Jonnylovers in Neverland

Coldplay

“The more we listen to our music, and the more we play it, the more original it becomes.”

Coldplay, the promising new UK band, subtly and gently places beautifully poignant, deeply moving songs before you. Without shouting or putting on airs, will this sound seep into the scene as another “good, ordinary band” following in the footsteps of Travis?

Interview ● Hidefumi Harima Interpreter ● Mariko Kawahara Photos: Tom Sheehan

Wow, this really gets to you. It’s like a pale blue flame burning faintly somewhere, quietly yet unmistakably radiating heat and illuminating something. It sounds rather clichéd when put into words, but that’s the feeling. The British music scene, especially the new bands, have long been said to be in a slump, but a presence that, whilst not flashy, gives off a definite glow has finally, at long last, emerged. Coldplay. They had already shown great promise with a few singles and EPs, but their debut album ‘Parachutes’ (released in Japan on August 9th) is, without a doubt, a magnificent work.

It feels as though I was sinking slowly and endlessly, yet it is far too transparent to be called despair. It is as pure as water seeping gently into every single cell. It appears plain and unassuming, yet it is rich, and also remarkably intricate and refined. What’s more, the band members who created this are all in their early twenties. Hmm, just what will become of them?

Melodies that are melancholic and poignant, yet possess a catchy pop sensibility that makes them easy to hum along to. A sound meticulously crafted to bring out the very best in those melodies. A voice that possesses a depth and maturity as if it has seen it all, yet harbours an innocent resonance. The lyrics depict fragments of love and everyday life from a man who doesn’t seem particularly adept at navigating the world. All of this blends together to form music that is beautiful, lonely and warm, yet also possesses a mysterious power that can, at times, be truly uplifting.

They’re making their early debut in Japan at Summer Sonic 2000 (their music is sure to cool you down at a midsummer festival), and we spoke to vocalist and guitarist Chris Martin.

—I was really looking forward to this, as your previous work has been so good, and the album has turned out to be a truly rich, emotional and wonderful piece of work. I reckon I’ll be listening to it for the rest of my life. 「Thank you very much.」

—Don’t you feel like you’ve really hit the mark yourselves? 「No, actually, we’re a bit nervous at the moment because we don’t know how everyone will take it. Some people like it, but we’re still worried.」

—(laughs) There’s no need to worry. It really is a brilliant album. When I listen to it, I find it’s a strange kind of music that makes me feel wistful or lonely at times, yet uplifting at others. 「That’s lovely to hear! That’s exactly what we wanted to achieve. It’s not that it’s ambiguous, but we wanted to express both sadness and happiness. Most of the music we listen to is sad, but not overly melancholic; on the contrary, it’s often expressed in an uplifting way, so that’s what we wanted to do too.」

—Although emotions do sometimes overflow, it’s precisely because the overall tone is so understated and restrained that it really hits you in the chest and feels like music that grabs the listener and won’t let go. It feels like the bare minimum of expression, much like a delicate watercolour or Japanese ink painting. Do you personally like that sort of thing? 「That’s right. Even when we’re recording in the studio, we often pare parts down. Our philosophy is “less is more,” and sometimes simpler is better. We do sometimes end up cramming too much into a song, but when that happens it doesn’t work, so we cut it out. We’re not afraid to pare things back. We’re definitely a minimalist band right now.」

—It sounds so simple and understated, yet it’s actually incredibly intricate and lavish, and it’s rare to find music that moves you so deeply like this. Where do you think this “power” in your music comes from? 「As I said earlier, there’s hardly any music we listen to that doesn’t touch our hearts. Nobody in this band listens to music that doesn’t have heart. All the singers we like sound incredibly sincere, whether they’re conveying happiness or sadness, so we feel we have to sing that way too. Before we went into the studio for this album, we were listening to bands like the Flaming Lips; they’re trying to make sincere, emotional music, and that’s exactly what we want to do. Otherwise, it would just be meaningless to the listener.」

—Although it’s simple, I sense a great attention to detail in the texture of each individual sound, the way the space is crafted, and how the sound spreads out. Do you pay a great deal of attention to those aspects? 「Of course. My co-producer Ken Nelson (Gomez, Badly Drawn Boy, etc.) is a master at judging where sounds shouldn’t be played and keeping things simple. He isn’t afraid to limit it to just two sounds where ten could be used. So I think I owe a great deal to him.」

—You mentioned earlier that it’s quite understated, but do you ever feel that expressing all your emotions to the fullest is too much? 「Not at all. When you listen to an Oasis album, for instance, it’s absolutely packed with emotion. They express anger and such in a very clear-cut way, and I suppose I’m subconsciously drawn to that sort of thing. To music that’s heartfelt. Bob Dylan’s the same. I can’t trust music that’s shallow or artificial.」

—What’s the meaning behind the title “Parachutes”? 「At first it was just a song title, but then we couldn’t decide on an album title for months. In the end, we were left with “Parachutes” and “Don’t Panic”, and we settled on “Parachutes”. We made the decision under quite a bit of pressure, but I thought it was a good title because a parachute is a comforting thing that gives people hope.」

—I agree. I’d been wondering if there was a desire for it to function as a “parachute” that eases the listener’s pain and suffering. 「That’s exactly it. When we first settled on it, I think all the members were actually a bit disappointed because we hadn’t come up with a new name ourselves, but now we’re really happy with it. I think it fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do.」

—By the way, what was the band’s vision when you first formed? 「We didn’t really have one. We knew what kind of sound we wanted to produce at the time, but we had no idea what we’d want to be two years down the line. We just knew what we liked, so we just hoped that it would develop from there. And I think we’ve achieved that over the past year, and expanded on it too. The more music we listen to, and the more we play, the more original our music becomes. I think that’s already starting to happen.」

—You’re all quite young, with an average age of just around 20, yet you already seem to have a certain maturity about you. 「That’s nice of you to say, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing!」

—(laughs) Have you been aiming for this kind of mellow sound ever since you formed the band? 「Yes, we have. We haven’t changed suddenly, so it’s not as if we started out playing punk or funk. People often say we sound mature, but I don’t really know why they think that. It’s not as if we ever consciously set out to create that kind of sound.」

—I hear that during your very first rehearsal, you grasped the “essential elements needed to achieve something great”. What exactly was that moment like? 「It just clicked perfectly. We’d all been in bands at school or elsewhere, but I reckon we were all destined to go to London and find the right bandmates. You know how sometimes you enjoy playing together but feel like you’re not quite on the same wavelength? Well, that wasn’t the case with us; it was perfect. Even when it came to songwriting, I’d show the other members a fragment I’d come up with, and when they – especially Jonny – would add something to it, the song would end up being ten times better than before. Thanks to him adding his touch, the songs became so much better. The reason I felt it would work was because we could inspire each other. I knew from the first rehearsal that this was something special.」

“Good melodies, good chords, good riffs and good songs are important, but above all, to convey your feelings, you have to make a sound that comes from the heart. Otherwise, it’s meaningless.”

