The Rolling Stone recently conducted an interview with Chris Martin.
An excerpt from the chat follows:
When Chris Martin emerges from a town car on a quiet West Village street one afternoon in May, he's dressed like a stagehand black khakis, black hooded top. You'd never notice him, which is probably the idea. But then he starts singing Talking Heads' "Girlfriend Is Better" loud enough to be heard from across the street. The guy can't help it: He's a ham. The paparazzi siege that came with marrying Gwyneth Paltrow and having two angelic blond children with her has forced a certain public guardedness on him, but it seems he can't keep it up. As Martin sits down for what he calls "an epic interview" seven hours over three sessions his band is about to release its fourth studio album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends.
What was the mood of the band going into your new record?
On our last album, we took a real beating from some people, and by the end we felt like no producer would really want to work with us, basically. We were bigger than we were good ? we were very hungry to improve on a basic level. So I asked Brian Eno, "Do you know any producers who could help us to get better as a band?" And he said, "Well, I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I might be the man."
What was his assessment of the band?
He goes, "Your songs are too long. And you're too repetitive, and you use the same tricks too much, and big things aren't necessarily good things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are not good enough." He broke it down.
On the first single, "Violet Hill," you sing about a fox becoming a god and a "carnival of idiots on show." Was the song inspired by Fox News?
No one's got that before, no one in the band, no one. The first line in that song is the first line of any song we ever wrote. Years ago, when Guy [Berryman, bassist] heard that first line and that first little melody "It was a long and dark December" he said, "OK, I'll join the band." But we just didn't have the other 49 lines until last year. And then one day I was watching Bill O'Reilly, and I was like, "I know how to finish that song."
My best friend, Tim, he's a musician in a band called the High Wire, but he also has to work in a bar. He was having trouble with his boss, and it made me think that so many people spend their lives being told what to do by people that they just don't like. So it was that idea, and watching Bill O'Reilly, and all these words just came out.
On "Death and All His Friends," there's this great topical line: "I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge."
That's Brian Eno's line. I had this blank spot in the lyrics: "I don't want to battle from beginning to end. Something, something, something. I don't want to follow death and all of his friends." So we were all having a sandwich, and it's like, "I don't want to watch too many episodes of Friends? No, that won't do. I don't want to listen to Radiohead's The Bends? No. I don't want to eat any Jerry and Ben's No." And then Brian came out with the line, and he was like, "I quite like that. You should use that."
It does speak to the state of the world.
And it's fucking true, man. You can see it everywhere. It's like, when are we going to learn? We're never going to learn, is the answer. It's an ultimate bummer, and the last humans on Earth will really kick themselves. You and I are living in the time when revenge is the most dangerous thing, because the stakes are so high and the weaponry is so advanced.
Do you see any reason for hope?
As soon as Barack Obama becomes president, people will be a bit more optimistic. If Obama was to be president, it would immediately change the whole outside world's opinion of America overnight. America's public image at the moment is really bad. And it's a bummer, because over half of Americans are the coolest people on the planet. But they've been so misrepresented.
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