My Coldplay.com

Taken from: Rock Star
Author: Steffen Rueth
Pages: 79-80-81-81-82-83
Date: June / July 2008

LIFE IS BEAUITFUL

Everyday gymnastics, family life and team spirit. These are the rules of life that Coldplay suggest to anyone who wants to preserve eternal youth and apply to the throne of rock. The fit band talks about the new album ‘Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends’.

When they met during university, in London, Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion simply wanted to make music. Something that, once they became Coldplay, was transformed into a form of full-time job. It is now almost ten years and thirty million records since then and no album, in 2008, is awaited with more anxiety than ‘Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends’, the ambitious fourth piece of work of Gwyneth Paltrow’s husband and his three companions, produced by Brian Eno (U2, David Bowie). We had a long chat with Chris and Jonny in the group’s headquarters, The Bakery. And we met a band in excellent form, who still hardly believe they’re no longer nineteen years old.
Chris, have you just finished jogging?
Chris: “Yes, I have just finished my training. I just need some time to recover a bit…”.
Do you train every day?
C: “Yes! I eat so much chocolate that I must train a lot. Otherwise I would risk to become a fat singer and am not yet ready for this evetuality”.
Is the fate of a man decided when you’re thirty?
C: “You’re right. The rule is: less chocolate cakes”.
Do you run the marathon?
C: “No. I like yoga”.
Jonny: “Guy recently run a marathon here in London…”
In short: perhaps Coldplay are not one of the best bands in the world, but they certainly are one of the fitter.
C: “We believe, and no matter how stupid this assertion may seem, that the fatter the members of a band become, the lazier they are. Maybe it’s a great nonsense, but I’m sure about it”.
J: “It mainly happens to great success bands. They think ‘Ok, we have the money, let’s start spending it all in candies…’”.
Confectionery or cocaine?
J: “You’re right: both”.
C: “If we said that we have spent the last three years of our lives drinking champagne and eating caviar, you would most certainly not take our music seriously. Actually, maybe my theory is not standing: Pavarotti was the fattest singer of all time but he also was the best singer in the world. So I just contradicted myself”.
J: “But do you think he was really that fat?”
C: “I know that he needed two seats when on a plane”.
Although you’re thin, you sing in a deeper tone on the album, compared with the previous ones. Why did you made this choice?
C: “I wanted to try a few new tricks. In ‘X&Y’ I was often singing at very high tones. It’s much harder to sing in a low tone, but I feel really good when I reach a deep note: this way my whole body vibrates.”
I’m not able to sing. Can you describe what is this vibration like?
C: “You’re able to sing too. You just need to try. Take two classes and you’ll begin to feel it too. Singing is about being confident in yourself. When you go to a football match and see 50 thousand men singing after drinking a few beers, you feel you can do it too. It’s amazing: those fifty thousand manage to take the right note, have a great power and an amazing vocal range. If you asked each of them, after the game, if they’re able to sing, all of them would say no”.
For them the rule applies: union is strength…
C: “Exactly. But this is my theory. Singing means be confident in yourself”.
So, how much is Chris Martin confident in himself?
C: “At the moment I don’t feel so confident. But I always trust in me enough to open my mouth. There’s a lot of people who currently has a certain opinion about the way I sing and about my voice. This can be embarrassing. But on the other hand I love singing, therefore I don’t care if someone doesn’t like my voice”.
So you sing for the many who like your voice and not for those few who don’t love it…
C: “You’re right. Although there are many people who don’t like to hear me singing”.
Are there still many people around who think Coldplay are ridiculous?
C: “We have sold about 20 million albums and there are six billion people in the world. I think there’s still few people who haven’t spent any money on us (laughs). However I like the idea that there are still five billion nine hundred and eighty million people to be convinced”.
Maybe you will make it with ‘Viva la Vida’. The album is very experimental and adventurous in terms of sound and tracks composition. What were the difficulties compared to the previous ones?