—I suppose that’s what they call ‘chemistry’. 「Exactly! “Chemistry” is the perfect word for it.」

—According to the material you wrote yourselves, musically you’re into Jurassic 5, Tom Waits, The J.B.’s, Stevie Wonder, Super Furry Animals, etc…… It’s quite a mixed bag, did you all put that list together? 「Yes. But that’s actually quite old material.」

—(laughs) What about you now? 「Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Stone Roses, Joy Division, The Smiths, Tom Waits, Björk, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Sparklehorse, and Supergrass are missing.」

—And before that? 「Jonny the guitarist had an older brother who could tell him what kind of music was good, but I was the oldest, so I didn’t know what to listen to. When I was about 14, I was buying James and Blur’s first album. After that, I listened to all sorts of things, though some of it was rubbish. When I was younger, I liked and looked up to a-ha and Michael Jackson, but it wasn’t until I was 17 or 18 that I really became captivated by music.」

—What sort of music was that? 「I can’t really remember. It might have been Cat Stevens. I think he was the first artist I really got into. Or maybe the Beach Boys.」

—What would you say you learnt or absorbed from the musicians you’ve just mentioned? 「As I said earlier, it’s the heart. And not being afraid to express your emotions through music. Even if you’re not good at talking about it in interviews, you have to do it through your music. When you listen to something like Sparklehorse’s “Painbirds”, you can really hear that they mean it. I learnt from them that you have to make that kind of sound. R.E.M. are the same, so I learnt from them too. Good melodies, good chords, good riffs and good songs are important, but above all, to convey your feelings, you have to make a sound that comes from the heart. Otherwise, it’s meaningless.」

—Even though the band members’ tastes are quite different, there was chemistry from the very start, wasn’t there? What was there? 「The reason we got on so well is that the other members come up with ideas I’d never have thought of myself. And often, those ideas are better than the ones I’d come up with. Once, when I was working on the chords for a new song, Jonny came up with a riff that I’d never have imagined. Adding that riff completely changed what I’d imagined, but the song suddenly became much better. We inspire each other like that, but if we didn’t all have such different musical tastes, it wouldn’t have happened like this; we’d probably only have been able to create exactly what I’d imagined. But because we all listen to different music, we can surprise each other. And that usually works out for the better, not the worse.」

—Your vocals aren’t the kind that rely on technical flourishes or belting out loud notes, yet they’re incredibly captivating. There’s a certain lustre and sex appeal to them. 「(laughs)」

—As a vocalist, how do you want to be? 「I want to be natural. When I listen to the tapes from the various bands I was in before, or even this band’s early recordings, the vocals sound so forced. I suppose I was either trying too hard to sound American, or going too deep or too heavy. You can learn technique, and you can improve your voice with technique, but being natural is what matters.」

—So you don’t deliberately avoid listening to other singers to make sure you aren’t influenced by their style, then? 「Unconsciously, I steal ideas from great vocalists! (laughs). Like Bob Dylan, for example. We’ve got a B-side called “God Help Us Around The Corner”, and that one’s a total rip-off of Bob Dylan. Will’s actually really good at playing or singing other people’s songs exactly as they are. Just the other day, I tried singing like Bob Dylan and Morrissey. So, I love listening to other people’s music.」

—I heard you had to cancel a gig in March because you’d strained your throat. 「I really should be taking better care of my throat, but I haven’t been doing that. It’s the same with other parts of my body, but my throat got worn out, so I needed a rest. It was a shock. I’d never cancelled a gig before, so it felt strange.」

—Please take care before you come to Japan. Unfortunately, I don’t have the lyrics with me right now, so I can’t say exactly what the songs are about, but what sort of things do you mainly sing about? 「I often sing about things I shouldn’t really be worrying about, but I do worry about them anyway. I sing about things I’ve experienced myself, with all sorts of emotions. There are a few songs where I’m making excuses, and there are happy songs where my feelings are clear. There are songs about girls, and songs that aren’t. I sing about all sorts of things, but there isn’t a single song with a story, so that’s something I need to work on in the future. I need to keep learning so I can write good songs with a story, like Bob Dylan. It seems some people think our lyrics are boring at the moment, but I wonder if that’s because they’re too much in the first person. But that’s just something that comes naturally to me. So, yeah, most of the songs are very personal.」

—How important are lyrics in your music? 「They’re not as important as as Bob Dylan’s or Radiohead’s. Their lyrics hold a very important place. But even we don’t think that it’s okay to write anything just because it'’s lyrics. But we still have a long way to go when it comes to lyrics.」

Translator's Note: Truthfully, I enjoy translating the really early interviews of bands, because newer ones are easier to find, but older ones do require effort to find them. It's easier to find these in good condition in physical print media than on video or audio, given how much of the data resolution of videos and audios can be, well, either shite or lost.

Also, Chris' taste in music during his teenage years leaning more towards hip-hop is hilarious to me, because Matt Bellamy had a similar taste in music in his younger years before Dom got him to listen to more rock and indie music.

COLDPLAY

For Chris Martin, sorry seems to be the easiest word…

Rogers Centre, Toronto, Canada THURSDAY, 30 JULY 2009 ★★★★

“When you take away the stage set, we feel naked.” JONNY BUCKLAND

No one apologises quite like Chris Martin. Onstage and off, the word “sorry” or a close variant thereof is never more than a few minutes from the Coldplay singer’s lips. During the course of this evening, for instance, he will verbally flagellate himself for everything from the state of his hair to the fact that his band have, in his eyes at least, shoddily neglected Britain and their British fans when it comes to touring their last album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. For a man who fronts one of the most successful bands on the planet, with all the attendant lifestyle perks that brings, this is a strange state of affairs.

“Oh God, I thought all that had gone out of the window years ago,” says Coldplay drummer Will Champion after the show, still clad in the regulation 19th-century French army cast-offs that constitute the band’s stage costume. He’s perched straight-backed and attentive alongside similarly attired guitarist Jonny Buckland on a comfy green leather sofa in a small, dimly-lit room signposted “Chill Out Room”, somewhere under the banks of seats that line Toronto’s Rogers Centre.

Unlike their singer, Buckland and Champion are neither habitually apologetic nor twitchily energetic. Instead, they’re friendly, impeccably polite and not given to public bouts of self-recrimination. It’s the drummer’s 31st birthday celebrations today; within minutes of meeting Q, he’s invited us along to a party at a swanky boutique hotel on the other side of Toronto’s city centre. Having known each other since school, they’re more than familiar with their singer’s penchant for apologising.

“At the early gigs, he’d say sorry 500 times a night onstage,” says Champion. “The year 2000, I think that was the height of the apologies.”

