said to [Harvey]: ‘Go and talk to Julian about creative control.’ They went to a nearby café together, and when she came back she signed the deal.”

In other words, Harvey signed the deal because she thought Island was the sort of place where she might be allowed to exist as an artist without necessarily having to turn a huge profit. During his time on Island Julian Cope didn’t recoup his advance, but Harvey has. And more importantly, her continuing presence on the label sends out a signal to other artists trying to decide which stable they should choose.

“You need a maverick quality to run a label,” says Mike Batt, whose Dramatico imprint is currently home to Katie Melua, Carla Bruni and Marianne Faithfull. “You know you’ll lose on some acts, but it doesn’t matter as long as you have enough to gain with.”

According to McGee, all the best labels have a “dyed-in-the-wool music man” with whom they are associated. When he ran Creation, McGee saw himself in the vein of larger-than-life label presidents such as Berry Gordy at Motown and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic. And for a time he got the results to support that view. Creation releases by the likes of Oasis, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream — “albums that simply wouldn’t have come out on any other label” — remain among the most fêted of the 1990s. His contention that “for a time every young band wanted to sign to Creation because of those records” isn’t such an exaggeration.

When Hands arrived at EMI, the label had one executive who was regarded as a proved nurturer of talent. Described by Marot as an “awesome rival”, the label’s chairman Tony Wadsworth was a former musician himself, who helped to bring Radiohead, Coldplay, Blur, Gorillaz and, much later, Lily Allen to its Parlophone imprint. But no less important were signings such as John Cale, Dr John and Sigur Rós, whose presence on the label made it seem like an artistic community.

Both Marot and Batt cite his departure, less than a year into Hands’s tenure, as “disastrous” for the label. It was instructive to note that, at his leaving party early in 2008, Radiohead and Damon Albarn both registered their allegiance by showing up. “These days,” McGee says, “you identify [EMI] with

a guy who runs a f***ing hedge fund [sic]. It could find another Beatles and it wouldn’t make any difference because it wouldn’t want to sign to them.” Asked if he could turn the label around, the man who discovered Oasis says: “Pretty f***ing easily.”

Whether or not EMI’s salvation lies in the appointment of someone such as Alan McGee, his point is a sound one. The high-profile appointment of a known music fan would send a strong signal out to bands who might otherwise concur with McGee’s view that it’s a “toxic” brand. Hands might feel that the old way of running a label is obsolete, but Batt’s findings suggest otherwise. “Back in the late 1960s, when I was a 19-year-old A&R man for Liberty/United Artists, I signed the [stoically uncommercial blues rockers] Groundhogs, expecting to sell no more than 5,000 records. There was a sense that if you amassed a roster you liked, it would take care of itself commercially.”

Batt’s tastes may have changed, but he says that the same approach is true of Dramatico. “If you don’t like the music you’re putting out then you’re second-guessing people’s tastes. And that really does rip the soul out of what you’re doing.”

Under its guiding executive Jim Chancellor, one of Universal’s most successful imprints, Fiction, has achieved remarkable results by picking up groups that had yet to realise their potential on other labels. Elbow and Snow Patrol are its two biggest success stories. Having released three consistently excellent albums before parting ways with — yes, you guessed it — EMI, the Isle of Wight quintet the Bees seem likely to be a similarly shrewd investment for him.

Marot says that there’s a lesson to be learnt here. “EMI won’t be able to compete with other labels who also want to sign the same bands, but it can go back to grass roots and invest in groups that other labels don’t necessarily get. That’s what we did with Pulp. Just a two-single deal worth £15,000. But it was an act of faith that more than paid for itself.”

Indeed, since the 2008 appointment of Nick Gatfield as president of new music for North America, United Kingdom and Ireland, some green shoots of optimism have begun to poke through the dirt. Gatfield says that the last couple of years at EMI have been subject to “a roster regeneration process that every major label has to go through occasionally.” He likens his job at the label as that of a football manager who has to break down the existing squad to rebuild a stronger one. If an overall gameplan hasn’t seemed immediately apparent at times, Gatfield says that’s because “we don’t just sign things and throw them to market [without first developing them], but you’re just beginning to see some of that work come to fruition.” As their recent No 1 hit Good Times suggests, signing Roll Deep — the East London collective who number Tinchy Stryder and Dizzee Rascal among their former members — has been an inspired move. Tinie Tempah’s Pass Out and Professor Green’s I Need You Tonight, both huge hits, underscore the sense of a label gradually rediscovering its pop mojo.

Not surprisingly, Gatfield is keen to accentuate the positive. Spurred by the success of their hit single Need You Now, Lady Antebellum have made their eponymous album this year’s bestselling US disc. Just as importantly, its 2.1 million sales ought to ensure that the label shows healthy operating figures for the second consecutive year.

In the long term, however, it will take a new Radiohead, a new Rolling Stones or a new Queen to even begin denting that existing debt. Citing the likes of Lily Allen and Damon Albarn, even McGee concedes that some amazing artists remain on the label. “But,” he adds, “who’s going to succeed them? Unless it becomes a sexy brand again, that’s a tough question to answer.”

When a village side faced closure, they asked some famous locals for help. Simon Turnbull (Independent) talks about an unlikely alliance of rock and cricket...

The sun was not the only one with its hat on in the village known as "the Venice of the Cotswolds". By the gentle slopes of the River Windrush, a group of men with peacock-feathered head gear, blacked-up faces and red and green ribboned clothing were dancing up and down, banging their sticks and whooping.

It was, it transpired, Morris Dancing Day in Bourton-on-the-Water – to the obvious bemusement of one camcorder-toting Japanese tourist wearing a Chelsea strip. Life must be like that in this chocolate-box corner of the Cotswolds. You never quite know what you're going to get...

A five-minute drive up the road in Lower Slaughter, the village cricket team were busy pulling their new cellophane-wrapped shirts from a cardboard box. "We've just got them today," said Paul Heming, distributing them to his team-mates. "I'm sure they'll do the job. They're what all the players are wearing these days: three-quarter-length textured shirts."

Maybe so, but only the players of Slaughters United have them with the name "Coldplay" emblazoned on the chest. "Yeah, I'm sure very few cricket clubs are sponsored by a world-famous band," Heming pondered. "Coldplay was a bit of a coup for us."

