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Coldplay, hot band

July 12 2003



If their US tour is anything to go by, Coldplay's Melbourne gig will have ballad-inspired fans reaching for their cigarette lighters.

It's the day after another sold-out Coldplay concert and the British rock band's tour bus is gliding along a normally clogged freeway to San Diego with the same ease with which the group has moved to the forefront of pop.

Coldplay's first two albums have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide, thanks to sensitive, reflective songs that offer a calming break from the relentless pessimism and aggression of '90s rock.

That positions Coldplay as one of the few bands in years to make music smart and embracing enough to connect with part of the edgy young alt-rock crowd and accessible enough for mainstream pop fans.

Audiences invariably sing along toYellow, the enchanting ballad that lead singer Chris Martin wrote three years ago in a moment of bliss, and many will likely wonder if a new love song, Moses, was inspired by Martin's girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow (it was.)

"I couldn't be happier," says Martin, 26.

This is the way stardom is supposed to feel but rarely does in rock. Where quality musicians, all the way back to Elvis Presley and the Beatles, once routinely sought the biggest possible audience, most of the great bands of the past 15 years - from Nirvana to Radiohead - have either been suspicious of too much success or torn apart by internal strife while reaching for it.

Coldplay's potential for reviving that grand rock tradition of quality coupled with mass appeal was underscored in Q magazine's review of the group's last Grammy-winning album, A Rush of Blood to the Head.

"By now we are accustomed to seeing great bands falter at the edge of the big time as we are watching the England football team crumble in the quarterfinal," wrote critic Dorian Lyneskey. "It doesn't make them any less inspiring, but wouldn't it be nice, every now and then, to see one go all the way?"

Coldplay hardly seemed ripe for this role just two years ago.

In England the group's rapid rise led to a backlash. Alan McGee, the maverick record executive who signed such bands as Oasis and Jesus and Mary Chain, wisecracked that Coldplay's tender strains appealed only to "bedwetters."

At the same time, Martin felt hopelessly out of place in the United States, sandwiched between testosterone-heavy bands on US tours. As he sang his thoughtful tunes about relationships and life, audiences pelted him with coins and bottles. In one show, a CD struck him on the head.

"We were confused about what we were trying to do and who we were trying to please," Martin says now. "Instead of focusing on all that bad stuff, I (decided) to focus on the four people in the audience who paid their money and want us to show how much we are into it. I stopped being shy about showing how much I cared about what I'm doing."

When Coldplay played for its own audience on the next tour stop in Atlanta, Martin displayed that pent-up energy and passion, and the word began spreading.

By the time the foursome returned to Los Angeles last year, Martin was reaching out to the audience with the warm, openhearted spirit that audiences have come to expect from U2. Whether sitting at the piano or moving about the stage with a guitar, he throws himself into the music with his whole body so forcefully that he becomes a real-life tambourine man, inviting the audience to join him.

This is a band on a mission, and it's brave enough to admit it. "Mainstream pop culture is so awful and so bland and so packaged," Martin says on the way to San Diego. "Our goal is to change the mainstream. We don't want to just keep ourselves a secret. We want to fight to have sincere music be the main thing again."

There are moments of pure pop magic in Coldplay's concerts, especially near the end of the show, when Martin sits at the piano and sings a song he learned from a 1967 Louis Armstrong recording.

Written by George Weiss and Bob Thiele, What a Wonderful World is a lovely, utopian vision that can seem sarcastic when played against the backdrop of Vietnam in the 1960s or the post-September 11 anxiety of today. Yet Martin, as did Armstrong, sings it with a purity and faith that make you want to suspend disbelief and dream along.

Rather than being tied to rock's raw blues and country roots, Coldplay's best numbers seem to grow out of the eloquent and melodic pop-rock tradition blueprinted by the Beatles in their most sweepingly orchestrated works - notably such ambitious yet uncommonly personal tunes as Lennon-McCartney's Across the Universe.

Whether backed by Jonny Buckland's jagged guitar licks or Martin's epic piano chords, the music is filled with such beauty and timeless grace that it reminds you of the purity of ancient cathedral bells. Martin's singing ranges from the droning ache of Radiohead's Thom Yorke to a comforting, conversational tone, sometimes accented by a touch of falsetto.

