[Music] cool place what's it called where are we are we rolling you always ask me that you know with the same answer always rolling always rolling okay we are currently sitting further apart than we would like to be i think one more seat over would be the
preferred arrangement i would prefer that but your people said not to come too close to you or to look at you in the eye it's not true i'm not the one who shifted seats but we can talk about that another time they said look at him like just below the neckline
i convinced my friend once to to greet jared leto like that and i almost let him let him get away with the whole thing it was going to be so awkward i told him i'd set this whole thing up like don't go like don't look him in the eye don't call him jared
don't like the whole like went deep like six things you don't do yes he was so terrified i had to let him off the hook just before but it would have been a great moment if i'd gone away gone through with it that's funny because i looked at jared in the eye
once and he punched me in the nose so don't ever do that again but we're in a beautiful location this is this is awesome i love this this is like a wonderful boutique kind of bespoke theater environment in in in los angeles called the playhouse
this is called the playhouse yeah mm-hmm why are we here we're here we're here because you wanted to speak to me i did yeah well i wanted to speak to you or both i think it works both ways it does um and we're here we actually um are currently trying to make this
theater nice again got a cap which says m t t n a because it's going to be for us but also for like young people theater programs and like any any kind of events and but right now of course there's no one in it because that's the same in every theater in the world
it's really cool it's a really cool space but i i don't i i guess i'm surprised i wasn't sure that you were in the sort of like make theaters make this theater nice again business yes well no only no i wouldn't call it business just
just the one theater yeah for now yeah you might catch them but no so so for the time being we get to rehearse and and do interviews in here and it's it's exciting to uh have somewhere that eventually will help hopefully be good for the whole community yeah
for sure rehearse for what i mean i know now there's performances that are coming up you know there's a brittle wars performance yes there's a live stream you've got planned um how is all that working out because right now we have this new song right
higher power we're going to talk about that but you're diving straight back into performance again so so how does it feel to sort of get the band back together and play this new song and yeah well i just came back from rehearsing with everybody
and it was just so i think that one thing that this whole time has given all of us is an extra gratitude for the job itself yeah the fact that we can go to work together even that is amazing yeah so of course there's part of us that was
rehearsing like why we're rehearsing to play to nobody but i think there's just a for me personally i just so grateful to be playing in a band in that band in our band so um so it's funny within the band there's a sort of a mild frustration that
not quite knowing when we might be able to do what we're really here to do yeah and play for people but also a deep gratitude and joy in the thing itself yeah you see something really interesting about the need to take breaks as well and i wonder kind
of like an enforce break for everyone last year everyone sort of needed to figure things out personally and on their own terms and deal with the challenges ahead and it was this huge micro global pandemic that affected billions of people in a micro
way so you know in terms of like your plans last year was coldplay were there any or did it sort of fit into that that that need to regroup and make something new and try new things uh well that's a good question actually we just before covered we'd done an album called
everyday life correct which uh we were never going to tour for a couple of reasons one environmental and one just that it felt like it might some of those songs might not feel quite right in amongst certain other songs it felt like its own thing and uh
so this last year we were always supposed to be making the thing that we making at the moment so we were very lucky like that but uh because it was so difficult to get together and because because we always work a bit separately and a bit together we've done that for a
long time and it's really great so the the basic pattern of it was normal but the the gratitude for it was quadrupled because of psychology suddenly it was so difficult to find a country that would we could all go to for a bit
yeah you know that would let us all in yeah to record but we were able to in some funny places but um always in like a bubble and all you know all the rules and everything everyday life uh it's a beautiful body of work um it's a conceptual work in terms of
you know sunrise sunset it's an album that sort of to me having listened to it a lot now walks two different paths at the same time um one being calling some things out getting involved in the conversation diving in there being afraid the other
one being this yearning for connection that's what i got out of that yes the album as a whole why did you make that album what inspired that album okay ma'am well i'm gonna say something you know uh i love you so i'll tell you the truth so um i think that after our last tour we got
to a place of well in fact for the last sort of eight years it's just been following the muse more and more purely like i don't know how to explain it other than when you close your eyes just sort of told what to do and uh as the last tour was finishing in
fact on the last morning this song arrived in the hotel room in buenos aires that that i recorded on my phone and that that phone recording is on everyday life because that sort of was the spirit of it and it was it just seemed like we we
wanted to make a record about what people are going through on earth what what is it like to be a human and then some of those people are other people that we see and some of those songs are about my feelings about things or what i'm going through and
sometimes if you're lucky the song applies to other people and to you and there's a lot of you know unless you hide in a hole right now there's so many questions about how should i be as a human how how am i how can i contribute rather than detract yeah and it's very