C: “The basic feeling at the moment is that of a liberation. Our previous album was a real effort. We were used to criticism and to be a famous band who played big concerts. At that time it was not easy for us to see our progress as musicians. This time we’ve been supported by Brian Eno and Markus Dravs as producers. They helped us to strip down to our true sound. They took us back, when we were only four people in a room. And we finally ceased to worry about our songs not being up to ‘Clocks’ or that the next could have the same success as ‘Fix You’. We felt free to try any style. We didn’t have to do any more ‘traditional’ Coldplay music, because there was enough of it around”.
So, someone put you in a small place and you were happy, more than on a huge stage?
C: “No. When we end up in a small place, we want to go into a bigger room and play in front of as many people as possible”.
J: “We wanted to get rid of the usual gimmicks. There are things that we could have achieved even sleeping. But we wanted to abandon these formulas to try many new things”.
C: “Writing and recording an album is more or less like being in a bathroom. You undress, wash, shave and at some point you come out refreshed and well dressed. When you work in the studio you’re really naked. I know, it’s a terrible metaphor but I hope you get what I mean”.
Do you spend a lot of time in the bathroom? More than your wife?
C: “Maybe not. But what I wanted to say is that when you do our job you need a great self-esteem to try new ideas, as many of them could sound terrible afterwards. And during these rehearsals you feel as being naked and without any defense. But you have to go on. It would be easy to say: “Okay, boys, we know that this kind of sound works, let’s follow this direction”. We haven’t in this album, in any way”.
Remaining on the subject, each one in the band has a beard. Apart from you, Chris. Why?
C: “You’re not really calling beard that few facial hair Jonny has, right? Are you kidding?”
J: “I also wore a moustache, for that matter. We tried different hairstyles”.
C: “When did you wear a mustache?”
J: “When we were in South America”.
C: “I am the oldest in the band. And I feel a great pleasure about looking the youngest. I believe that shaving has been a consequence of my middle-age crisis. When I passed 31 years I thought: “damn, this beard must go”. And now I feel a twelve-year-old again”.
How old do you really feel?
C: “About twenty-eight. No, I’m joking. I think that when you’re thirty, you’ve reached the second half of your youth. I still feel really young but I’m beginning to consider my age with more attention. When you’re twenty you see thirty as a great barrier. Then when you’re over thirty, you realize you’re an adult and everything is exactly as before”.
Are you worried about turning 40?
C: “No, not at all. I feel really calm about my entry into the next decade and I rather guess how I’d feel at 90″.
J: “You’ll simply be old and couldn’t care less about it”.
How much being in Coldplay helps to stay young? Do you age faster when you have all the eyes of the world on you?
C: “In one week I travel more than I’ve done in the first twenty years of my life. And when you travel around the world you always learn something new. This means I grow a lot and I grew more quickly because I saw and experienced much more than any person of my same age. I think that becoming adults is mainly related to life experiences. In addition, we also have children and the concerns that involve them”.
You’ve been the first in the band to have a daughter. Apple is now 4 and since then all Coldplay have become parents. Do you organise parties with your five children?
C: “Last Saturday we celebrated together the birthday of Ava, Will’s daughter. She is only six days younger than my Moses. We were all together, men, women, children and it was really fun. We spend most of the time among the four of us doing things related to the band. But when all the children are around, we realize we’re no longer nineteen years old”.
You said that your children enriched your life…
C: “Oh, sure. Every life experience makes you aware of your priorities. I think there are things in life that make you open your eyes about what is really important. My children had me to concentrate about the essential things for my existence and taught me not to squander my time. So I fully concentrated on music and on children, since when they become the most important thing in my life”.
Did you give up doing something because of your children and music?
C: “Playing golf. But it’s not that important for me. When I have some spare time, I’d rather play with Apple and Moses”.
Let’s speak about the strange title of the album: ‘Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends’. What does this mean?
