Coldplay almost fell apart in recent years, but reconnected through unconventional bonding exercises (like making their own clothes and buying their own studio). The resulting album has fewer anthems and more low-key music, says Chris Martin. He tells Brian Boydabout hating paparazzi, loving Christy Moore and why his band are "the seventh best in the world"
A GROUP of drunk, colour-blind four-year-olds were trying to draw the Sgt Pepper's outfits worn by The Beatles. The resultant sketches were taken to a first-time clothes designer who ran up something awful-looking and gave it to Chris Martin to wear.
Or this is what it seems to have happened when you meet the strangely clad Coldplay singer in an anonymous London hotel. You look him up and down suspiciously, wincing at his unprepossessing "nouveau French revolutionary" look. There's only one thing to say: "You look great Chris."
These clothes are supposed to maketh the band. The sleeve of the new Coldplay album, Viva La Vida (or Death and All His Friends)is a reproduction of Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the Peoplepainting which commemorates the French Revolution of 1830. The band got a designer to run up outfits based on the clothes in Delacroix's painting. In a bizarre sartorial bonding exercise, the four members of Coldplay are wearing these clothes as a "uniform" during all promotional duties for the new album.
"When we got the clothes back from the designers, we customised them ourselves," Martin explains. "We're trying to reconnect as a band all over again after what happened at the end of the last record [ see below], and we thought this was a good idea . . . But enough about the clothes, who are you listening to you at the moment?"
This week I've mainly been listening to The Blue Nile.
"The Blue who?" he asks. The Blue Nile - A Walk Across The Rooftops, Paul Buchanan, Glasgow band, complete genius. "Oh my God, I can't believe I've never heard of them," he says. "Write down some album titles and I'll get them this afternoon."
And on that Chris Martin-has-never-heard-of-The-Blue-Nile bombshell, we begin the interview proper. Coldplay's last album, X&Ywas the biggest seller of 2005 with 10 million units shifted. But the fallout from the album almost destroyed the band.
ON THE BAND'S RIFT:
"U2 famously once said they were reapplying for the job as the best band in the world, but with us on this album, we feel like we're just reapplying to be a band again. We ceased to be a four-piece unit after the last album. We weren't really talking to each other - the vibe had gone. We were falling apart and I've seen it happen in other bands. We had to get back that sense that, as a four-piece, we were greater than the sum of our parts.
"It really just felt that we didn't own ourselves any more. There were just too many swanky dinners, too many award ceremonies and stuff like that. It was getting to the point where we could just have easily phoned in the songs for the new album from our holiday homes. For this album, I really wanted to burn all the awards - erase all that stuff from the past. I still feel we've got everything to prove and validation is absolutely crucial to me. We may be in an amazing position, but that validation is still needed.
"I wanted to buy back the business that Coldplay had become. The first thing we did was to buy our own rehearsal space and studio in London. There's this building in Camden which I used to pass every day - and it wasn't a very nice building. One day, I saw a 'for sale' sign on it and thought that, because the building was so ugly, nobody would ever bother us there. So we moved in, and for the first time since we used to rehearse in a bedroom way back, we had our own rehearsal space.
ON NEW BEST FRIENDS:
"The other big thing we had to do was to get back Phil Harvey. Phil is like the fifth member of Coldplay, he was the one who managed us for years and years and was sort of our 'creative director'. He passed over the Coldplay reins a few years ago when we just became too big for one person to manage, but we've got him back now and that was a vital reconnection with our past.
"Slowly, we just went back to a situation where it was just the four of us playing together in a small room. I'd say about 80 per cent of this album was recorded with the four of us playing simultaneously - and that's very rare for any band these days."
"We just had to hunt Eno down for this album. We all really felt that he was the man who could reconnect us. Just listen to his Music For Airportsalbum or any of the production work he has done for Bowie, Talking Heads or U2. The U2 thing is appropriate because I always view Coldplay albums in terms of U2 albums and I believe that Viva La Vidais our Unforgettable Fire, in that it's a less straightforward, more oblique-sounding work. If pressed as to what it's about, I can say it's about sex and death and love and fear and travel and illness.
"We also got in Markus Dravs, who has worked with Arcade Fire, and he was great in that he really put it up to us. I had this song which I thought was amazing called Cemeteries of London, and Markus said it was just an okay song when I played it to him. I just thought 'Well, fuck you' and I came back the next day with a much better version of it."