difficult yeah because on the one hand say well if we play a big show and people are happy that's great but then on the same time but you got there by using loads of fuel or you know if you're for white english people with a mouthpiece that's great
but also there's no diversity within our band how do we deal with that that's that's not necessarily our fault that's you know we we met where we met in the part of england you're asking the right questions yeah but it's not it's not
even that we know the answers is that that i think that album is about just acknowledging that there's so much we don't know yeah on earth and everywhere else but uh but thanks for listening to my i sort of felt like no one would um listen to it because um it felt
extremely personal in a strange way even though it's about loads of other people yeah i i i love you know i love that big i love it because i feel when i press play on it from the minute that it starts from sunrise which is the most beautifully
orchestrated composition it's incredible did you write that on piano yeah yeah amazing i wrote my part on piano and then uh dav who we often do strings with this guy davide rossi this italian mad person who we loved the bits he had played me some music by a guy
called arvo part which spelled arvo part this composer and he said and i played him this piece he said oh avo part would put this interval as the harmony and so he played that harmony on the violin and that was that's when it became what it became yeah like so it's
like all our things this ultimately teamwork yeah and that's what it sounded like it sounded like um it sounded like a record that you needed to make as a band for yourselves maybe that's what you mean by you're not sure if anyone else was going to hear it
because it it doesn't it just felt like it felt quite vicarious is it possible that that hour but you could have not even put that album out that it still would have resonated with you in the right way it would have been an important process to go through
yeah no exactly had we had to do it had to make it yeah but uh yeah then then then then we wanted to put it out because which was really good also said a lot of really interesting things that i think i think in a weird way that i'm going to come out in 2020
and resonated in a completely in a very acute way because there's a lot of things that were being said on that record that kind of almost foreshadowed a lot of what we ended up kind of experiencing as humanity to some degree which does
happen for the foreshadowing in art yeah yes yes i don't i don't know how to speak to that i don't know how well let me ask you this did you have you listened to it since we've gone on to quarantine and does it sit different for you i don't i think we might have talked
about this over the years i don't listen to things really after they're done because it's too difficult i don't i it's also if i listen to it and thought it was amazing i don't know how healthy would that that would be for my ego and if i listen
to it the most normal thing is i think is awful the same as when you hear your voice on an answering machine or right do you listen back to your show every day no right you should because it's really good but thanks it'll be a different
experience for you that's a very good point i've never thought of it that way i've never flipped it into a different environment but that being said at some point you have to love it enough to let it go yeah that's that's really true and i always love
playing and singing the songs that we've released for example we have a song called the scientist like when we first did that i thought it was amazing the recording but now if i hear i just feel oh this is awful but then but then if we're playing the song we were just
rehearsing last week oh i love you know it's so nice to get into the song i think maybe it's partly because while you're working on something you're already inside those clothes and then as soon as you give it to the world a mannequin fills us because
you're you're not inside the song anymore unless you're playing it live so do you think there are songs on everyday life that you're excited to play now i know you didn't want to tour that record but are there ones that have risen to the surface
orphans being an obvious selection but i don't think that will make it into the oh you are kidding me that's dick come on you're toying with me that's such an incredible song if you haven't heard our new songs that's true no i think there's so of a certain color
those songs in i don't know we'll see i mean yeah we we might as well be talking about la la cuckoo land because a set list is it's an imaginary thing right now at the minute but it definitely feels like that data starting that energy is starting to
shift i think with some sensible behavior within society we might get there sooner rather than later let's talk a little bit about the song i want to talk about um higher power this is one of my favorite songs you've ever recorded hey really really
you say that to all the girls no i really mean it this song um you wrote it on guitar uh no i it came on a a kitchen sink a bathroom sink right started with the beat yeah really yeah and then um the title higher power have been around
for one there's if you go on my phone there's like 15 abandoned higher powers that aren't that good demos and then um voice notes voice notes here and um then it just dropped through that song it just landed on a keyboard that uh my friend's friend lent me because of where
we were staying there wasn't a piano so i was supe super grateful you tapped into it well yes i think with good songs at least they they are they are just like their own things that you happen to catch how do you know when they're there
because you just know there's nothing to do with you no but how do you know when to apply yourself from whatever you were doing that very second and switching that into needing to drum something and sing along to it like what is the moment that goes from i'm reading a book
now i'm not reading a book i'm writing a song how do you know well that's a really good question i have a deal with myself it took a while to negotiate it but we came to an agreement but to say that if anything comes calling you have to go and do it