How Slaughters United – of the Gloucestershire County League Fourth Division and representatives of the rural idylls of Upper and Lower Slaughter – came to be backed by one of the planet's leading rock bands was painlessly simple. Heming, the club's secretary, batsman and wicket-keeper, learned that Guy Berryman, Coldplay's bass player, had sponsored the under-15 team at Stow Rugby Club and wrote to him asking if the band might consider helping Slaughters United to get some new kit. Berryman replied, saying the band would be "delighted". A cheque for £750 swiftly followed – a Parachutes payment, you might call it.

For village cricket clubs, even in this picturesque part of the world, it is a constant struggle to keep on top of the costs. Slaughters United run two Saturday sides and a Sunday team, plus under-15s, under-13s, under-11s and under-9s. They would appear to be living proof of the ECB's claims that the game is booming in popularity at grass-roots level. Their under-15 team, managed by club chairman Nic Hayward, have won their way through to the regional finals. Slaughters (population 200) face Bristol (pop 421,300) in a David and Goliath contest.

Their shirts, too, will feature the name of the band whose front-man has first-hand knowledge of village cricketing life. Chris Martin has played for Countess Wear club in Devon; his father is the president. The Coldplay singer, reputedly fairly handy with a bat, has been involved in a game or two at Great Rissington, near-neighbours of the Slaughters club.

"A local umpire recalls having a chat with Chris Martin after one game and asking him what he did for a living," Heming said. "He told him, 'I'm in this band called Coldplay. We've just made our first album and we think it might do quite well.' And everyone at the bar went, 'Yeah, yeah'." While raising disbelieving eyebrows, no doubt.

Heming has invited Martin and his band-members to "come down and have a knock". Not that there was any sign of Gwyneth Paltrow's other-half as the butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers of Slaughters United gathered in their pavilion, kitted out in their cool new Coldplay shirts, ready to take on St Phillips North. They won the toss and the club captain Phil Chaple, a 51-year-old painter and decorator who once reached the final of a "Find a Fast Bowler for England" competition run by The Sun, strode out to open the batting with Wayne Rose, a 42-year-old farmer.

Rose rattled off 63 before his off-stump was dislodged – the top score in a Slaughters tally of 235 all-out. "In Emmerdale and The Archers, they have the farmers playing," Farmer Rose reflected, polishing off a rock bun at the tea interval. "I'd love to be in the village team in The Archers because they stop harvest to play cricket. I could play all season then."

The eclectic ranks of the Slaughters first XI also include an antique restorer, an electrician, a builder, an opera house furniture fitter, some students and an internet entrepreneur. "That's what it's all about in rural communities," Rose mused. "We're doing different things, but all joining together for the cricket."

It was not hard to see the attraction, with the sun beating down on a glorious, timeless rural setting: the green sward of the Lower Slaughter pitch backing on to allotments and the church, with the manor and the water mill just beyond. By the end of the home innings, it had drawn the grand total of eight spectators. Four of them were bicycling by-passers: Tobias Woerner, Rachel Peacock and their children, Theo, five and Ruben, three.

Though a native German, Woerner was familiar with the quintessential English game. "I've been to cricket matches," he said. "I've been to Lord's. I don't understand a thing. I watch it for the beer and for the barbies."

And now he has watched the Coldplay club. "Yeah, we wondered about the name on the shirts," his partner said. "Chris Martin lives not far from us, actually. He lives in Primrose Hill; we live in Belsize Park. I used to take Theo to a football thing, Little Kickers, and he used to take his son."

It remains to be seen whether the Coldplay front-man will take his son, and indeed his daughter, to the Slaughters. "I'd definitely hang around for that," Wayne Francis, the St Phillips North captain, said. Was he not a little envious that Slaughters had bagged their big-deal sponsorship? "Not at all," Francis replied. "Just glad to see someone like Coldplay supporting a village team. It looks good on their shirts, doesn't it?"

The whole scene at Lower Slaughter looked pretty good. Quite what possessed John Milton to sit down by the banks of the River Eye, on the other side of the village, and pen Paradise Lost is one of life's mysteries.

Resplendent in their Coldplay tops, Slaughters United prevailed by a margin of 69 runs. It was their first win of the season. As the sun set over their Cotswolds paradise, and the glasses were being raised in the bar, you could not but help think: we live in a beautiful world. Yeah we do, yeah we do.

Following yesterday's release of the 'Slashed' footage, Tim Wheeler tells Coldplay.com about their appearance in Ash's discarded film, which instead makes up the Alternative video to their new single. Here's the official interview:

Good afternoon. A few years ago, Chris and Jonny were persuaded to star in Slashed, a horror movie made on the road by Northern Irish band Ash. The film never saw the light of day and has since become the stuff of legend. But now, Ash have decided to use some of the footage for the video of their new single, Binary, which is out this week. We called up Ash's frontman Tim Wheeler to find out more about Slashed and Coldplay's role in it.

Hi Tim. How did Chris and Jonny come to be in Slashed?

We were on tour with Coldplay, doing a lot of support slots in America in 2002. When you're a support band, you've got a lot of free time, so we decided to make a slasher movie on the road. And then we kept meeting so many interesting people and getting them involved. It was kind of amazing how much fun we had and how many people wanted to join in on the action. Dave Grohl is in it too...

Did you think Chris and Jonny were good actors?

I thought they were incredible! They really showed us up. They brought an air of professionalism to the whole thing and they were really game for the laugh of it. Later on in the film, they get totally doused in blood and they were absolutely fine with it. They were both really funny as well. It's good to see their comedy side.

Why has it taken so long for Slashed to appear?

Well, we never quite finished it. I guess in the end, I was meant to get killed and our manager was meant to get killed, but I think we just ran out of time and energy. And because we never completed it, it didn't make sense to put it together. But since then, YouTube has come into existence and it's perfect for something like this, so we figured we'd stick it on one of the videos for one these 26 singles which Ash are putting out this year. It was kind of like, if we don't do it now, we'll probably never do it.

Are you still friends with Chris?

Yeah, we've been pretty close friends for a while now.

And you're a fan of Coldplay?

Oh absolutely. I've always loved what they do.

Did you see Coldplay on the Viva tour?

Yeah, I saw them in Belfast. I always seem to get a nice shout-out when I go and see them! Chris has been known to play Shining Light sometimes too - I remember he did that when I went to see them in Kentish Town once. That was a real buzz.

He does seem to be a genuine Ash fan.