A bulging white dome that nuzzles the base of the needle-like CN Tower (at 1815 feet, one of the world’s tallest structures), the giant concrete soufflé that is the Rogers Centre hosts the 140th date of the Viva La Vida tour. A 44,000 stadium that’s usually home to baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays, tonight it is stage to the biggest solo headlining show of the band’s career, something which Buckland and Champion confess to being daunted by (“We were quite nervous,” admits the guitarist afterwards, with characteristic understatement).

These nerves aren’t in evidence before the show. The hollering, shouting and general bustle of industry that usually soundtracks concerts of this scale are all noticeably absent, replaced by a tangible air of calm. Even the security guards offer a smile as you pass.

An hour before playing, the four members of Coldplay can be found in a curtained-off room, just off the two-lane subterranean road that circles the inside of this giant stadium. They’re dutifully taking part in a meet-and-greet with fans, exchanging pleasantries and handing over signed copies of LeftRightLeftRightLeft, the free CD they’ve given away at every date on this leg of the tour (presumably at great expense). Following this, there’s a presentation of platinum discs to the band and some celebratory champagne for birthday boy Champion.

As proceedings draw to a close, Martin catches Q’s eye and wanders over. He’s already wearing his Les Misérables-style stage costume, albeit barefoot. His hair explodes from his head in cherubic curls, the longest it’s been for years. Up close, he looks tired and drawn; it’s been a hectic time, and the band only arrived at the venue 20 minutes ago, having filmed an appearance on Carson Daly’s talk show. Still, he’s charm personified, thanking us for making the trip over (which is no problem) and asking if we’ve been treated well (we have). The singer isn’t officially doing any interviews, but he still wants to talk. “Are you sticking around? There’s a couple of questions I want to ask you,” before proceeding to pleasantly grill Q as to the current state of the music press.

With many other rock stars, this could easily be seen as a deliberate and possibly cynical charm offensive. But with Martin, it’s both genuine and entirely in character: there’s none of the supreme bluff of a Noel Gallagher or the bullet-proof confidence of a Bono here, just a winning blend of affability, insecurity and peculiar need for approval. As his bandmates head back to the dressing room, we drift into the corridor. Talk turns to tonight’s gig (“[Perturbed] This is our biggest show, so I’m worried the stage set might look a bit small for the venue”), his concerns that people in Britain, even Coldplay’s own fans, hate the band (“[Aghast] We played one gig, and the reaction after the first song was terrible. I felt like a rapist”), and the forthcoming Wembley gigs (“It’s such a big thing. I think we’ll be OK. Do you think we’ll be OK? Sorry, shouldn’t ask you”).

After 10 minutes, he needs to head off. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I really need to go and get my head together. [Frown] Are you going to be OK? [Concern] Let me know if there’s anything you need. [Beaming smile] I’ll see you later, right?”

Conversation over, he lollops away, jogging around the track and back to his dressing room.

Out front, the Rogers Centre is slowly filling up. Rows of chairs line the playing field, ensuring there’s no embarrassing gap at the back. It must be a daunting sight for tonight’s hand-picked all-British support line-up, not least rockabilly revivalists Kitty, Daisy & Lewis. This is the teen sibling trio’s very first tour, and while they acquit themselves admirably in front of a half-full venue, they’ve yet to master touring etiquette (“I saw them watching us at the side of the stage at one show, brazenly smoking,” said Martin earlier. “I was like, [Waves hands] Er, could you just do that a bit more out of sight”). Even old hands Elbow look like they’re struggling to come to terms with the scale of it, though a combination of Guy Garvey’s gruff Northern charisma and eternally uplifting closer One Day Like This conspire to win over several thousand previously diffident Canadians.

“We’ve got used to these bigger gigs,” says Buckland. “You can’t actually see the audience. Do we miss the intimacy of small shows? In all honestly, no. We do occasionally do smaller shows, where you can see what people are ordering to drink. Those gigs are absolutely terrifying for us. When you take away all the stage set, we feel naked.”

If intimacy is a long-vanished concept for Coldplay, the quartet have certainly raised their game on a visual level. This is the summer of the stadium spectacular, with everyone from U2 (giant claw) to Take That (huge circus) offering more bang for your buck, and Coldplay haven’t been left behind. Not that there weren’t teething troubles.

“At one point we had a trampoline at the end of one of the walkways,” says Champion. “It was a little trampette, like you get with pommel horses. The idea was that Chris would run down, jump on it and go flying through the air. It was all well and good, but we quickly realised it was going to ruin Chris’s knees.”

It might not be as grand as U2’s current extravaganza, and it may sadly be bereft of opportunities for mid-air gymnastics, but the Coldplay live experience certainly offers its share of spectacle, from the sparklers whirled by the band behind a dark gauze during opener Life In Technicolor to the hundreds of giant balloons launched into the crowd during Yellow. But there’s a winning lack of bombast here: during Lost!, the giant screens that hang from the dome-like roof zoom in on a vintage TV set, itself tuned into Martin’s face.

Unsurprisingly, Martin is the focus of the display. All that nervous energy is channelled into a performance that finds him constantly swirling, spinning, shadow-boxing and dive-bombing – one part lightweight contender at the punchbag, one part hyperactive kid running around the supermarket. During a monumentally abrasive Politik, he sits hunched over his piano like an 18th-century composer, before leaping up and pointing heavenwards (he does this a lot, as if seeking some sort of divine validation).

Sometimes he tries too hard with the self-deprecation. “Some critics say it’s the best value for money we’ve ever given,” he says of the aforementioned free CD. Then there’s his coiffure, a particular butt of his own jokes. “We call this the Michael Bolton tribute section, mainly due to the singer’s hair,” he says before a solo piano version of The Hardest Part. The same song ends with another laboured quip: “The hardest part is having hair like Justin Timberlake just after he left ’N Sync.”

While hardly small of scale on record, the size of the venue suits Coldplay’s expansive music. In this cathedral-like dome, the hymnal qualities of Fix You or Glass Of Water are amplified 10-fold. Even the delicate, Tinariwen-influenced guitar lines of Strawberry Swing take on an unforeseen magnitude.

There are moments that don’t work, not least the clumping “dance” version of God Put A Smile Upon Your Face: performed at the end of a long walkway, it sounds like the sort of remix that might have been buried on a 12-inch B-side in 1986. Much better is the acoustic mini-set, played on a tiny, stand-alone stage in a far corner of the arena. As the rest of the venue goes black, the spotlit quartet rollock through Green Eyes, the Will Champion-sung Death Will Never Conquer and a ramshackle, campfire jam cover of Billie Jean, complete with impressive acoustic guitar solo from Buckland and impressive falsetto squeals from Martin.

The set ends with Champion being dragged out from behind his drumkit and presented with a birthday cake by former manager and “fifth member” Phil Harvey. He looks less sheepish than you’d expect. He certainly doesn’t apologise for getting it.