immediately whatever it is and most of it is not that good i think that we've been very blessed to have some songs that some people like over the years largely through tenacity and perseverance because there's thousands of ideas that
don't even make it past the drumming department right yeah but but a song like higher power there's a few there's probably in our whole catalog there's probably 15 songs where that's happened where it basically just lands learns why do drummers a lot of drummers that i've met in
varying bands seem to have a very high bar larry mullen jr yeah very hard to get something that's not incredible past him i know you all do but i feel like drummers to some degree have this thing about them uh first of all will physically is like
ferdinand the friendly ball what's it called that movie yes so he look there's i think there's a movie about bull he everyone's scared of him but he's really sweet yeah and that's what will i'm scared of will and he loves me but even yesterday i had to speak to
johnny or guitarist i said i think will might be mad at me really ask that question after how many years 24 marriage 25. wow and he's still like i think he's because sometimes he has a look oh yeah most bands are only successful
really because of their chemistry you know but none of us are virtuosos none of us except matt bellamy but most or mark not though there are a bunch justin bannon yes okay there's a load of them but but in a banner hours it's the only
unique thing we have is our chemistry and about the balance of that chemistry and uh yesterday i was reading about jason and the argonauts and of course when they were assembling that crew to go and get the golden fleece they had to have a person that does this
and a person that does that and a person that's good at this and a person and a band is like that and will for us is like an anchor and i'd say pro larian you too is like an anchor because you might have a front man and a you know or a guitarist who's you know they we
want to play yeah you're offering marshmallow costumes so someone has to sort of say okay great we can go to the marshmallow castle but let's you know do the planning properly yeah and will is that for us and we would be completely screwed without him
higher power feels like it's a marshmallow castle record though it's it's like pop music on steroids it's incredible it's like got that sort of like modern love beat and the whole thing just feels like this crazy like joyous dance through the fields
and so when you demo that and then it comes back to the band is that one of those ones where everyone's like yes great yeah actually will will said i really like this that sounds and that was our first session all together with max martin right all together like at that
early stage yeah and they so i sent them the demo and then they started working on it and will text him and said this this is gonna be really good yeah it's awesome which is i never get i've had that maybe twice what was the other time uh viva la vida
yeah which is also good yeah um i i wanna before we get into max martin i wanna trace it back to to me the origin of what i consider sort of your three point so 4.0 like parachutes being a an album within itself to me you've done nothing that sounds
anything like that ever since and that's the whole album no and it's this beautiful kind of like document of the of the band and this wonderful naive space but the songs and the production is so awesome and then from there you you it got
adventurous pretty quick right it was like all right cool like we know what we're capable of that's your 2.3.0 being sort of viva la vida into milo zyloto and all that but around that time he started to dance with pop music in a really big way
yeah and and in particular up tempo pop music avicii rest his soul being a very early collaborator in that space and and the experimentation is a question coming i promise but the experimentation that you began to do at that time which seemed
to lifelong coldplay fans to be wait who who are they with yeah now makes total sense at the time did it what inspired you to want to make these changes okay i have two answers to that it's a really great question i think that every artist is um completely intertwined with
what's happening culturally and what's happening technologically around them you know so when when the delay pedal came through whoever invented that then he had all these amazing delay paddle records so we have been we've as we have existed in a we've existed in
the band concurrently with the barriers between types of music coming down correct which is for us is the biggest blessing in the world yeah when we started it was like you you're you're a white indie band and they are this this is urban radio
and this is alternative radio and basically old-fashioned racist statements and um so you know of course we fit in a box at the beginning and then you know right now in 2021 you know everyone's doing everything and you can like olivia rodrigo as much as
you like ac dc and no one thinks that's weird and that is that's musical utopia for me and you can also listen to olivia rodrigo and then listen to something recorded 70 years ago it's miraculous so why would you want to stay in one box plus we did that and it still exists
yeah it's not like a i always feel for chefs because they make this amazing thing and then someone someone eats it but no one ate parachutes it's still there so so there's that there's the coming down of the barriers and uh and the fact that when you've
made something it remains then i would say that over you know when we made that first record i was 23 and had a lot more insecurities and a lot a lot less life lived and over time for one reason another from experience from seeking out certain teachers
from watching other people work from studying bruce springsteen or looking at michael jackson or nina simone or anyone that's been great for a long period of time i i and we have just cared less and less what anyone else thinks
and more and more about what is what is coming through what is what are we being told to do by the whatever you call those powers that be and so the less you give about what anyone thinks the more you're completely free and i think that our journey to freedom has
been slow but ever widening so i feel like there's no reason why you can't have a pop song like a sky full of stars which have she produced next to a really indie thing like uh there's a song on the record fly on which is really gentle and sweet and