I think so, yeah. He talks about hearing Angel Interceptor when he was 18 years old. He realised that we were the same age as him and he says he was intensely jealous and didn't actually want to like it, but then couldn't help himself! I think he said he saw us play at the London Astoria in '97. And I remember Will said that when they were at university he sat around trying to figure out how to play Goldfinger, which has got some quite tricky chords in it. Then, when we met them a few years later, we just really connected.

Doesn't legend have it that you met them on the street?

I think they walked by me when they were recording up in Highbury, but they said they didn't have the guts to talk to me then! Haha! I think we met properly at a festival in Norway in 2001, when I got talking to Chris. Then later that night me and him and a bunch of people went swimming in a fjord at 4am and I got totally stung on my feet by a jellyfish! After that night, we became really good mates.

And you've even collaborated with Coldplay.

Yeah, I played guitar on 1.36, which was one of the B-sides of The Scientist, and then Chris sings on Everybody's Happy Nowadays, a Buzzcocks cover we did for the Shaun of the Dead movie. He's also on one of our B-sides, called We Don't Care. And we've toured a lot together. So, yeah, there's a lot of mutual love there, I think.

Chris and Jonny do work well as a screen double act.

Absolutely. I think their role in Coldplay is very much like Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. You can tell those two really love each other. There's a lot of affection there. They're sweet guys.

And there's more to come from them in Slashed?

There is. I don't want to give the plot away too much, but both of those characters meet a very gruesome end!

Do you think they have careers ahead of them as horror movie actors?

Oh, I think they're more versatile than that - I wouldn't restrict them to slasher B-movies. Or, in the case of our one, more of a Z-movie!

For more info on Ash and their A-Z singles series, head to www.ash-official.com

The first full fan reviews of Coldplay roadie Matt McGinn's forthcoming book are now available online as Coldplayers begin receiving their copies. The very latest discussion on the book release is at the Coldplay forum now. Here are the most recent reviews...

To say I was excited about reading this book would be an understatement, like any dedicated fan I love discovering little details about the inner workings of the band, whether it’s from an interview, backstage photos, a blog, or in this case a book...and I wasn’t disappointed. Born in South Devon and possessing a love of music to rival his extremely famous bosses, Matt manages to paint an honest and hilarious picture of life with the biggest band in the world, whilst remaining completely respectful to their private lives and desire to remain enigmatic...

‘Roadie’ follows Matt from discovering rock and roll as a kid, through his many years trying to make it in a band, falling into part time roadie work and finally to fully fledged ‘Bunkline Boy’. With the band from the start, he gives us a comprehensive insight into how his role has changed as the band have become more and more successful to the hours and hours of painstaking work and the man (and of course, woman) power that now goes into preparing a venue for the 90 minute show we see today.

There’s tales from the studio too, celebrity encounters, insight into the band personalities, how they work and deal with each other and the sometimes explosive fights that occur when the stress levels are high, all of which is told with complete sincerity, emotion and humour. His recollection of the final Wembley show in September, in particular, really touched me. Though boasting a foreword by the band themselves and photography from Guy, ultimately this is Matt’s story, not Coldplay’s, and that’s no bad thing. You don’t have to be an aspiring roadie or Coldplay fan to enjoy this book. This is a man who loves his job and the people he works with and he has given us an absolutely fascinating understanding of his world. Whilst it may not be as glamorous as you’d imagine, when that alarm goes off at 7am on Monday morning you may just very well find yourself wishing you were waking up on a tour bus...[thanks mimixxx]

My copy finally arrived today and I immediately ran home from the uni post office, got into bed, and read the entire thing in less than three hours. Never have I been more grateful for being a speed-reader as I have exams to get back to tomorrow! I don't think I have time to write such an eloquent review as Mich's (which I wholeheartedly agree with) but let's just say I thought the entire thing was epic and has further cemented my dream to work in live music production (though I always wanted to be more of a Vicki Taylor than a Matt McGinn). As Mich said, if you're looking for a book about the band, this isn't it, but for God's sake read it anyway.

There are great personal stories of the band in there, but this book is really about the life and practice of being a roadie and what the life entails, and Matt tells it thoroughly and with great humor. He's been there through it all, it seems, but he focuses most of his attention on the big arena tours of X&Y and Viva la Vida, and what goes on behind the scenes more than on the front lines, ending with a heartwarming account of the last Wembley gig, which almost made me tear up both because it was a perfect ending and because I was there myself. As a side note, most of the pictures in the three glossy sections were from the New Jersey concert in October 2008 which made me squee because I was at that show in the very front row...and the Today Show...ahh, memories. It was awesome to re-live my experiences of various gigs in contrast to Matt's experiences on the front lines of the crew, as well as hear about their time in the studio recording X&Y and Viva. This is probably the most inarticulate review I've ever posted, but I've only just finished and have yet to really eat or do anything else besides read the book all day (can you tell I need some excitement in my life these days? ).

I'll probably come back later with more formed thoughts as a procrastination to revising for exams! I also can't help but almost explode at the line in the introduction that says the band is working on their own biography. When I read the part about him and other roadies giving out/not giving out picks and setlists, I thought of Pris's "name that roadie" flashcards that she made for our Hartford CT concert in 2008. Matt said one of the only reasons they ignore polite requests for souvenirs is when security are making them hurry up packing away the stage...I guess that happens a lot, because very seldom have I seen them willingly passing out things. Though I made friends with a "vidiot" in NJ in 2008 and he gave me my setlist...I just wish I knew his name! [thanks ApproximatelyInfinite]

As a Coldplay fan and an avid reader who'll try most genres, there was always a strong chance I was going to like 'Roadie'. Having said that, I have also read some pretty dreary autobiographies, which had promised to be interesting, so there was a chance I may hate it. I knew from the moment I read the introduction that I was going to enjoy this book, and I wasn't disappointed. After all, a man who quotes one of my favourite scenes from 'Pretty Woman' can't be bad! Its not often a book makes me laugh out loud, but I did on more than one occasion. Matt's telling of a disagreement between Guy & Chris had me chuckling, and I could picture the scene in my head...