Post-show, and things are no less sedate than they were before. The distant rumble of trucks hauling away the stage on the other side of the arena aside, the ambience around Coldplay’s dressing room has the air of a slightly funky library. In a few hours’ time, the band, their entourage, plus a hundred or so of Toronto’s more beautiful young things will commandeer the patio of a swanky uptown boutique hotel to celebrate Champion’s birthday (though Martin will be noticeably absent, presumably having sent his apologies).

For now, Champion and Buckland are enjoying a relaxing glass of post-gig, pre-party red wine. In a month, they will start their very first stadium tour, which eventually brings them to Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow and Wembley – the latter, at 80,000 capacity, almost doubling tonight’s record-breaking audience.

“Are we nervous?” says Buckland. “Oh, more nervous than about anything else we’ve done. It’s our home. All our friends will be down. But we’ve done our homework, checked out other concerts. We want it to be an event.”

The pair talk about the support acts at Wembley, Jay-Z and Girls Aloud (“We could have filled it with a load of bands who, to be honest, sound just like us”), and the next Coldplay album, currently little more than a loose assemblage of ideas being worked up on the road (“Our Wikipedia page says it’s due out at the end of the year? Which year?”). Then there’s the band’s debut in a forthcoming episode of The Simpsons.

“They approached us about four months ago,” says Champion. “We’re all fans, so it was a no-brainer. Do we speak? No, only Chris. We have no voices.”

“Story of our lives,” adds Buckland, with a laugh.

And there they go again with the self-deprecation. If they’re not taking the piss out of themselves, they’re apologising for being Coldplay. It’s both endearing and frustrating. What exactly do a bunch of successful, largely acclaimed rock stars have to feel sorry for? There’s a moment of silence from them both.

“We do tend to agonise over things,” says Champion eventually. “Ultimately, we just want to get better. There are so many things we want to do. The whole apology thing, it’s part and parcel of who we are and what we do.”

There’s a pause and a smile.

“Sorry.”

DAVE EVERLEY

THE SET LIST

Life In Technicolor Violet Hill Clocks In My Place Yellow Glass Of Water Cemeteries Of London 42 Fix You Strawberry Swing Talk (Dance Version)/God Put A Smile Upon Your Face The Hardest Part Postcards From Far Away Viva La Vida Lost! Green Eyes Death Will Never Conquer Billie Jean Politik Lovers In Japan Death And All His Friends The Scientist Life In Technicolor ii

Translator's Note: Truly, this October 2009 issue of Q Magazine had given so much for me to scan and read the content.

Jonny Buckland - Coldplay [Q Magazine (July 2008)]

Coldplay

¡LA VIDA LOCA!

According to Chris Martin, Coldplay haven’t done anything good yet. Hence Viva La Vida…, the band’s very own revolution in sound, inspired by paintings of watermelons and “Mrs Battersby’s scones”.

WORDS: SYLVIA PATTERSON | PICTURES: STEPHAN CRASNEANSCKI

‘WE WANT TO MAKE THE SONGS THAT DEFINE THE DECADE. THE GREAT SONGS OF THE TIME.’ CHRIS MARTIN

Chris Martin has a dream, brothers and sisters.

“I always dream about other musicians,” he smiles, with a blink of those sky-blue eyes the size of almond-shaped dinner plates. “And with U2 or Radiohead it’s always [enthusiastically], Hey, how you doin’? And they’re never that interested in hanging out with us. It’s a permanent feeling of being at school and the bigger boys don’t want to play with you. Check out this chord I can do! Just leave us alone. I dreamt about Radiohead last night and Westlife the night before. Which I think is the perfect blend of what we’re trying to do musically.”

Chris Martin is, surely, the most self-deprecating frontman in the history of rock’n’roll. If the first thing he did the moment he took his first Grammy Award (for Best Alternative Music Album) home was to draw a comedy moustache on it, you wouldn’t be surprised. It’s 12 March 2008 and perhaps dream-state neurosis is understandable as Coldplay begin the task of choosing which of 25 completed songs, and 16 more tracks, unmixed and in various states, will form their globally anticipated fourth album. We’re in Hampstead, North London, in their very own studio, The Bakery, and the deeply indecisive Martin has arrived wearing a crafty indecision aid, a stern black tie and dark blue shirt. “I thought if I wore a black tie I would feel like I had some authority,” he announces in his soft, gracious voice. “Like, if I say today, Well, that one’s definitely a B-side, people might listen.”

Three years on, then, from X&Y – the 10 million-selling album that cemented Coldplay’s rise from winsome indie kids into this decade’s biggest band – and we learn from the outset that dictatorial rock star megalomania has failed to claim the soul of Chris Martin, who remains as far away from despot as it’s possible to go without actually becoming Saint Francis Of Assisi. A statuesque 31-year-old, he is supernaturally friendly, profoundly gentle and radiates with the excess energy we know as human charisma.

‘WE FEEL LIKE A NEW BAND AGAIN, RATHER THAN SOME CORPORATE MACHINE.’ JONNY BUCKLAND

The Bakery is a musician’s dream HQ, bought in early 2006 and the place where “everything” (music, art work, arguments, jokes) happens in Coldplay; a fully functional studio downstairs and a large open-plan lounge area upstairs bestrewn with sofas, flight cases, a circular wooden dining table and black and white prints of The Beatles and The Clash on the walls. The Other Three are also here, chuckling at Martin’s quips and chipping in, most often the winningly wry drummer Will Champion. He contemplates their “eagerly anticipated” album. “When you haven’t done anything for a while you get to thinking, Does anyone, really, actually give a flying fuck?” he wonders, gamely. There’s Guy Berryman, the outrageously handsome Scottish bassist, saying, “I ran 18 miles this morning,” which isn’t a quip; he’s in training for the London Marathon. There’s Jonny Buckland, beatific guitarist, smilingly serene. X&Y saw the end of the band Champion officially calls “Oldplay”, an album Martin now feels was “too long”, which Buckland feels was “finished under pressure [from label EMI], but then they were under pressure, still are”. This time, adds Buckland, EMI have applied zero pressure, “they’ve been fucking brilliant and we’ve been feeling like a new band again, rather than some corporate machine”.

Downstairs in the studio (the traditional two-room affair – twinkling, technological Control Room and chaotic, instrument- strewn Live Room), a number of song titles are chalked onto a wall: Viva La Vida; Death Will Never Conquer; Death And All His Friends; Postcards From Far Away; Thought You Might Be A Ghost. A wooden desk bears the scratched-in message: “Brian is great.” After 2000’s Parachutes, 2002’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head and 2005’s X&Y Coldplay were ready, says Martin poetically, “to try new colours”. Enlisting Brian Eno for production, an acquaintance of Martin’s since 2001, they spent 2007 running through a dazzling spectrum of Eno’s fabled techniques: “musical gym”, playing together without recording a note; Oblique Strategies, using Eno’s “oracle” deck of cards that hold perspective-bending instructions (examples: “Allow an easement of stricture”, “Emphasise the flaws”, “Do we need holes?”); the swapping around of each other’s instruments, abandoning their career-long tradition of starting a song with an initial idea from Martin, which the singer saw as “liberation”, as well as Friday night sessions of what Will Champion calls, “Uncle Brian’s Storytime. Tell us something great about Talking Heads or Bowie!” Q steals away to listen to nine possible album tracks beginning with 42, a mesmerising three-part contemplation of death, while Q’s favourite, Chinese Sleep Chant, features a tsunami of guitars and a shimmering vocal force-field you cannot decipher one word of. By the mixing desk, Martin perches on a swivelling black leather chair and fondles his tie as his chipper mood begins to unfeasibly and rapidly disintegrate. We talk about the album’s seeming emphasis on death.