C: “This is a kind of joke. We laugh about the fact that there is a category of people who asks us why our music is so positive and another who wants to know why we make such depressing music. For all the things we do, there is a half of people who sees it in a certain way and the other half that sees it in a diametrically opposite way. So we chose a title that was cheerful and depressing at the same time. We simply wanted to have two titles. Everyone can choose the one closest to his mood”.
Is it positive or negative, the fact that people do not agree on the emotional direction your songs lead to?
C: “I think it’s a great thing. It’s a bit like in Woody Allen’s movies. I believe that he is by far the most important source of inspiration for my lyrics. He always handles our own arguments: he arises questions on God existence and the meaning of life. And you never know if he is happy or desperate. But this is life. You can never say whether you’re happy or sad”.
Why is it so difficult? ‘A super family, a super career, I love the music I do, everything is perfect’. You could safely say these things…
C: “Of course, I say it to myself, sometimes. But then things happen when you don’t expect them. For example, when someone near you is ill. Life is various. But even when it’s especially bright, there’s always a little bit of darkness that awaits for you, somewhere. When you’re in bed with four strippers, there are people in the world who don’t have enough food to eat. In short: there’s always something to be improved”.
I don’t know if it ever happend to you. But if I happen to go to bed with four strippers I would never think about hunger in the Third World.
C: “Ok, it was a bad example (laughs), but you got what I meant. There is always light and darkness”.
In the title song you speak very extensively about Church, the Pope and similar topics. What are you referring to?
C: “I try to sing from the perspective of a king or a leader who is assaulted, in his palace, by the revolutionaries willing to remove him from the throne. I’m fascinated by this idea. The end of a kingdom. It’s the moment you have to answer for all that you have done. The best example in this respect is the French Revolution”.
Do you feel you’re in a situation similar to that of Louis XIV when Napoleon was at the gates? Do you feel like the king of the realm as young and angry rock bands are trying to depose you?
C: “No, we’re still there. We still have U2 and The Beatles as our models. We would like to reach their status”.
Did Brian Eno produce your album in order for you to take another step towards the threshold of U2’s door?
C: “Maybe. But, really, we don’t see us on top of something. At most we are somewhere in the middle”.
Before you said you’re not too confident about yourself. Now you’re acting like a very modest person. Is this your character or are you consciously thinking: ‘Guys, let’s keep a low profile, although last year we sold more records than anyone else’?
C: “There are fast-food chains selling million of hamburgers every day. Do their hamburger have something special? You cannot measure the quality of a product on sales. In my opinion none of this has much to do with modesty and with arrogance but rather with a desire to improve in what you do for people who want to listen to your music. With ‘Viva la Vida’ we tried to record an album that justifies the act of listening to Coldplay. I am thinking about fifteen-years-old children at school who say: “I like, Coldplay”. Our real goal is to make an album about which everyone can say this sentence with pride”.
You are again being modest
C: “No. Being cool in schools’ courtyards is a great result”.
And were you cool, back in the time?
C: “No. But I would have liked to be one of those guys saying ‘I like Coldplay’”.
What is Violet Hill about?
C: “It’s our first attempt to write a protest song. We like the idea of publishing something that sounds angry, with many guitars”.
It sounds very beatles, this song…
C: “You’re right. It was about time for us to steal something to John Lennon”.
What do you protest against?
C: “The song invites you not to do what you’re said to do”.
By contrast, the album contains also “Strawberry Swing”, the most explicit love song you’ve ever written.
C: “Yes. Whether you like it or not, in the album that we created there are so many different colors. ‘Strawberry Swing’ is the one emanating more colors than anyone else. When I listen to it I think of a bright red of pleasure and magic”.
Was the song inspired by a day in the park or something similar?
C: “No. Really. Maybe I don’t remember anymore”.
You sing ‘Without you, it’s a waste of time’. What was your wife reaction listening to these verses?