Matt briefly fills us in on life before Coldplay & how he came to be a roadie, but he concentrates most of the book to working for Jonny Buckland & with Coldplay. There is plenty of material to keep you going: from the first time at Glastonbury; the transition from smaller venues to stadiums; life as a roadie and plenty more. For those avid fans (stalkers?), there's plenty of roadie name-dropping. With appearances from Dan Green, Bash, Hoppy & 42, and a great story about Jackie's crowd control techniques. There's plenty of inside stories about how the show works from the stage & what the venue looks like when you're the roadie on the stage pre-band. For those of us who are missing the Viva tour, there's plenty to bring the memories rushing back. I loved it and recommend that its one book that no Coldplay library should be without. [thanks Jenjie]

Coldplay blends and fanart (by Jen LondonSkies)

View more photos at Flickr now!

Guy Hands’s Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. is telling investors they could earn a rate of return of as much as 58 percent if they provide cash needed to keep lenders from seizing control of EMI Group Ltd, Business Week are reporting today. More discussion on this is at the Coldplay forum here onwards.

The projection includes any recovery of the original equity, which would probably be worthless without the new investment, according to a presentation Terra Firma sent its clients April 27. The firm needs to corral support from 75 percent of fund investors and inform Citigroup Inc., EMI’s lender, by May 14, according to the document.

Terra Firma asked current and third-party investors for 360 million pounds ($546 million) in two parts, to restructure EMI’s 3.2 billion pounds in loans and bring the company into compliance with its debt agreements. While EMI, whose artists include Coldplay, Queen and Pink Floyd, produces sufficient cash flow to service its obligations, it hasn’t lowered the debt enough to keep the company from breaching an agreement with lenders, according to the presentation.

“Investors really don’t like these deals because it is just asking them to put in some more money so they lose a bit less,” said Jérémie Le Febvre, partner at global placement agent Triago in Paris, which helps firms raise money. Private equity firms are restructuring loans in companies acquired at the peak of the buyout boom, to cut debt and extend maturities after a record rally in credit markets. Blackstone Group LP’s Hilton Worldwide hotel chain last month completed a deal to reduce debt by almost $4 billion and extend the maturity by two years.

Intrawest ULC, the owner of Olympic skiing resort Whistler Blackcomb that’s backed by Fortress Investment Group LLC, refinanced a loan that was due in December, after lenders threatened to auction off the resort during the Olympic games. The new loan matures in 2014, Intrawest said in a statement April 27, without giving details. The equity returns projected for EMI assume a successful exit of the fund’s investment by 2015.

Terra Firma has cut the fair value of its 2.6 billion-euro ($3.4 billion) EMI investment to zero, according to a February letter the firm’s 5.4 billion-euro fund, TFCP III, sent to investors. The fund, which put 59 percent of 2.8 billion euros it invested into EMI, owns 63 percent of the company. A separate fund, TFCP II, owns 23 percent. In addition to EMI, Terra Firma is also negotiating with creditors over TFCP III’s second-largest investment, 691 million euros in aircraft leasing company AWAS, according to the letter. The fund’s stake is now marked at 466.2 million euros. The company, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $652.2 million, has about $378 million in debt maturing this year that needs to be refinanced, according to the letter.

EMI has earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 330 million pounds in the fiscal year 2010, according to Terra Firma. The company may sell its Japanese division and its EMI Christian Music Group, the document shows. Terra Firma is seeking an initial 105 million pounds from investors to help EMI meet debt covenants through March 2011, according to the presentation. The private equity firm is also seeking guidance from investors whether they would be willing to invest an additional 255 million pounds to ensure EMI stays compliant through 2015, when its loans end. Terra Firma said it would be willing to contribute 55 million pounds.

EMI was unable to get money from other major music companies through a combination of licensing and outsourcing transactions, although talks are continuing, according to the presentation. “The majors indicated that no deal would be possible unless an equity cure for a longer period was achieved, given the perceived risks associated with the debt holder subsequently becoming the owner of the company,” Terra Firma said.

Pictures of Chris Martin in New York City (23rd April 2010):

Source: http://infdaily.com

In our new poll, we're asking you to decide who or what will have the biggest influence on Coldplay's fifth album. You can vote for your choice at the poll on the left of the page. Based on previous interviews with the band and news articles on LP5, the shortlist is below. You can also comment on the poll at the Coldplay forum, and we will synch the frontpage/forum poll results later in the month. The best comments will be published with results soon...

Roadie #42 on the solar system: Frontman Chris Martin stunned his crew this week by asking them to build him a model solar system in the band's new studio. "Here in the studio, it's difficult, if not impossible to anticipate what's coming next and what you'll be asked for... it shouldn't really come as any surprise then, that within an hour of my first day back after South America, Chris comes up to me with the following: "I've got a little project for you". "I'm not sure whether to be excited or terrified", I reply. "I'd like you to build a solar system..."

[A source said: "Chris likes to create a certain mood when he's in full creative flow. He had a real interest in 18th Century revolutionary politics when he was piecing together Viva La Vida. Now he's really got into the universe. The crew scratched their heads a little when he first came up with the request but they're cracking away now."]

Chris Martin on EMI: "What success lets you do is have complete freedom when we go back into the studio. We feel more excited about making music than ever because we know that if we do something good some people will enjoy it. It's a great thing to have a record contract, it's what every band dreams about. But ours does last until we die, basically. I wouldn't change it because we're having a great time. I would maybe change some of the figures! Artistically, they give us total freedom. We signed for a lot [of records], it won't be the last one. We're 'owned', we can't do anything without asking someone's permission."

[Talking about their EMI record contract, Chris Martin stressed the importance of having the support of the label.]

Guy Berryman on Brian Eno: "Yes, he (Brian) is not so involved in production, but he's joining us to test new songs, one or two times a week. It's great to have him around - he always brings new ideas and makes us think differently, escpecially with the rhythms that we use. The structures of the songs are very different and he is always willing to try something new. He gets bored very fast, so to keep his interest we have to keep moving with new ideas."

Roadie #42 on the Beehive: "Everywhere you go there's light streaming in. Even on a relatively gloomy British afternoon, it's noticeably bright inside. I can only imagine that this will be reflected in the new material. Talking of new material, the studio whiteboards are positively exploding with plans, schemes and fragments of fresh ideas. In some places, when Chris has run out of white-board to write on, he's carried right on to the adjacent plaster. It's like the tour was an 18 month session of shaking up the fizzy drink bottle of the band's imagination - and now they're back in the studio, the lid has been unscrewed."

[The Sun has focussed on Coldplay's new home, saying online about Viva: "The last one was written and put down at their London studio The Bakery. Now they have moved up the road to a posh new purpose built facility."]