ON ANTHEMS:
"Okay, here's my take on X&Y, it was melodic, but it was safe. There were too many songs trying to be anthems. The problem with anthems is that the songs in-between get dwarfed. And there is that thing that if you have two or three really big songs, you can fill out the rest of the album with just okay stuff.
"Don't get me wrong, we still love our big choruses, but on this one, there is no one big anthem that dominates. On the last one, there was Fix You, which now seems to crop up whenever there's a sad moment on some TV drama. So the big thing for us this time around was to write a complete and cohesive album.
"I'm calling this our 'anti-download' album, in that I think and I hope that there's not just two or three songs that people will dip into. I think each song informs the next and they all have - however wanky this may sound - their own colour.
"I really wanted this to be more like a film; something more complete than the usual album. The big guiding principle we had - given that we had fantastic commercial success with X&Y- was that we can't get any bigger, but we can get better. Maybe by removing the anthems, we have taken off the safety break.
"Before, a song would get on to an album and we thought 'it'll be okay because there are a couple of big songs either side of it', but this time, whenever we felt that sort of thinking creeping in, we just binned the song. Hence the mad rush at the end of recording. But in a weird way, that sort of thinking also gives you great freedom.
ON EMI:
"I remember on the last record - which we were late delivering - there were all these press reports about how the EMI share price had gone down because the album wasn't going to be released in a certain financial quarter. How can I emphasise this enough to you: it's got nothing to do with me. You cannot put that sort of pressure on a band.
"I know our label EMI has been through a lot over the last year or so, but when you have people saying 'the success of the new Coldplay album is vital to EMI's future', you just want to crawl up and die. "Shareholders, stocks, all that stuff. It has nothing to do with me."
"Wow, so much has changed since the last album. I thought what The Raconteurs did, and particularly what Radiohead did, was absolutely great. We really respect how they went about releasing their albums.
"Radiohead had that freedom, though, because they were out of contract with EMI. We're still in a contract with the label so we just didn't have that option. I know that, these days, you're probably supposed to say that being on a major label is totally antiquated, but we're actually fine with the label and we love the people we work with at the label.
"We are trying to keep pace, though, with the idea of free content. The first single, Violet Hill- we gave the seven-inch single of that away free with the NMEand we also made it available as a free download. And then [this month], we're doing three free concerts, in London, New York and Barcelona. So I like that thing about going 'here's a free single, here's a free gig'.
ON MUSIC QUALITY:
"I always thought that if you were a 16-year-old in the school playground and you liked Coldplay, you would have to whisper it under your breath. We're just not a cool band and we never will be. To be honest, the notion or concept of being cool means nothing to me.
"I would like to think that when this album is released and people hear what we're like now, that that 16-year-old can now feel proud to say he likes Coldplay. On the 'cool music' thing, I have no problem sitting here and telling you that the best gig I ever went to was by John Williams. He's the guy who wrote the music for Jawsand Star Wars. I also love Stevie Wonder and Christy Moore - are they 'cool' choices?
"There was something you said earlier on about how, in all probability, the best two bands in the world today are Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros. They are both absolutely remarkable bands, but if you have them at number one, then I think Coldplay would only be the seventh best band in the world."
ON FAME:
"There's that clip on YouTube of me 'attacking' a photographer, and you know, I really regret that. I really regret it because what I did suddenly meant that guy earned $500,000 or something out of those pictures. I should just have ignored it.
"The thing is, I never publicly talk about my wife. Yes, it is the case that we are both involved in very public professions, but you do try and keep your private life private. I'll tell you one thing, I'm a lot fonder of music journalists now - you can talk music together - but you just know there are some people who hate me and hate Coldplay but want to talk to me because of who I am married to.
"Being followed around by photographers all the time . . . I just feel that they are trying to get me into trouble. You get very guarded.
"I'm really stressed out at the moment. The album's coming out and we're in the middle of rehearsals for the tour. I'm stressed because this all matters to me still, I want people to like the album. I know I always say that, but this album is a big change for us, so this time I really, really mean it."
Viva La Vida (or Death and All His Friends)is released on June 12th. Irish tour dates will be announced shortly
