GOING FOR COLD

It d be very easy to hate Coldplay. Not on musical grounds, let me hasten to add, as Parachutes is one of the most impressive debut albums you ll hear this year, but because the band have entered the media fray with little or no history or manifesto attached, with the result that they re every journalist s nightmare a band who have to be played, ahem, cold.

"We re not very rock n roll," laughs bassist Guy Berryman. "I fully understand how it would help if we d concocted some outrageous agenda for ourselves, but we loathe that kind of posturing. For us it s far more rock n roll to be honest and we haven t had a particularly rock n roll upbringing, which is why our interviews so far have tended to concentrate on backgrounds, which can be quite annoying because then you start having to validate where you come from."
For the record Guy hails from Canterbury, angelic-voiced frontman Chris Martin from Devon, guitarist Will Champion from Southampton and drummer Jon Buckland from North Wales, the band coming together at University College, London four years ago.
"We were all living in the same halls of residence," explains Guy. "All of us played instruments and we just drifted together, as people living away from home for the first time tend to do. There was no real masterplan as such, we just started playing songs together anything from Simon & Garfunkel to Irish folk songs, which was Will s specialty liked the idea of getting a band together and started attracting a crowd. In fairness, the reason promoters on the Camden circuit loved us was definitely down to the fact that we were in a quite big college and could count on plenty of support from friends, but I can honestly say that initially we never expected to get to this kind of
level."
Signed to Parlophone after two well-received indie releases, Coldplay hit the Top 40 with Shiver in February but experienced a quantum leap in their fortunes when Yellow went in at No.4 earlier this month.
"That came as a huge if pleasant surprise," the bassist enthuses. "In fact, initially it felt so weird that we began to think there was something wrong! We had been gigging solidly for most of the year, kicking off with the NME tour, but to be honest we d have to say that the success of the single is down to support from radio. Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq were totally behind it and that obviously helped enormously. As regards the media we never really wanted to be thrust at people, we re far more comfortable with a gradual build-up through word-of-mouth rather than going shouting from the rooftops about how great we are. That s just not the kind of band we are."
So what kind of band are Coldplay? Well, they ll admit to being in thrall to song-based acts like The Stone Roses, Bob Dylan, The Flaming Lips and Neil Young, but with an effects-laden guitar squall underpinning Chris Martin s high, pure voice there are inescapable comparisons to be made with Radiohead and Jeff Buckley. The resigned sigh in Guy s voice makes it obvious that I m not the first person to have raised those names.
"It s not something that annoys us, " he says, "because we ve been getting those comparisons ever since we started. There s no way we re denying that we love both of those artists but we never set out to make mere carbon copies of their work. Songs like Don t Panic , Trouble , Shiver and Yellow to name but four are, I feel, recognisably us rather than a compendium of outside influences. Ultimately what we re about is good songs played and sung with plenty of emotion, and we re hardly unique in wanting to go down that road. People have been doing that for donkey s years and so, hopefully, will we."
With Parachutes likely to spread Coldplay s tentacles way beyond the UK indie ghetto from whence they sprang you can t help feeling that they may be rather more rock n roll by this time next year. Six months slogging around the States with, say, The Black Crowes may not alter their music s undoubted qualities but I d safely bet that their next round of interviews will definitely be longer.