“Well, a lot of people around me have died recently,” he says, plainly. “Just, y’know, family and friends. I don’t want to get specific. Isn’t it disrespectful to say who died? But I always see it as an optimistic thing like, OK, well, what can we do before that punch line, y’know? A lot of people have been born as well [all of Coldplay are now fathers]. There’s so much to do. We haven’t got time to waste. Carpe diem.”

We talk, inevitably, about public expectation, about assumptions this album might be Coldplay’s experimental Kid A, at which he cringes, saying, “You can’t beat Kid A!”, and besides their intention is the opposite: “I want to make the best Number 1s in the world – and we’ve never had any.” We contemplate Coldplay’s position as the Biggest Band In The World and he cringes even more.

“I’ve just been excited about writing,” he finally manages. “After the last record I felt like, God, I can’t believe we’ve got away with becoming this huge band. And we still haven’t done anything I think is that good yet. So it was almost like, We’ve got the job, now we’ve got to kind of prove why we’ve got it. [Ruefully] The World’s Biggest Bland. Y’know… I haven’t thought about this stuff since two years ago.”

Martin is struggling, hands darting into tufts of blond hair. Q, it seems, has inadvertently brought into Coldplay’s environment the opinions and expectations of an outside world they’ve forgotten exists.

“Because of this place,” he says of The Bakery, “we don’t feel like we’re at all successful. Or hated. We don’t feel anything but, OK, how are we going to make this song sound better? I live one minute away. And I come here. So… the only thing that makes me remember that we’re in a big band is when I remember that I’m married to someone famous. Everything else in the day is exactly the same as it was 11 years ago. When we would just meet and play.”

You feel your fame is mostly to do with your marriage?

“Well, it’s a different kind of fame, that we do everything to avoid.”

So you feel, in your head, you’re still the boy from the indie band in the Yellow video?

“Maybe. You’re bringing some home truths. You’re greatly helping.”

We also talk about coping with criticism, about how he felt when the New York Times ran an actual thesis in 2005 on why Coldplay were “the most insufferable band of the decade” (self-pitying lyrics, sonic delusions of grandeur, opined the writer; “Very informative”, says Martin. “I thought, I’ll get better, then”), and whether it’s the religious sound of the music that people find easy to criticise, their sense of import, a seemingly spiritual search for The Light.

“I have no idea,” he replies, in a tiny voice. “I’m sure it’s every aspect. What can we do? That’s just what comes out. I don’t think we’ll ever make evil music as well as Rammstein. And I don’t want to write obscure little songs. I mean… I can’t. Well, fuck ’em. What can I do? What d’you want me to do?”

And so Q finds itself in the bewildering position of trying to reassure Chris Martin, four times Grammy-award winner, seller of 30 million albums worldwide, internationally beloved musical icon, husband of an Oscar-winning Hollywood beauty, that there are many more millions of people who love Coldplay than are writing scathing theses in the New York Times.

“Well, all that stuff is very positive… [buries head in hands] I’m only human!”

Q tells him about friends in Scotland who love what Coldplay do, especially live.

“It’s always fun playing Scotland,” he replies, perking up. “Anywhere that likes singing is fun to play.”

Scotland loves the communal experience.

“Well, that’s where I feel most alive,” he says, suddenly springing back to life. “In answer to your question, the thing that probably most annoys people about us is the only thing that makes me feel alive. Singing together and feeling like you’re there and present. And so I can’t really apologise for it. I went to see John Williams, the guy who wrote all the Star Wars music. And they played Star Wars, and this was in a room of thousands of people in tuxedos. And as soon as that music came on, the place just went mental. More than I’ve ever seen in a rock concert. Everyone was completely transported. Some people like the challenge of an audience not being completely with them and other people just want to kick the goal all the time. We’re definitely the latter. We want to make the songs that define the decade, the great songs of this time, the music that makes people come together and feel good. That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to try and make the standards. And with that comes a certain amount of flak. But we’ve just got to take it. And talking to you has made me realise that. And it’s good! Time to put the old armour on.”

Down a quaint, olde London cobblestone mews, Brian Eno opens the door to his studio while waving across the cobbles to a figure at the opposite window. “I’m just waving to my friend,” he smiles. “Jason Donovan.” Q peers over at the sight, indeed, of Jason Donovan on the telephone by a window. “Don’t stare!” scolds Eno and bundles Q inside.

In a large, high-ceilinged work space, two nuclear-white Apple Mac computer consoles throb along a table with screens the size of plasma TVs. Wearing a shiny blue and white polka-dot shirt, pop culture’s best-known boffin is, unexpectedly, an exceptionally cheerful man. Over the years of their burgeoning friendship, he’d let Chris Martin know he was no longer particularly interested in full-time producing for anyone.

“So I’d implied I wasn’t interested,” he says, “and then I had a very funny lunch with Chris and Gwyneth at their house. Chris said [begins bumbling], Look, um, I dunno, maybe, y’know, I think we really need some help on this next record, someone we can bounce ideas off, and he’s going on and on, Perhaps you could suggest someone? And finally Gwyneth interrupts and says, Look, why don’t you just tell him you want him to produce the record!? It was very sweet. She’s very nice. And so is he. They’re all nice people actually, charming and intelligent and if I’m going to work with people it matters that I like their company. And I like some of their songs, a lot.”

The sound of X&Y, thought Eno, suffered from excessive digital tampering, “though I liked a lot of the material on there.”

“They’d slightly mis-stepped,” he says, “which often happens with the digital, cut’n’paste, ProTools-type technology. It increases perfection at the expense of life in my opinion. It evens everything out. Dead music.” His lone intention with Coldplay was to create “musical life, the only thing I care about in music, now, is life”. To this end, as a non-musician himself, mostly he “encouraged”, suggesting freeform “experimentation, stupid ideas, prattish things, some of which worked, some didn’t”, Eastern instrumentation (Martin can now play the zither-like hammered dulcimer), and outright discouraged any moribund “perfectionist ethos”. Ask Eno if this album will take Coldplay into the pantheon of The Greats and he modestly demurs, much like Coldplay themselves.

“History is so quixotic,” he muses, “so I don’t really think in that way. I personally think that some Coldplay songs will endure for a very long time. But it’s life that lasts. When you sense somebody living at the edge of their possibilities. And that’s something I think you get with this band sometimes. I think you get it a lot on this record.”