Whatever his shading, the band - which also includes bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion - plays with taste and economy. This is a band that understands the importance of restraint, even when it is trying to revive a lost tradition in rock.

You sense that same restraint in the band members. They don't have to work at being down to earth when they stop by a breakfast radio show before heading to San Diego.

A lot of bands do these promotional chores begrudgingly, but the four guys in Coldplay are so cordial that one of the fans asks, during a Q&A session, how they stay so grounded. Martin seems genuinely surprised by the question.

"We don't think we are that grounded," he tells the fan. "We get whisked from here to our hotel rooms, then to a nice venue to play for a lot of nice people. It's pretty easy to stay happy."

At a trim 187 centimetres, the seductively handsome Martin would stand out in one of those Vanity Fair covers showcasing Hollywood's hot young talents.

He's also smart, athletic and courteous, adores his parents and is socially conscious.

Plus, good gosh, he can laugh at himself.

Asked about his university background, Martin, who is from Devon in south-west England, assures you his high marks aren't as impressive as they sound.

"It was pretty easy and very light," he says of his major's degree of difficulty, as he lounges in the tour bus' modest dining area. This modesty apparently isn't an act. British writers describe Martin as "terminally humble" and a perpetual worrier.

In early interviews in England, he fretted about everything, from not fitting in with the rebellious rock'n'roll image to a receding hairline. To his everlasting chagrin, he admitted he was so girl-shy that he was a virgin until 22. He still doesn't take drugs or normally drink alcohol.

At first he felt self-conscious about his upper-middle-class, university roots (his father was a businessman, his mum a schoolteacher), but he relaxed, seeing the acceptance of Radiohead, whose members also have college backgrounds.

"To me, what was great about rock'n'roll was not fitting into some image but having the freedom to be and believe in anything you want," he says.

Growing up in a conservative setting, he sensed something liberating in rock'n'roll; he was enthralled by the photos of musicians he saw in such publications as NME even before he had heard much of their music.

As he got deeper into music, the teenager read not only about the music, but also the reasons some bands stayed together and others broke up. He noticed that three of his favourites - U2, REM and Radiohead - divided the songwriting royalties equally and shared decision making.

The same principles govern Coldplay, whose members met in the fall of 1996 while living in the same residence hall at university.

They attended classes during the day and rehearsed three to five hours a night.

After releasing a mini-album in 1999, Coldplay started receiving rave notices in the British pop media and was signed by Parlaphone Records, a branch of EMI, which made them label mates of Radiohead.

Thanks to the popularity of the single Yellow, the group's debut album, Parachutes, entered the British charts at No. 1 in 2000.

So many promising British bands failed to crack the US in the late 1980s and '90s that Coldplay and EMI's main US labels - Capitol and Virgin - were skeptical about trying.

When those two labels passed on releasing Parachutes in the US, a smaller EMI affiliate, Nettwerk Records, jumped at the chance to work with the album.

David Holmes, who now manages Coldplay, was co-owner of Nettwerk, and he persuaded the band to do a few shows there, insisting it could connect strongly with US fans.

With many bands, the members convey such attitude, even offstage, that you can spot them right away. With Coldplay, you'd have a hard time doing that.

They speak about the band's history with a sense of wonder themselves - and as equals.

"I think we all sensed right away that we had a potential to do something that few people ever get a chance to do," says Berryman, who lives in London with his girlfriend. An engineering student, he dropped out after a year but kept close to the band. "I would work all day and they would go to school all day, and we'd meet at 6 in the evening," he says, sitting on a curb in the parking lot after the basketball game. "We were exhausted but we would rehearse until late at night. It was fun but it was a struggle, just the physical commitment."

About the future, drummer Champion says: "We don't want to contrive any type of path for ourselves. A lot of people say you either have to go down the Radiohead route or the U2 route, and I don't like to think of it like that.

"We just have to do whatever is right for us."

- Los Angeles Times

Coldplay will release their four-track single God Put a Smile Upon Your Face on July 21.
They play on Friday at Rod Laver Arena.




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