Guy Berryman on recording restrictions: In an interview with Brazilian outlet Terra, on 28th February 2010, Guy said, "We're working on a new album that is more acoustic, organic, without wanting to sound small. We have some limitations in the manner of recording, the equipment we use - for now, we're only using acoustic instruments and very little amplification, which sounds good, but we don't know where it's going. But we have many songs written and we're very pleased with what we've done so far."

Chris Martin on the Joe Satriani affair: "That thing is painful for us, because it's just something that is not true and it's happened to us five times now on the same song - where someone says that 'you took their song' - five different people with the same song. And it also happens to be our most successful song... no-one ever says we stole our unsuccessful songs! But the good side of that was that after that whole embarassment we thought we'd better write some even better songs. So in two years time if anyone looks at that information and say, 'this band have got 57 great songs, and these people who say they wrote Coldplay songs haven't. So it becomes very inspiring."

On keeping it intimate with fans: Sources close to the band say that Chris Martin's made a conscious decision to develop a more acoustic, "stripped down" sound on their next album, and move away from the grandiose and big budget sound that characterized 'Viva la Vida.' Speaking to the Herald Sun, an anonymous source said that Martin's "determined not to be seen as a huge commercial rock juggernaut, filling stadiums and cashing in." In opting for a more acoustic, modest sound, then, the band hopes to keep themselves "as close to their fans as possible."

On the Latin American influence: Coldplay revealed Don Quixote, a song that was debuted live at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires on 26th February 2010. Coldplay fans have embraced the song, hoping it would make it on to LP5, and according to Wikipedia, Don Quixote, fully titled The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story by creating a fictional Moorish chronicler for Don Quixote named Cide Hamete Benengeli. Don Quixote was introduced by Chris Martin as a song written especially for the Latin America tour 2010. On the C-stage in Buenos Aires, Chris Martin said, "We had such a great time in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil (2007), it would be good for us (Coldplay) if we had a special song that celebrated how much we think of the Latin American audiences. We decided to write a song about the magic escape that the band receives when they come to Latin America".

The first full reviews of Coldplay roadie Matt McGinn's forthcoming book are now available online. Many thanks to the publishers for allowing Coldplaying to review the full book ahead of its release next month. Here is the review from Coldplaying's admin, Jenjie :

As a Coldplay fan and an avid reader who'll try most genres, there was always a strong chance I was going to like 'Roadie'. Having said that, I have also read some pretty dreary autobiographies, which had promised to be interesting, so there was a chance I may hate it.

I knew from the moment I read the introduction that I was going to enjoy this book, and I wasn't disappointed. After all, a man who quotes one of my favourite scenes from 'Pretty Woman' can't be bad! Its not often a book makes me laugh out loud, but I did on more than one occasion. Matt's telling of a disagreement between Guy & Chris had me chuckling, and I could picture the scene in my head...

Matt briefly fills us in on life before Coldplay & how he came to be a roadie, but he concentrates most of the book to working for Jonny Buckland & with Coldplay. There is plenty of material to keep you going: from the first time at Glastonbury; the transition from smaller venues to stadiums; life as a roadie and plenty more. For those avid fans (stalkers?), there's plenty of roadie name-dropping. With appearances from Dan Green, Bash, Hoppy & 42, and a great story about Jackie's crowd control techniques. There's plenty of inside stories about how the show works from the stage & what the venue looks like when you're the roadie on the stage pre-band. For those of us who are missing the Viva tour, there's plenty to bring the memories rushing back.

I loved it and recommend that its one book that no Coldplay library should be without.

You can also see the full page on Roadie by Matt mcGinn at WikiColdplay now, which includes the full cover image, publication details and the pre-publication teaser released by the official Coldplay site last year. There is also the first media review of the book, courtesy of The Guardian . This was published last week and Coldplayers have had the opportunity to digest this review and post their comments on it at the Coldplay forum. Whilst it is not the most favourable review possible, it does provide some excellent outline to sections you will find in the book. Here is The Guardian's review:

A Coldplay roadie's diary of excess... You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yawn. A Coldplay roadie reveals all in a no-holds-barred account of life on tour...

The Dirt, the story of Mötley Crüe's descent into druggy, boozy mania might be packed with stories of death, orgies with porn stars and car crashes, while Led Zep chronicle Hammer Of The Gods has underage groupie sex, backstage assaults and guitarists dressed as Nazis. But next up in the canon of tell-all rock tour memoirs is guitar tech Matt McGinn's Roadie: My Life On The Road With Coldplay with its tales of cheese butties, meeting Gwyneth, and telling Jay-Z move out of the way. Rescued from the Observer New Review's charity shop pile (shame on you, New Review!), here are some of its other highlights ...

On Rock Debauchery - "Coldplay crew members, like the band themselves, don't just wheel out the bloody Horlicks and the board games post-show; we all like a good knees-up with a pint and a pie after work, same as anyone else."

On Inventive Nicknames - "All Jon [buckland]'s guitars have names ending in "y" – Blacky, Sunny, Browny etc". This is followed by a three-page list of different guitar pedals and units.

On Meeting The Stars - " ... Another time I held the door open for Paul Weller at the BBC when I was doing Jools Holland's Later show with Kenickie."

On Live 8 - "I'm not getting into the politics ... frankly you'd do better to listen to some other people, like maybe Bob Geldof. Say what you like, this is a man who deserves respect."

On Snow Patrol - "I didn't even like them that much until they showed up and politely knocked us sideways with their niceness and generally relaxed, professional attitude."

On Seeing America - "Chicago is an amazing town. It's right on a massive lake for a start."

On Disastrous Errors - "Not content with handing Jonny a wrongly tuned guitar for his performance of Clocks, I later managed to drop a blob of superglue into one of its vital moving parts. Nice work, roadie!"

On Glastonbury 2002 - "I do remember some daft things about the aftermath, like my triumphant post-show cheese, pickle and crisp sarnie."

On The Roadie's Plight - "In his otherwise sharp and funny personal memoir Cider With Roadies, ex NME-hack, writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie arguably does his book's fantastic title a disservice by hardly talking about roadies at all."

On Fame - "Imagine my excitement – after years of adoring Ash from afar – of being asked to stand in on guitar for their leader at a soundcheck."

On Drummers' Names - "Will Champion, eh? What a great name."

