“WE FELT like rock music has been done,” Chris Martin says, apparently dropping the lid on 60 years of swaggering guitar bands.
Contemplating the zesty pop tones of Coldplay’s new album, A Head Full of Dreams, released on December 4, Martin suggests “the future of music is in new sounds and new ways of treating vocals. We wanted to add those colours to our palette”.
His bandmate Guy Berryman agrees: “There’s an awful lot of rock music already out there. I’m not sure there is anything left to add”.
Not that Martin thinks Coldplay will be considered any great loss to the genre by die-hard rockers.
“No one would ever put us in a list of the top 10 rock bands. We’ve maybe rocked out once, for 10 minutes. I don’t think anyone would throw up the devil horns to any of our major works,” he says.
“The old-fashioned rock ’n roll lifestyle thing is great, but does it really make for great music?
“Does it make people happy?
“I don’t feel we’re embarrassed about being successful, but we don’t need the perm and the gold Rolex,” Martin says.
Yet as frontman for Coldplay – the biggest-selling band this century – Martin is still arguably the definitive rock star of the last decade.
Incredibly friendly when I meet him backstage recording the Christmas Top of the Pops special, the 38-year-old doesn’t drink or take drugs, dresses scruffily in sweatpants and a hoodie, and likes to walk everywhere without retinues of bodyguards and hangers-on.
“One of the benefits of not having a particularly great dress sense is, I don’t really look like a pop star. I like to go on the Tube and see what’s up, get out in the cold with everybody.”
Forming the band in 1996, at the tail-end of Britpop and arguably the beginning of the end for rock music, he thinks “an advantage for our generation is that we see how things turned out for other musicians.”
Walking around London, Martin doesn’t always manage to maintain his anonymity.
Recently, he found himself being assailed by irate builders yelling: “I’m sick of seeing you in my newspaper every f***king day”.
With their new album hurtling up the charts, Coldplay were in the midst of a blitzkrieg of radio and TV appearances and have announced a stadium world tour for this year.
But the element that adds prurient intensity to the attention is Martin’s 2014 divorce from Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow, after 10 years of marriage and two children, and subsequent romantic links with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence.
He is currently dating British Peaky Blinders actress Annabelle Wallis.
“Every human being, whether they are a pop star, a prince or a pauper, has challenges. So the interesting questions are about how do you respond to them. Do you let them control your day?”, asked Martin.
Coldplay’s subdued and introverted 2014 album, Ghost Stories, was widely deemed to be Martin’s divorce record, and the upbeat A Head Full of Dreams has already been pronounced to be the sound of him bouncing back – his dating album, if you will.
“Songwriting to me is about making sense of the day,” Martin says. “So of course my personal experiences are in there, but I wouldn’t like to reduce it to that.
“I am really trying to process the outside world. So if I’m looking at a story about Israel or Palestine or reading The Grapes of Wrath, it all comes through.”
He describes the album as an attempt “to link the personal with the universal”.
It concludes with Up and Up, an inspirational song about changing things in life that are not working for you that “just grew and grew and now it sounds like this big world peace anthem. But it came from a very personal place”, he says.
After working with Brian Eno in the past, Coldplay made the surprising choice this time to work with Norwegian production duo Stargate, renowned as hitmakers for Rihanna and Beyoncé (the latter guests on the album, along with Noel Gallagher).
“Rock and pop is like chalk and cheese,” notes drummer Will Champion. “Our records are full of layers, strings, synths, twinkly bits, the whole lush world of real, comforting, big sounds that you can use to help communicate emotion.
“There is so much space and clarity on modern pop records. Stargate are brilliant at finding what’s important in a piece of music and letting everything else sit back.”
There has always been a sense of mission to Coldplay.
“We would like to be behind the idea of togetherness and acceptance, rather than finger-pointing and against-ness,” Martin says. “My manifesto is to not give up on the idea of humans working together.”
Martin delivers this little homily with conviction, then shudders at the idea that it will reinforce notions of him as rock’s most starry-eyed idealist.
He is a man given to making big statements, then immediately questioning them, prevaricating between self-belief and self-doubt.
But for bassist Berryman, Martin’s emotional extremes are the essence of Coldplay. “If you know Chris, and spend every day with him, you realise that he’s genuinely bouncing off the walls with happiness, or almost inconsolable.
“So I feel that the music we’ve made is very true, it’s either up in the clouds or down in the dumps, and there’s not much in the middle,” Martin says.
The key to the album may be a sample of US President Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at a funeral after a mass shooting in South Carolina in June last year.
“In a situation when he could have gone very revengeful and aggressive, he chose to do that, which was a powerful statement. That’s a good way of looking at life,” he says.
Like a lot of Coldplay’s finest work, the album is full of songs that will make most sense being sung aloud by fans in a stadium.
“No amount of unchoreographed movement from four little men can unite 80000 people like one good chorus,” Martin says.
He admits he can still have moments of panic on stage.
“There is definitely a suspension of normality. The part of your personality you access to do a big concert is not the same part that’s just walking down the street every day. You have to believe, ‘This is my job, we are awesome’.”
“And a couple of things can go wrong and freak you out, then you suddenly think: ‘Oh sh*t, I’m just a boy from Devon, who the hell do I think I am’?”
Coldplay seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. “It’s a very happy ship,” insists guitarist Jonny Buckland.
But after seven albums, selling more than 80 million copies, there has been talk about this being their final offering.
“I think there’s a sense of a journey nearing its completion,” Champion says.
“It’s not to say there’s not going to be another journey. But this is our end-of-term report. This is what we’ve learnt since our first record came out, the summary of how we have evolved as people, as friends and as a band.”
Martin admits to doubts about what the future could hold for the band. It could just be creative exhaustion.