C: “(stuttering) I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t know. I don’t like being in a room while someone listens to our music”.
So you said something like: “Dear, I leave for a few minutes, just the time you need to listen to it’?
C: “Yes. I always leave the room when people listen to my new songs. I do the same with everyone”.
But does Gwyneth like the album? During the the premiere for ‘Iron Man’ she said that ‘Viva la Vida’ is her favorite Coldplay album ever.
C: “I’d rather change the subject. Seriously, I don’t like to talk about these things. It makes me uncomfortable”.
Are you preparing a statement in which you affirm: we are not doing this kind of music to be obscured by superficiality such as red carpet appearances and other similar things?
C: “A manifesto is not needed. We are like this, that’s it”.
J: “The four of us are trying to keep our feet on the ground. We don’t want other things to stay in the middle”.
C: “That’s why solo tours are dangerous. You immediately come in contact with this fascinating world, which is very dangerous because everything is unreal. But since we are a true gang, no one is impressed by how famous the other is: we are all in the same band and we are all equally famous. If I came in the studio and say ‘Hey, I am a friend with Sylvester Stallone’, none among us would be interested”.
Are you really a friend with Stallone?
C: “No, no. It was just an example, but look around here in our studio. Do you think it’s a glamorous place?”.
In fact it’s impressive. You may live and work showing off much more. While it seems to me I’m taking a coffee with my neighbors.
J: “We still have many things to achieve. Once finished we can start to talk about the story of the throne..”
C: “As far as I am concerned, it’s like as if we have done this work thinking of being the best band in the world. Now we must try to do something good with this work”.
“And we’ve just started”.
Jonny, what did you think when Chris announced his intention of doing a duet with Kanye West? J: “I exclaimed ‘great!’. Although it seemed a bit as if he had a relationship with someone else. Similarly Chris is concerned when he sees me talking with other singers”.
C: “Of course. It’s strictly forbidden. Sometimes Guy sneaks away to Scandinavia and plays bass on other people’s albums. We have occasional relationships, but we are still a happily married band”.
But you had several of these relationships at once: Kanye, Nelly Furtado, Jay-Z…
C: “The funniest thing of all these songs is that it works like this: you go visit someone in the studio, record for one afternoon and then go away. After nine months this album is published and you think back to that afternoon. All these collaborations almost seem to come in as casual, accidental”.
How was with Kanye?
C: “He was recording at Abbey Road Studios and I simply went in to greet him. He was working on a song (’Homecoming’) and I said ‘Come on, make me sing the refrain’. Then I went away. This happened two years ago and only afterwards it became a duet. With Nelly Furtado it went roughly the same way. I like to do this kind of duets, because the pressure is on someone else. And this is fun. I also sang in duets that were never realized. I like Kanye West album a lot. I used to play down about ‘Homecoming’, the song in which I sing, as I didn’t believe we could go along musically but I am really happy with the outcome”.
Did you ask Kanye or Nelly whether they would have liked to collaborate on your album?
C: “There was a song for which we had problems with the sound of drums and we thought about making a phone call. But then Brian found the solution. In any case, we are open to work with people who we believe are better than us. Because it allows us to improve”.
I have read that you would have wanted to work with Timbaland?
C: “I don’t know where this news came from. No, we never planned it and this story is false. But we like Timbaland”.
Four years ago you supported John Kerry during the American presidential campaign…
C: “And it’s not been a great success”.
You’re right. Are you still involved in the American elections?
C: “To be honest we said only once that we liked John Kerry. It was not exactly a long election campaign. That’s why it gets on my nerves saying who I like, because he may end up not winning too. Here you are: let’s say that I want George Bush to be president again. Now and forever”.
So I assume you like Obama…
C: “You must be an idiot if you don’t support him. I am not one of these idiots: I like him, Obama. This election is the most important decision of the world. Whoever wins this time will have to decide and shape the future of our planet”.

Big thanks to iriden/coldplayzone.it for the scans/article