On Dishing The Dirt - "Other stars can be a big disappointment, and almost put you off their terrific music just by being twats ... but we'll name no names here."

Continues for 240 pages. Roadie: My Life On The Road With Coldplay (Portico) is out 17 May.

Full press release for 'Roadie: My Life on the Road with Coldplay':

He may look like just any other music-loving old hippy, but Guy Hands appears increasingly out of tune with EMI, for which he paid an astronomical £4.2 billion in August 2007, according to the Sunday Mail today.

Hands has already admitted that the company is now worth only about half that sum, making it one of the most disastrous private equity takeovers. He is, of course, trying to sue his backer on the deal, Citi, to save face on this foray. But it is his spectacular failure to achieve any of the major changes he thought were so desperately needed when he arrived at the music group that is even more telling.

But such a cement-boots approach saw the Rolling Stones and Radiohead walk out while Coldplay would not let EMI market their last album, according to the Mail. Paul McCartney is set to take his back catalogue elsewhere as might Queen. EMI has also just lost a court case against Pink Floyd so cannot sell individual tracks on the internet.

Hands, it will be remembered, not only vilified the previous management for paying for 'fruit and flowers' (a euphemism for industry indulgences), he also suggested the company's artists might like to start working a little harder. At first glance you can see why. Of the 14,000 artists on EMI's books, a third had never made an album and 200 accounted for half the group's sales.

But, not content with falling out with major players on the existing roster, Hands has also set about ensuring that EMI's ability to secure new talent will be damaged by deciding that the A&R guys must give way to the suits. The emphasis has been to shift away from discovering what will sell and on to how to sell. Now, with his plans to pawn the rights to the company's catalogue in the US, Hands appears ready to whittle away EMI's attractions to new signings still further.

After all, what up-and-coming artist would want to sign for a label that no longer has the ability to promote them in the world's biggest music market? And without a healthy flow of new signings, just what will happen to EMI in the longer term? EMI has long had a struggle to build sufficient strength in America, but it is still the fourth-biggest music group in the world after Universal, Sony and Warner. It remains one of Britain's decreasing portfolio of global champions.

The previous management of EMI flirted with the idea of mergers to address the company's deficient status in the US and to benefit from more muscular global marketing and distribution.

If Hands cannot raise £120 million or so from his increasingly queasy investors to make sure he doesn't breach loan agreements with his paymasters at Citi, the American bank will seize control and almost certainly flog the lot to Warner, which is clearly waiting in the wings desperate to swoop.

I am really not in favour of losing another British treasure to an overseas buyer, but a swift death at the hands of respectable Warner, with which the business fit is arguably excellent, would surely be better than the slow dismemberment as Hands struggles to stay just above the jaws of his hungry creditor.

More on this is at the Coldplay forum here [thanks coldplayisawesome]

Pictures of Coldplay at Estadio Universitario, Monterrey, Mexico (11th March 2010):

Photos by Galo González

Simon Williams is the founder of Fierce Panda records, the much-loved UK independent label which released Coldplay's Brothers & Sisters EP in April 1999. Coldplay.com called him up to chat about his memories of working with Coldplay. This interview comes a couple of days after it was announced on the official site that Coldplay's former label will release Goldheart Assembly's debut album.

Back in 1999, Coldplay released the Brothers & Sisters EP, via UK independent label Fierce Panda. The band have remained firm supporters of the label, and they've asked the official site to let you know about Wolves And Thieves, the terrific debut album by folk-rockers Goldheart Assembly, which is out on Fierce Panda this week. Click here for more information and a free download of a track from the album. Read on for the interview with Simon Williams...

Hello Simon. So, it's 16 years since you set up Fierce Panda, over a beer with a couple of other music journalists.

That's absolutely true. We were in the Blue Posts on Tottenham Court Road in London, which is now a Boots chemists, sadly. We were talking about a scene called the New Wave of New Wave and how we should celebrate the greatness of the bands in that by putting out a record.

Those kind of drunken conversations presumably happen all the time, but then nothing comes from them.

Of course they do. And I think we were aware of that even as we were talking about it. It's the kind of conversation where you'd see each other at work the following morning, look moderately embarrassed and try and remember what the hell you were talking about. But in this instance I did actually know someone who knew a bit about putting out records, which was Ian at Damaged Goods. So before the hangover had cleared, I'd got in touch with him and he said he could help us out. That was a giant step forward without us even realising. It meant we never had to worry about how to get the records made, or how to get them into shops.

How long between the pub conversation and the first Fierce Panda release?

Probably about two months. That was pretty much how long it took to get a record out, back then. And we unwittingly invented the double 7-inch six track EP. Originally it was going to be one 7-inch with four bands on, but then other bands heard about it and wanted to be on it.

And the label became pretty successful, pretty quickly?

Yeah. We didn't really know what we were doing, but we did five of these compilations EPs in the first year and found ourselves a pretty hardcore fanbase of collectors. We had bands like Supergrass and Ash on those early releases. We quite quickly had a clear identity and people begging for us to put out more material.

So, when did you first spot Coldplay?

That was in November 1998, in the Camden Falcon. One of the most stinky, notorious Camden venues of all. Someone was reminiscing last night about breathing in the spores in the toilets!

Were you just there hanging out?

Yeah, back then you'd either find yourself at the Bull & Gate, the Dublin Castle or the Falcon. 1998 was also the same time as bands like Muse and Elbow were playing their first gigs in London . I remember seeing Muse at the Falcon as well. Another one of those gigs where you could barely breathe.

It was never a particularly pleasant place to spend time.

Not at all, no. But it didn't really bother bands like Coldplay and Keane after them. Playing those places was just what you did. There wasn't a team around them pontificating about where the next gig should be and how to exploit the fanbase, which is what happens with new bands now. People are a lot more cynical and careerist about it these days. It seems faintly ludicrous that a band of Coldplay's stature should have come from a place with a toilet as ghastly as the Falcon's was.

Do you have strong memories of that first time you saw Coldplay?

Yes, it really stands out, because they were absolutely brilliant. I remember the gig was rammed, but there were no music industry people there. It's fairly unique for a band of that stature to have a roomful of their own fans, without being rubbish. But the songs were great, the band were charming and it just ticked all my boxes. They'd actually already played In The City and stuff like that, so I was hardly first out of the blocks in terms of A&R. But I guess we were just in the right place at the right time. And I think we were the only indie label that would've gone for a band like that, because we didn't have a set agenda. Other labels might have worried about alienating the cool people who bought their records, but we didn't have those problems. We never pretended to be cool!