Signing off on a high note
Contemplating the zesty pop tones of Coldplay’s new album, A Head Full of Dreams, released on December 4, Martin suggests “the future of music is in new sounds and new ways of treating vocals. We wanted to add those colours to our palette”.
His bandmate Guy Berryman agrees: “There’s an awful lot of rock music already out there. I’m not sure there is anything left to add”.
Not that Martin thinks Coldplay will be considered any great loss to the genre by die-hard rockers.
“No one would ever put us in a list of the top 10 rock bands. We’ve maybe rocked out once, for 10 minutes. I don’t think anyone would throw up the devil horns to any of our major works,” he says.
“The old-fashioned rock ’n roll lifestyle thing is great, but does it really make for great music?
“Does it make people happy?
“I don’t feel we’re embarrassed about being successful, but we don’t need the perm and the gold Rolex,” Martin says.
Yet as frontman for Coldplay – the biggest-selling band this century – Martin is still arguably the definitive rock star of the last decade.
Incredibly friendly when I meet him backstage recording the Christmas Top of the Pops special, the 38-year-old doesn’t drink or take drugs, dresses scruffily in sweatpants and a hoodie, and likes to walk everywhere without retinues of bodyguards and hangers-on.
“One of the benefits of not having a particularly great dress sense is, I don’t really look like a pop star. I like to go on the Tube and see what’s up, get out in the cold with everybody.”
Forming the band in 1996, at the tail-end of Britpop and arguably the beginning of the end for rock music, he thinks “an advantage for our generation is that we see how things turned out for other musicians.”
Walking around London, Martin doesn’t always manage to maintain his anonymity.
Recently, he found himself being assailed by irate builders yelling: “I’m sick of seeing you in my newspaper every f***king day”.
With their new album hurtling up the charts, Coldplay were in the midst of a blitzkrieg of radio and TV appearances and have announced a stadium world tour for this year.
But the element that adds prurient intensity to the attention is Martin’s 2014 divorce from Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow, after 10 years of marriage and two children, and subsequent romantic links with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence.
He is currently dating British Peaky Blinders actress Annabelle Wallis.
“Every human being, whether they are a pop star, a prince or a pauper, has challenges. So the interesting questions are about how do you respond to them. Do you let them control your day?”, asked Martin.
Coldplay’s subdued and introverted 2014 album, Ghost Stories, was widely deemed to be Martin’s divorce record, and the upbeat A Head Full of Dreams has already been pronounced to be the sound of him bouncing back – his dating album, if you will.
“Songwriting to me is about making sense of the day,” Martin says. “So of course my personal experiences are in there, but I wouldn’t like to reduce it to that.
“I am really trying to process the outside world. So if I’m looking at a story about Israel or Palestine or reading The Grapes of Wrath, it all comes through.”
He describes the album as an attempt “to link the personal with the universal”.
It concludes with Up and Up, an inspirational song about changing things in life that are not working for you that “just grew and grew and now it sounds like this big world peace anthem. But it came from a very personal place”, he says.
After working with Brian Eno in the past, Coldplay made the surprising choice this time to work with Norwegian production duo Stargate, renowned as hitmakers for Rihanna and Beyoncé (the latter guests on the album, along with Noel Gallagher).
“Rock and pop is like chalk and cheese,” notes drummer Will Champion. “Our records are full of layers, strings, synths, twinkly bits, the whole lush world of real, comforting, big sounds that you can use to help communicate emotion.
“There is so much space and clarity on modern pop records. Stargate are brilliant at finding what’s important in a piece of music and letting everything else sit back.”
There has always been a sense of mission to Coldplay.
“We would like to be behind the idea of togetherness and acceptance, rather than finger-pointing and against-ness,” Martin says. “My manifesto is to not give up on the idea of humans working together.”
Martin delivers this little homily with conviction, then shudders at the idea that it will reinforce notions of him as rock’s most starry-eyed idealist.
He is a man given to making big statements, then immediately questioning them, prevaricating between self-belief and self-doubt.
But for bassist Berryman, Martin’s emotional extremes are the essence of Coldplay. “If you know Chris, and spend every day with him, you realise that he’s genuinely bouncing off the walls with happiness, or almost inconsolable.
“So I feel that the music we’ve made is very true, it’s either up in the clouds or down in the dumps, and there’s not much in the middle,” Martin says.
The key to the album may be a sample of US President Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at a funeral after a mass shooting in South Carolina in June last year.
“In a situation when he could have gone very revengeful and aggressive, he chose to do that, which was a powerful statement. That’s a good way of looking at life,” he says.
Like a lot of Coldplay’s finest work, the album is full of songs that will make most sense being sung aloud by fans in a stadium.
“No amount of unchoreographed movement from four little men can unite 80000 people like one good chorus,” Martin says.
He admits he can still have moments of panic on stage.
“There is definitely a suspension of normality. The part of your personality you access to do a big concert is not the same part that’s just walking down the street every day. You have to believe, ‘This is my job, we are awesome’.”
“And a couple of things can go wrong and freak you out, then you suddenly think: ‘Oh sh*t, I’m just a boy from Devon, who the hell do I think I am’?”
Coldplay seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. “It’s a very happy ship,” insists guitarist Jonny Buckland.
But after seven albums, selling more than 80 million copies, there has been talk about this being their final offering.
“I think there’s a sense of a journey nearing its completion,” Champion says.
“It’s not to say there’s not going to be another journey. But this is our end-of-term report. This is what we’ve learnt since our first record came out, the summary of how we have evolved as people, as friends and as a band.”
Martin admits to doubts about what the future could hold for the band. It could just be creative exhaustion.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Trending Now
Latest Videos