‘I LIVE IN FEAR OF SOMEONE LEAVING. IF YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR SQUADRON YOU’RE FUCKED.’ CHRIS MARTIN

The Bakery, 15 April, 2pm. “I’ve got something to tell you,” announces Chris Martin, “but come out here because it’s a bit soppy.”

We loiter on the stairway leading into the lounge.

“You’ve directly influenced the album.”

I have?

“With the running order and bits of sequencing. After I’d spoken to you, it was obvious we hadn’t yet got the order right. It was very death-heavy at the beginning and that’s not the message we want to get across. It’s like editing a film. So it was very useful. So thank you.”

You’re very welcome. Just put me down for a royalty.

“Hur hur!” chortles Martin, while Q is acutely serious.

Today, Chris Martin appears to be an art-school student, his all-black T-shirt-and-trousers ensemble dotted with purple paint, hair sprouting ever-further upwards. Sitting at the circular dining table, he’s painting the bodies of two acoustic guitars that have been covered with masking tape. Strewn around the guitars are pots of paint and two open art books on early-20th-century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Madonna’s favourite). Today he’s a verbal sorcerer, intent on blurring the lines between reality, fantasy and art-pop flights of tomfoolery. Not widely regarded as a rock’n’roll Lothario, he’s bawdier than you might imagine. “I’ve got a Girls Aloud fixation today,” he announces. “I want to do a cover of Call The Shots. It’s the combination of being extremely physically attractive with songs that are great, it’s more than any man can take. I think it might be the ultimate form of life.” He’ll invent outrageous lies, “and then I did a line of coke with some hookers and had sex with Neil Tennant”, and while contemplating the concept of a world without music yelps, “Well, there’s still sex, so you’ve still got one of the best things left, don’t take that away, please!” He attempts to explain the concept of his artistic endeavours.

“It’s not really a concept,” he decides, wielding a purple-dipped brush. “It’s just the idea of everything being home-made. That’s the whole purpose of The Bakery, that everything we do comes from us. We realised we were at the centre of this big corporate business so we were, We’re going to set up, basically, a church-fête stall. And make our own cakes. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Musically. Make Mrs Battersby’s scones.”

He’d rather tell you that, in fact, than fully explain the startling name of the album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, other than Viva La Vida (“Long Live Life”) is the name of a Frida Kahlo painting of watermelons that the band discovered in Mexico in early 2007. Martin is a fan of Kahlo’s “incredible optimism; she had a very tough life, was in a back brace through her life and was very influential, brave politically and also very sexy. And the other half… [of the title] I don’t want to explain it! It’s just a title. It could be called The Frozen Chosen. Or, Heroes Of The Ice-Cream Brigade. What colour shall I put on next?”

Viva, as it will become known, almost featured Kylie Minogue, who recorded vocals for one song. “Kylie is awesome,” he beams. “She’s like Girls Aloud rolled into one. And then I took the song apart. Like a Corby trouser press. It’s now one of those half-finished models in a garage.” When Kylie was in the vocal booth, the four Coldplay members were, he adds, “like that” [feigns an enormous swoon]. It takes Will Champion, eventually, to explain the concept behind the art-rock vision, a sort of Monty Python Goes Up The Revolution Down Mexico Way, Possibly Wielding A Catapult.

“The visuals behind the album,” says Champion, “is the idea of a slightly shabby revolution, not very organised but with intensity and passion and colour. The idea of this ragtag bunch of people storming into a palace and trying to overthrow whatever is there. Which is possibly an analogy for the way we approached the record, really rebuilding everything. Home-made.”

Nothing at all to do with Mrs Battersby’s scones, then.

“I can’t help you with the scones.”

Back at the wooden table, Martin abandons the purple guitar and contemplates his now supernatural fame. He loathes the tabloids, refers to their employees as “fascists” and has long maintained a zero tolerance approach to talking about Gwyneth Paltrow, his wife of four-and-a-half years, who he never mentions by name (their children, Apple and Moses are now 4 and 2). This month, Paltrow announced in public that her husband has “a fit” if she talks about him. The pair live in both London and New York and are connected to the stratospherically famous; Paltrow is a long-time friend of Madonna and Guy Ritchie while Martin forged new friendships in 2006 with both Kanye West and Jay-Z, both of whom he recorded songs with, providing backing vocals on West’s Homecoming and Jay-Z’s Beach Chair. He calls these collaborations “fun infidelities”. In September 2006, he sang backing vocals for Jay-Z at the first-ever hip-hop show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “Pretty great,” he says of the night, “I was on with Nas and Jay-Z. Wasn’t bad. For a little posh boy from Devon.” He admires the invincible hip-hop spirit.

“A lot of these people aren’t British so they don’t have this inherent insecurity,” he smiles. “And apologetic…ness. Hanging around with people who don;t worry about anything, that’s what I love. It’s such good energy to feed off, that confidence. It’s very free-ing. I just think I’m very drawn to talent.”

There’s a spectacular amount of crotch grabbing in the Homecoming video.

“Not from me I hope! I’d love to be a crotch-grabber but I can never find it.”

Have you had a try, just to see what it looks like?

“I’ve tried all kinds of things in the bedroom.”

Jay-Z was being shot at when he was nine, what were you doing?

“Going shooting,” he quips, royally. “I grew up with shepherds and dairy farmers, y’know?”

Do you share any characteristics with Jay-Z?

“I feel funny talking about him. It sounds so ridiculous.”

Mention his attending of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s recent wedding (the couple supposedly married in secret in New York) and, much like Jay-Z himself, he feigns no knowledge of it.

“What wedding?” he deadpans. “I don’t know anything about that, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

You’re friends with the biggest hip-hop star on the planet, it’s exciting stuff.

“Well, someone has to carry on the tradition of Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, The Girl Is Mine. Y’know, there’s a side of me that comes from where I come from that is, Oh, you can’t do this, be friends with that person, wear this, y’know? And if you listen to all those rules you can’t do anything. You can just read Country Life.”

Earlier this year, a heavily-hooded Chris Martin appeared on YouTube after a mobile phone video was taken of a scuffle in New York, Martin wrestling a camera from a photographer after he and Paltrow left hospital a few moments apart (she reportedly had a stomach complaint, igniting unsubstantiated speculation over a miscarriage) saying, over and over, “you’ve got to have some respect”. It looks pretty grim out there sometimes.

“The last thing I want to do is talk about them,” he says of the paparazzi, aggrieved. “But listen, we’re not living in Nazi Germany, y’know, so I’m not going to complain about anything. But I will say that you should ask politely before trying to take a picture of someone’s… haircut.”

This week, the newly-back-to-work Paltrow (we’re 10 days before her “super-stiletto” shoes, worn to the premiere of Iron Man, make front-page tabloid headlines) announced they deliberately never go out in public together to thwart the idea of the “celebrity couple”.