uh so i just feel like all the rules have gradually been thrown out of the window and and that's so fun when you discovered that at the time it just felt to your point so groundbreaking like wow coldplay just on one they're working with this this and this and
these kind of people and da da da and now there is this desire i think for this cross-pollination genre freedom that you that you talk about that leads us to a place like higher power which to me almost sounds like three and a half minutes of all of it
right yeah you know yeah it's like all the things we've learned come together in this moment and it it sounds so authentically coldplay whereas i do feel like if you tried that even three albums ago it might have been like no there's no way
it's funny man because in a strange way the longer that we've lasted as a band the less credit you feel you can take for anything yeah and with within that even is quite a lot of freedom beautiful yeah so i don't feel any pressure about oh you did this or this sold that or this
because it's like well it's i'm just being put on earth in this shape to do the band and some other things too but so i'll just do whatever whatever songs come through and we should do them to their fullest when we did a sky full of stars for
example we tried to do it in an indie way for a bit but then we're like nah let's make it sound like it wants to sound so with higher power yeah we've been through all those challenges so it clearly wants to sound like this like this and we're with the
best producer of all time so just let so one of the things we said to max when we were you know does music musically does he communicate like normal people or does he just speak through his music he speaks you have to go through a system of gates
and you know do certain tests and then there's a physical exam and then eventually they open a tunnel and you get he's really blindfolded yeah he's what he wants he's not willy wonka and but he's more ripped than willie i hear he's jacked and and
willy wonka is not great so great on production we tried working with him but uh what was the question again oh yeah so with max but by the time we came to max which has been a long journey towards each other yes i think we wanted to get there at the
point where we're like you do your thing yeah and we'll do our thing and if it works amazing and if it doesn't no one loses anything so you send him the song he did his thing and you and then you are you there or you sort of getting it back are you giving him the space to
work or how's that working well when uh you know max is our producer right now yeah for anything we do so just before higher power arrived yeah i i'd done a whole session with him or auditioning songs for a potential album all right but higher
power didn't exist then right so we've been through this whole process of him saying yes no maybe change this you know real this is real production real mr miyagi stuff yeah this is because i think a lot of times you get the feeling with max martin it goes into
the max martin world doesn't really matter who touches it or how invested he is or not invested no one really ever knows this is why by the way i'm spending a lot of time on this just because there's great there's a lot wrapped up in max
martin a lot in his story and who he is and he's very reticent to ever talk about his craft and so you imagine that it's going to kind of get swept up in the max machine and come out sounding incredible the fact that he's right there next to you and he's actually
wrote like he's ear testing the songs and you know i think that for whatever reason where he is in his life and where we where we are in ours it just it felt really fresh for both parties yeah and i think it's he didn't know if i was going to let him
that deeply in if he said i mean and i think that's been you'd have to ask him but i think it's been more enjoyable for him than us just saying here's the song don't touch it but add some sparkly yeah stuff it doesn't mean that at all it's been very much like
okay here's the very basics what do you think what and then we so all but with higher power to answer your actual question i was here and they were all there and that song arrived and so i sent it to them quite quickly yeah and then went to meet
them and went yeah we've got one and will was like you can stay this time um then he well then he quickly moved on to a song he didn't like one of the things i love about the way that you move actually if you take a look at the last
10 years of coldplay you do have this wonderful contrast with each other with you with yourselves where it's like we'll make this but only because it will open a portal to this yeah and then we'll make this but only because it will send us back home to make this
yes and you seem to love this zigzag approach of like ghost stories head full of dreams yeah everyday life whatever this becomes yes i think it's just it's nice to have a picture frame uh to when songs arrive it's nice to know well that might fit in this picture
frame yeah because uh if you're going to bother making an album now in 2021 it should probably be its own entity as a whole because no one really needs to listen to an album anymore and the album is quite an outdated concept for most people we're basically
making silent movies but we that's what we love doing and uh charlie chaplin when he made the great dictator everyone was making talkies at that point because i know this is supposed to be a silent movie [Music] in a way albums are like silent movies i
don't know i sort of you know i think that that was a maybe a few years ago that was a loud conversation i i can't help but feel that we've gone back to a space where if an artist is truly invested in a body of work something that you really have to say
because it comes from you it doesn't matter whether i think an album is outdated or not you want to make it you're not satisfied doing it this way this way this way in this particular case you've got to make it like this because you want to say something that
lasts this long in this format and it's fun to dress it up and it's tracklisted and put art on and it's yeah it's very fun it's the fun right and if you're having fun isn't really at the core of the trade i'm having fun like don't i just want you to be having