They certainly didn't fit into an obvious scene at that time.

They really didn't. They kind of set their own agenda. That's what made them stand out - there was nothing like them, and they weren't posing or pretending. The indie scene was just floundering around then. There was some good indie punk-pop out there, but nothing with the musicianship and grace of Coldplay.

Did you speak to them that night?

Yes, it's always a question of getting drunk and striking while the iron is hot! I asked them if they wanted to do a single on Fierce Panda and so started a beautiful relationship.

And then you gave them some money to record a single.

Yeah, I think it was £400. And they went into Station Studios in Southgate, which I don't think is there any more, just like any normal Panda release.

Did you tell them which songs to record and that sort of thing?

I think if you'd asked me what song I would've really wanted out of all those early demos, I would've said Shiver. But normally we'd just leave it up to the bands. And Coldplay gave us a song which has barely been heard again, in Brothers And Sisters. It's a good song. But six months later they'd written Yellow, which must have changed their confidence levels and their quality control as well. So songs which were absolute stand outs down the Falcon show were suddenly not as good as this future smash.

Were you aware that Coldplay were on their way to big things?

Well, when you're seeing 15 bands a week, you can certainly tell which ones stand out. You can't tell that they're going to sell 50 million albums, or however many they've sold, but there was certainly something different and striking about the whole persona of the band. They were better than anything else I'd seen that week and better than anything else we'd put out for a good 20 singles. And from that point, it was all about momentum. In all the time we worked the band, I never saw them play to an empty room. And whenever they played to new people, they'd win them over really quickly. In fact, it almost felt like any band Coldplay toured with - music press darlings like Terris or Bellatrix - were instantly screwed because Coldplay almost sucked up all the good vibes and good fortune!

Do you think the Fierce Panda single changed the course of Coldplay's career?

Well, it wasn't so much the single release itself as the fact that it got onto radio. Once that happened, it just changed the industry's opinion of the band. A&R people often forget that the way most people experience music is on the radio. So the first time people heard Coldplay, they didn't know Chris looked like Leo Sayer! A lot of bands loved by the industry and the press didn't have a song that was good enough to impact on radio. And that was the thing that Coldplay did have in spades.

The single charted too.

Yes, I believe it got into the charts at Number 99! I remember the band were over-joyed.

Did you try to sign them beyond the one single deal?

We did. We had a deal with Mushroom Records and we desperately tried to sign Coldplay. But in the end, Parlophone got them. And, to be fair, if I'd been in Coldplay, I'd have signed to Parlophone. They were absolutely untouchable at that particular point. And obviously if you've got a fondness for Radiohead, then that's the label for you. But we absolutely did our best to get them.

You must've been disappointed.

Well, gawd bless them, we got a call from Chris saying "We'd like to take you for a drink, we're in Hammersmith, but we'll come up to Walthamstow now". Parlophone were based in Hammersmith, so the penny kind of dropped at that point. But they came all the way across London to tell us face to face that they'd signed for Parlophone.

That was pretty decent of them.

Definitely - and I hope Parlophone paid for the taxi! What I found fascinating about the band was their absolute attention to detail. They went to the mastering of the single in Walthamstow, and if you went out for a drink with Chris, he'd constantly bombard you with questions, but without making you feel like you were being interrogated or used. They were just genuinely fascinated by the whole process of it. And completely up for anything - even if it was being first on the bill in a tiny place like the Bull & Gate. And with all that questioning and diligence, came the charm. That was the key to the whole essence of it. But I do wonder what life would've been like for Coldplay if they had signed straight to a major. Would they have got in the NME? They weren't pretending to be cool, slouching around Camden trying to buy drugs. They were just incredibly eloquent, nice lads. Saying that, I did go to their student flat near ULU once. That was quite something.

In what sense?

I have never seen such a dirty toilet! People might have been calling them posh, rich kids, but they certainly knew how to slum it!

What did you think of the other tracks on the Brothers & Sisters EP?

They were great. It's a lovely little EP, even though I don't think anything much happened to any of those songs afterwards. We did two singles with Keane and I think three of the songs went on to be Top 10 hits. But I do remember that Coldplay hated the recording of it. It's no wonder they hang out with perfectionists like Brian Eno now. They understood that it was £400 session and they did it without complaints. But Chris was never shy about wincing about the actual recording quality. Even then they had that commercial nous about them, I guess.

Where did the EP's artwork come from?

I think it was either done by them or one of their student friends. It certainly wasn't commissioned by us.

It's not the most beautiful cover they've had.

No, not at all. You can barely see their name on there. It's got a kind of sixth form cosmic vibe. But, again, I guess that shows they were still trying to find their own identity.

The EP is still available on iTunes. Do many people buy it?

Yeah, it ticks over, although I won't be able to retire off it! There's still a lot of people out there who own Coldplay albums who don't know it exists. But it's certainly part of their story, though, alongside the Safety EP.

How are things going with Fierce Panda now?

We're still going strong. In fact, stronger than ever really. Major labels seem to have stopped signing guitar bands completely, so we can get someone like Goldheart Assembly to do an album with us, whereas maybe two or three years ago they'd probably have got embroiled in some A&R war and been signed to a big deal too soon. We had got to a point where it felt like the only reason people wanted to release singles with us was to help get them a big deal. Whereas with Coldplay, all we were doing it for was to put out a great record by a great new band.

Have you kept in touch with Coldplay?

Not really. I'm asked that quite often, actually. We do share the same lawyer and I've been along to a couple of gigs they've done, but I don't have their phone numbers or anything. They've got their South American tours to do and I've got to go and find someone else to put a record out by!

But the band do still seem to have genuine affection for Fierce Panda.

Yeah, I did have a cup of tea with them before Christmas and it's unnerving how little they've changed, really. They've still got that phenomenal work ethic and they always were incredibly grateful to us. I think you can see that in them coming all the way from Hammersmith to Walthamstow to break the news to us. That really was above and beyond the call of duty. And they've never denied the existence of the Brothers & Sisters EP, or re-written history to take us out of their story.

So Goldheart Assembly are your big push for this year.

That's right. I first heard about them in November 2008, because their manager was looking for a gig at our night. We ended up putting them on a few times and falling a little bit more in love with them each time. They're just absolutely brilliant. Every single step of the way with them has been a joy.