Isn’t that, logistically, very difficult?

“I’m afraid I have no comment on anything to do with that.”

Surely you’d want, sometimes, to walk down the street with your wife? And your children? And be slightly normal?

“Well, I have my cereal. And my lawn mower. That’s very normal. Even though not many people have cereal on their lawn mower. Who wants to complain? I’m a rock star. I’ve got nothing to complain about. I can cope… with anything except hair loss.”

Before he leaves this evening, he’ll produce a slim, credit-card-sized, silver case from his trouser pocket (it’s his version of a wallet, “my wife gave me this”), flick through his cards and stop at a photograph of two blond-haired children tottering down a pathway, holding each other’s hand, with sun-light bouncing directly off their golden heads. A Walt Disney animator, directed by Steven Spielberg, could conjure no bigger “wow” factor. “There’s my kids,” he says.

It’s good to see these children do exist.

“Actually, it’s just some random kids,” he smiles and clicks the case shut.

The Bakery, 16 April, 2.30pm. Today, Martin has turned into a rock’n’roll field marshal, bustling to and from the lounge and the studio, changing in and out of clothes that recall the military feel of The Clash in their Sandinista! finery. Coldplay are filming live rehearsals of the new album “for the internet” and the rest of the band have redecorated the Live Room with wallpaper and murals. The beige back wall has transformed into a landscape of snowy Alpine peaks by deep blue water, other walls show autumnal woodlands and around the window that separates the rooms Planet Earth rises up in kaleidoscopic splendour amid a starry, hand-painted universe. On the walls the word “VIVA” and the phrase “THE KING IS DEAD” are painted in red and black alongside a framed print of Woody Allen. “So we get our music from there,” beams Martin, pointing to the universe, “and our lyrics [points to Woody Allen] from there.” Above the mixing desk sit photographs of Jay-Z and Mozart. Chiming through a bouncy Afrobeat cavalcade Q has never heard before called Strawberry Swing, Martin shouts an encouraging “brilliant playing!” and, keen to get on, “next!” Today, the album is finally finished. It now has a radically changed running order, three different songs (Strawberry Swing, Reign Of Love and the phenomenal Life In Technicolor, the opening instrumental) and shimmers with life. Chinese Sleep Chant, meanwhile, has become a hidden track buried in the album’s centre. “We’re just trying to squeeze as much as possible into something that’s small,” twinkles Will Champion. Coldplay’s Tardis? “Basically!”

The great dichotomy of Chris Martin – angel of belief on one shoulder, devil of damnation on the other – is, say all of The Others, what lies at the core of Coldplay.

“Chris’s energy is what drives the whole thing,” concludes Champion. “He’s an amazing mix of total panic and worry and self-doubt, and confidence and absolute hysteria and fun. And you can’t really predict who you’re going to get. In him is a microcosm of the band; incredible self-confidence behind closed doors but also we’re quite surprised when people agree with us. We don’t expect to be adored.” Ask Martin where his “gift” for self-deprecation comes from and his theories are multi-fold: his dad (their personalities are similar), sex-free teenage years (“I think when you’re remarkably unsuccessful with women for 21 years it affects you”), but mostly it’s his country.

“I just think it’s a British thing,” he decides. “I feel the same way about my band that Bono feels about his but I just can’t say it. Well, I obviously just did. It’s feeling like you can always do better. Like I never quite catch up with where I think we should be. It’s a permanent chase. Great-lag? Exactly! We have Great-lag. We’re always three degrees of Great behind where we should be. That’s my life. So if I sit down at a dinner and Elton John’s next to me, I’m not going to feel that good cos I haven’t written Rocket Man yet.”

Brian Eno, naturally, has the grandest theory of them all as to why Chris Martin – the man he calls “one of the funniest people, he has a very quick, associative mind” – would appear to find it almost impossible to take himself seriously.

“Because I think one lives in fear of it,” he avers. “Because you see what it does to other people. It narrows you down. I was just reading this lecture by the scientist Richard Hamming [late mathematician who worked on WW2 nuclear weapon programme, the Manhattan Project]. And he said a consistent feature of science is that when people win big awards, like the Nobel, they stop doing really first-class work. And one of the reasons is, because they now take themselves very seriously, they don’t address themselves to small problems any longer. They address themselves to big, established problems. But, a lot of the most interesting things happen from addressing tiny things. A lot of the greatest songs come not from people thinking [gravely], Now I’m going to write a song about a nuclear holocaust, they come from someone tinkling away going [merrily], Ding ding diiiii….. oh, that sounds good. And if you take yourself very seriously, you don’t revisit these places. You feel you’re above them. And I think a lot of people intuitively grasp, even if they don’t articulate it, that if you lose touch with those things, you’ve lost touch.”

With Chris Martin, I don’t think I’ve come across genuine humility to this extent in any musician before.

“No, I don’t think I have either.”

Friday, 18 April, the day EMI release Viva La Vida… into the computers of a handful of media reviewers worldwide and Chris Martin shuffles up to the glass entrance of the circular IMAX cinema complex in Central London and looks even more bewildered than he did on Day 1. Today, he’s in disguise, black hoodie up over his hair, eyes as big as ET’s. “There’s been a band fight,” he whispers, forlornly. About anything important? “No, it’s stupid!” he wails. “We’re all just coming out of that little cocoon. We’ve let the album go now.”

We’ve come to see the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones tour documentary Shine A Light, at his suggestion. Sitting towards the back, the IMAX logo flashes onto the 65-foot tall screen, possibly as a personal message to the fractious members of Coldplay: “THINK BIG.” Martin keeps his hood up throughout and as The Rolling Stones finish each song is the only person to clap along with the crowd in the actual film.

Afterwards, in the IMAX café, he’s considerably cheered.

“I’m inspired,” he smiles. “I wanna go on tour immediately! I’m sick of being cooped up. What I love about The Rolling Stones is their confidence and their wry smile. And clothing. And they just seem so close. If you stick together, nothing’s a problem. That’s why I live in fear of being told to go solo, of one of the rest of the band leaving. Unless you have your squadron, you’re fucked. I’m going to go in on Monday and we’ll make up.”

We catch a black cab to North London and contemplate why Coldplay are quite so keen on the celestial soundscapes Q calls The Sound Of God.

“I wouldn’t go that far!” he baulks. “But there’s quite a big church influence. Because we all grew up singing in assemblies every morning. Of course. When you think about it, the most music we heard up to the age of 17 was singing hymns every day in school. Didn’t most people? In assembly?”

Not where I come from.

“Oh. Well a lot of places do! Here are the day’s notices. Here’s who's been expelled. And this is the hymn for the day. My favourite hymn is My Song Is Love Unknown. How does it go? I don’t want to do it. I’ve gone all shy! [The title appears in the lyrics to A Message on X&Y.] And I think it just comes out naturally cos it’s been fed in so naturally.”

OF MATTERS LIFE AND DEATH

The complete guide to Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. By Coldplay.

LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR Glorious instrumental. Originally a full song with lyrics, but when described by a stranger as an “obvious single”, the words were removed. CHRIS MARTIN: “It’s nice to not have a singer on the first song come in and ruin it. This is our milkman song, the most whistleable thing. We took all the lyrics off because this song was our only safety net.”

CEMETERIES OF LONDON Folk-tinged ghost story written overnight after Brian Eno’s assistant, Markus Dravs, deemed a song of Martin’s “good” but not yet “great”. CM: “I was mortified. But if you tell me to write a better song, I’ll do it. He said it was good but said it in a German way, If you come in wis ze song, it’s finished, complete, great, I will say it’s great. Zis is not finished, not complete and therefore I cannot say it’s great. So I was, OK, fuck you, man! And the next day I came in and played Cemeteries Of London.”

LOST! Church organs swell over an earthy vocal where Martin is, “Waiting till the shine wears off”. JONNY BUCKLAND: “We recorded some of it in a church up the road that’s now a studio. In a huge room with a piano and organ going at the same time.”

42 The three-part epic. Profoundly moving piano riff nods to Lennon’s Imagine before strings swell and Martin hollers, “I thought you might be a ghost!” CM: “Hitch Hiker’s Guide… related (The number 42 is revealed as the meaning of life in Douglas Adams’s sci-fi novel)? It is and it isn’t. 42 is my favourite number. 42 is just perfect. We’ve got two John Lennon songs, this and Violet Hill.”

LOVERS IN JAPAN/ REIGN OF LOVE Joyous indie-pop sparkler bleeds into bell-ringing hymnal. GUY BERRYMAN: “Couldn’t we make our minds up? No, it’s because we didn’t want to have an extra number on the CD. To keep it concise at 10 tracks.” WILL CHAMPION: “We just preferred to have less titles and more stuff. The album as a whole has got the most on it, but it’s the shortest. We wanted to make it almost impossible for you to not listen to it all in one go.”

VIVA LA VIDA Strident, string-led cinematic opus featuring lyrics about cavalries, missionaries and kings. GB: “It’s a story about a king who’s lost his kingdom, and all the album’s artwork is based on the idea of revolutionaries and guerrillas. There’s this slightly anti-authoritarian viewpoint that’s crept into some of the lyrics and it’s some of the pay-off between being surrounded by governments on one side, but also we’re human beings with emotions and we’re all going to die and the stupidity of what we have to put up with every day. Hence the album title.”

YES Mournful strings coil around the lowest singing register of Chris Martin’s recorded life so far, played and arranged by musician Davide Rossi (discovered when Coldplay toured with Goldfrapp). WC: “Dav is like a one-man orchestra, he plays an electric violin that has everything, from the top note of a violin to the bottom note of a cello, all that range on one thing.” CM: “We’ve become very good at collaboration. And passing if off as our own work.”

CHINESE SLEEP CHANT (HIDDEN TRACK) Juggernaut guitars and what sound like a choir of Angel Gabriels, along with utterly incomprehensible lyrics. CM: “The lyrics aren’t Latin, no! I will say this, if you take away all the guitars, what you’re left with is quite ordinary. But Jonny will always make things less ordinary. Without him we’d be fucked. It’s true!”

VIOLET HILL The first single and the song least like everything else: thumping Beatles-meets-‘70s glam-rock featuring Jonny Buckland on “guitar synth”. WC: “We really tried to make it sound like this great big machine that was slightly knackered. Something that’s slow and grinding. I’m sure people won’t get that! A psychedelic title? Violet Hill is a road in St John’s Wood (North-west London).”

STRAWBERRY SWING Twinkling Afrobeat, Eastern guitars and a phenomenally chunky bassline that appears to turn into a didgeridoo. Astonishingly, this works. WC: “A lovely, joyous song. Guy and I have managed to get more groove into this record than we’ve ever managed before. A bit more swagger.”

DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS Melancholy piano segues into spangling guitars and a male choir exalting, “I don’t wanna follow death and all of his friends!” Vocals recorded in an art gallery in Barcelona that was once the medical room of an ancient nunnery. WC: “This is us singing all together and then another us singing together. The Coldplay Choir. And it had an echo that lasted for a long, long time. When we did a lot of group singing we just roped in whoever was around. Studio engineers, whoever.”

THE ESCAPIST (HIDDEN TRACK) Church organ floats into a transcendental ambient instrumental written by Brian Eno’s friend John Hopkins, who “donated” it to the album. Over the top, a plaintive Chris Martin sings of escape. WC: “I think with everything this time, the recording, the artwork, the live shows and videos, people will see there’s more to us than they imagine.”

LIFE WITH BRIAN

Rock star? Stuck in a rut? Give the follicle-free producer a call.

“HEROES” David Bowie [1977]

BEFORE ENO: Rock’s foremost chameleon, Bowie had already put his inimitable spin on glam rock and funk, yet by the mid-‘70s drug addiction and an inability to distill all his best ideas onto one album were taking their toll.

AFTER ENO: Revitalised by the Cold War frisson of West Berlin and Eno's unorthodox recording techniques – including the use of cryptic “instructions” contained in the Oblique Strategies cards he devised with artist Peter Schmidt – Bowie emerged as the decade’s last great rock visionary.

HOW HE DID IT: Eno laid out Oblique Strategies cards around Hansa studios that he and Bowie selected at random – “Emphasise differences” formed the basis for Sense Of Doubt.

FEAR OF MUSIC Talking Heads [1979]

BEFORE ENO: Tuneful, if lightweight, new wave New Yorkers led by angular nerd David Byrne. Debut album Talking Heads 77 suggested merely that they had the potential to be America’s answer to XTC.

AFTER ENO: More Songs About Buildings And Food had its moments, but here Eno manoeuvred them to the vanguard of post-punk experimentation, taking on wiry guitar pop, electronic funk and even World Music.

HOW HE DID IT: By treating each song as a separate experiment: while recording Drugs Eno had Byrne jog on the spot to create a suitably breathless-sounding vocal.

THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE U2 [1984]

BEFORE ENO: Four highly strung young Dubliners on a mission to save rock'n'roll. Three impassioned Steve Lillywhite-produced albums had swayed middle America, but they were seeking new frontiers.

AFTER ENO: The biggest art-rock group on the planet. The studio “treatments” devised by Eno and co-producer Daniel Lanois turned down the bombast, adding a widescreen sonic shimmer to songs big enough to take on the world.

HOW HE DID IT: Never one to neglect the details, Eno spent days recording and re-recording Edge’s guitar, even mic-ing up an amp in the grounds outside Slane Castle.

Translator's Note: Finally got around to dealing with this behemoth of an interview. Even though I'm improving over time with the methods that I'm using to scan the magazines, I'm still frustrated that I haven't gotten the scans to not be too tilted. That said, this article had so many pics that I love it. And the interview is far more substantial compared to the NME one.