Jon Hopkins talks Coldplay with Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Cyclic Defrost Magazine spoke to Jon Hopkins a few weeks ago, and in the interview Jon talks about working and touring with Coldplay. Here is the Coldplay section of their article:

Cyclic Defrost: Now obviously you’ll be in Sydney soon, performing this live. Have you been performing this material live already?

Jon: I have, I’ve done a huge amount of touring actually since June. I was opening for Coldplay for a lot of last year, and in Japan I opened for them this year as well. And it’s just been great — it’s an unusual way to do your first tour! But it’s been an amazing experience, and certainly taken care of the nerves a bit. If I can play 40 ridiculous arena shows then I should be able to deal with anything else really. Although strangely I still get nervous when I’ve got 2 or 300 people and it’s my own show.

Cyclic Defrost: Now, obviously there are some other big name connections as well. So I was wondering how the connection with Brian Eno, who’s responsible for bringing you out, how did that come about?

Jon: Quite surreal actually — I have this friend called Leo Abrahams, who’s a guitarist and a brilliant composer, and he was in a guitar shop, just trying out some different guitars and playing some amazing stuff as he does, and Brian happened to be in there as well, and was, without him knowing, listening — and he introduced himself afterwards and took Leo’s number. And about a year later he called him up out of the blue and invited him in for a jam. And they were playing for a good two years and he did loads of stuff with Leo, and then Leo played him some of my second record and he invited me in for a jam. And on the very first day we came up with some of the stuff for Another Day on Earth and then it just went from there. That was about 5 years ago now, and we’ve stayed in touch, and he’s got me involved in most of the most interesting things I’ve worked on really. So, pretty cool!

Cyclic Defrost: Including I suppose the Coldplay connection as well. That must have initially be a spin-out to be working with somebody like that…

Jon: Well, very big spin-out actually. I’d always been a fan of their songs, and really admire that kind of songwriting where it’s very concise and, you know, being able to write melodies that the whole world can remember is more difficult than anything else really. So I was very impressed with them, and I thought there was room for an element of my kind of sound-making within their structures.

Read the full interview between Cyclic Defrost Magazine and Jon Hopkins here in Issue 23.

Jon Hopkins