Do you think Coldplay fans would like them?

Definitely. Again, it's all about the songs. They get the odd Midlake, Fleet Foxes or Low Anthem reference, but they're British through and through, and the two singers think they're Lennon and McCartney. People call it folk, but to them it's just pop. They're definitely worth a listen.

And you look back fondly on your time as Coldplay's label boss?

Yeah, totally. You leave a lot of gigs because the band's crap or you're fed up of paying £3.90 for a can of Fosters or it's too full of industry people, or whatever. But I can honestly say that the second Coldplay show at the Bull & Gate - the launch party for the single - is the only time I've ever left a gig because it was too good. It was absolutely phenomenal. Halfway through Shiver, I had to send myself out to the bar because I got a bit over emotional. It was just too amazing.

The Brothers & Sisters EP is available from iTunes - click here to download it.

Goldheart Assembly's debut album, Wolves And Thieves, is out now on Fierce Panda. Click here for more info and a free MP3 of one of the album's tracks.

Rio De Janeiro: Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman spoke with Brazilian music website, Terra, in the latest of Coldplay's Latin American interviews of 2010. Below is the roughly translated article of the Brazilian article found online. Guy confirms that Coldplay are hoping for a December release to their 'acoustic' fifth album, but if it doesn't appear by the end of the year then it won't be the first time a deadline has been extended. More discussion on this latest article is at the Coldplay forum now [thanks Iriden & marie/pims]

A room with walls behind the makeshift stage set up at Square Apotheosis sounds out of one of a mandolin. A cordon of security guards wearing black will not let anyone get close. Testing chords and improvising a song on the premises is the group formed by Chris Martin, Guy Berryman, Will Champion and Jonny Buckland.

Coldplay is in Rio de Janeiro for the first show of Viva La Vida tour in the country, which will go through Sao Paulo on Tuesday. Bassist Guy Berryman is scheduled to leave the room to chat with Terra. Displaying a friendly smile and an education worthy of the reputation of the United Kingdom, he spoke for twenty minutes on the tour, the band's future and the music industry...

What do you think about Brazil?

It's been great. I love the energy and vibe of the people here. Unfortunately we do not have much time here, we leave tomorrow. I would love to spend more time in Brazil and learn more Rio de Janeiro. I have a few hours tomorrow and I will try to do as much as possible.

What has been the reaction of the audience to tour Viva La Vida?

It's been too much. We're almost two years with this show. It took a while to get it right in the design and set list, but we got there. I think it is the best tour we did today. Certainly, the audience has been wonderful. The first show we did in Argentina was incredible.

Really, why?

I do not know. Well, I think the Latin American public is noisy. They react in an impressive way to music. We love coming here.

How to you after 12 years of band, playing and traveling together, the will remains the same?

We are very lucky, I guess. Many bands seem to get away with time and we do not. We have a very strong friendship. We've improved as musicians and really enjoyed ourselves. We continue with the hunger to make music and we are very excited about the new songs we're creating. We were in the studio, recording new material and will remain so, how long do we keep enjoying it.

How will the next album? Do you have a big difference from the last? What can we expect?

We're working on a new album that is more acoustic, organic. Not want to sound small. We want great, but we have some limitations, you know. In the manner of recording, the equipment we use.

Yes, you used enough synthesizers and effects in the final disk. So the new album should sound very different ...

I do not know. For now, we are only using acoustic instruments and very little amplification. It sounded very good. We do not know where this is going. But we have many things written and we are well pleased with what we've done so far.

The disc should come out until Christmas, right?

Well .. that's the plan. But you know. We have an incredible ability to disobey the dates planned. I do not know. But hopefully, to finish this tour, we can return to work and finish as quickly as possible. The only requirement is that is good.

You continue working with producer Brian Eno?

Yes, he is not so involved in production. But is joining us to test new songs, one or two times a week. It's great to have him around. He always brings new ideas ...

As he influenced your work?

He made us think differently. In the opened windows to the rhythms that we use. The structures of the songs are very different and he is always willing to try something new. He gets bored very fast. So, to keep his interest we have to keep moving and showing us new things.

You have prepared something special for the show today?

The show is pretty cool. Full of surprises. I think the best is that we have different stages. Let's each other, we close the hearing. For us it is important that approach. We do not like to stay away from the public.

Speaking of the music industry. How would you feel if you knew that some of his fans simply copy your music from the Internet without paying anything for the band?

I do not know. This is a very difficult question. No one really knows what will happen. We can not complain. We had so much success over the past ten years. I do not think we were very affected by it. Perhaps the new bands suffer more.

What is your position? You release an album for free?

If you reach the point where we release an album for free ... The artists have to find other ways. I think more and more bands and musicians are more open to the idea of doing business or have their music featured in films, for example. I think the subject is still taboo, but people over time will open more and find another way to make money with music.

You hear some Brazilian artist?

Yes, Sergio Mendes and Mark Vale ... Brazilians are have much rhythm.

You have always been engaged in campaigns. The music for you to walk with the attitude, it can make a difference.

I think the music or both. But we have access to a huge audience. People hear what we say. So when people approaching us and asking us to spread his message, we think we should. We have a great influence for many young people. So it is useful for those organizations that are important. And it really makes a difference. Especially the work we did with the campaign for Fair Trade. Many people got involved. We see people in supermarkets looking at products and seeing if you have the Fair Trade label.

What was the best show of the tour Viva La Vida?

Ah, there was no bad show ... If I were to name one, I would say that playing at Wembley Stadium in London, was a remarkable thing for us. Always dream, since young people in getting there.

Do you have any music that you can not bear to touch?

No Really, it has not. The set is very neat and is not a song is a journey. I still loved it and we only have eight more shows to finish. So we went through that very well.

What music is working better with the audience?

Viva La Vida, for sure. People sing along and it will be loud tonight (laughs).

What is legal and what is annoying in a tour?

It's great to see new countries, stay in great hotels. You know, just out of the English winter. It's great to come to a warm place. There is not much to complain about it. Just the fact of getting away from our families. I have a daughter three years old and I can not see her for five weeks.

You do kind of ritual before going on stage?

No, not sacrifice any animal or something (laughs). We do some vocal exercises and try to have a moment of silence together.

Backstage photos of Coldplay's dressing room in Rio De Janeiro (28th February 2010):

Pictures by showcoldplay.com.br