to be having fun no i don't i don't i've never agreed with that thing of like well i don't not agree because people should believe what they want to believe i've never been into that thing of like we like it so that's great and if anyone
else likes it that's a bonus i feel like we care about what both parties think uh or or does that mean i would never want to be willfully obtuse no okay i get that um but i do believe that if you're super into something and you connect with it emotionally then
some other human might do too how are you um for yourself personally at this point in your life now finding a balance between building a life that you can be at peace in and learn and be a human being versus being chris martin in the band coldplay
and all of the sort of craziness that comes with that um how is that work-life balance if you can call it work the holistic experience yeah it's not work it's just like a yeah what i do yeah i think that um all the stuff about being in a famous
banner or this or all that i think if if a worldwide pandemic teaches you anything it's that you don't want to get any delusions of grandeur yeah or think that you're better than you that you're better because you're famous or you're better because
you're whatever i think that you know i just feel like this is the gift i got given and that's what i do and i don't think any more about did we make it are we famous or with this or this or that does that make sense yeah like that's clearly bull
um i think this is what i'm supposed to be doing whether anyone's listening or not as long as i can afford to do that even if i was working somewhere else i'd still be going home and doing songs because so i think that if you go back 400 years
for example someone who did my job was right at the bottom of the social ladder in the king's court or whatever the musicians are like the dregs and the actors and mate it might be that we're heading back that way you know movie stars don't get paid a hundred
million dollars anymore unless you're the rock his respect by the way deserves very serious he deserves everything but um dealing with being this or being that it's it's inconsequential it's like this is the human body that i'm in is supposed
to be a singer and a bit of a dad and a bit of a partner and a bit of a someone who tries to plant trees or something and um i'm not really i know i'm being remarkably vague this is not tick-tock friendly no i think you did answer it i mean i think i think that it actually
answered it really nicely in the sense that you've been able to separate yourself from all of that ambition and all that sort of like construct of what is of value that's what you're trying to do is just separate yourself from that it's not really what motivates you yeah
i mean i i want to play to loads of people because it's so fun and there's part of me that loves the fact that we made it and stuff but the main part of me is like well everything has been given to you everything even the even the bit that
works hard on the thing the songs are given even that was given to you yeah so you can't really take credit for anything or for anything so at this point i just feel like so blessed and lucky to be doing what i'm doing and i want to do as much and as well as
possible you know at some point shows are gonna are gonna happen and you know you've said something really interesting and poignant before about everyday life and the reasons why you monitor it and being the environmental concern being one of them and
it's a really hard question because i want to see my favorite bands live and uh but but whenever my friends turn around and sort of say to me well you know the environmental impact of touring i'm like yeah but you know we my favorite band isn't
responsible for coming up with an alternative energy source in order to allow fossil fuels from being burnt and so i don't really know what the answer is but i know it concerns you i feel like the role of art as well as in and of itself giving people pleasure
or or um catharsis as well as that art has always played a role in dragging dragging the mainstream the way things work forward elton john coming out definitely helps helped the move towards any sexuality being okay definitely uh michael jackson
definitely the jackson five definitely put people of different skin color into a lot of white people's homes that you know and made it you know what i mean so there are things that even kurt cobain and and you know the conversation around mental health
exactly exactly oh okay because if you went back 60 years and you said oh i'm i'm depressed people laugh at you so [Music] so i think that the artistic community is not going to be able to change anything on their own of course but you have to at least show that you care so
so um in planning this next tour whenever that's possible since we said we're not going to tour until we can do it much greener and cleaner the blessing of that was so many people approached us to say well we build this and we do that we do this
so when we're ready to announce a tour it we will be able to announce this is what's different environmentally there's still this much to go what a learning curve yeah it's been amazing and but in in diving into it there's no way back
because there's no way we could now put a tour on in the old way yeah knowing what we know yeah but similarly there's also a side of us that you could still criticize because we still want to go on tour and it's still going to not be perfect environmentally but
i feel like if artists don't at least try yeah you know what why would it be trendy for anyone else to trendy of course is a word that has not been trending for many years i'm trying to bring that back wow it must be one of those situations where
being privy to that much information in order to try and find the best solution exposes you to the truth in ways that you didn't even imagine was possible but the reality was it harder to hear than even you could have imagined yeah you know i was i flew back
from england yesterday and i felt guilty yeah the finding of a clean aviation fuel is a i don't know that's i'd say of all the things we're trying to work out that's the that's probably number one right now yeah because it's hard to play in brazil if
you don't go to brazil it's much harder so so yeah so it's an ongoing thing and uh but it's exciting there's some things which we've seen it's like oh this is amazing yeah so i think that touring and stuff will get a lot cleaner for a lot of people you