Having been elevated to stadium rock demigods – this generation’s U2, if you will – the members of Coldplay could not be faulted for becoming a tad bored or jaded. They’ve been together for more than 10 years, having formed in 1998 while students at University College London. How have they retained interest in both the band and the music over all these years?
“It’s inherently interesting,” says Will Champion, drummer and unofficial spokesman for the group, which will perform at the Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater on Wednesday. “We have been doing it a long time. Our commitment to music is what keeps it fresh. Every day there are new bands to listen to, something to make you think of music in a slightly different way.”
Champion says the band broke from its usual routines in recording its latest album, “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends,” by working with Brian Eno, a one-time member of Roxy Music. Previously, Champion, lead singer Chris Martin and the other members of the group – guitarist Jonny Buckland and bassist Guy Berryman – would more or less go into a studio and spontaneously create music.
Martin would typically start them off with a melody or parts of a song, and the rest of them would collaborate until a song formed. This time, Eno had them do something drastically different.
“We would come in and pick a (homemade) card from a deck that had different strategies,” he said. “You’d pick one, and then you’d do what it says on the card, and it would yield some very interesting results. It might say ‘percussion’ or ‘guitar’ and force you to do something you weren’t expecting to do. He tried his hardest to knock us off balance a bit and approach things from a different angle.”
Champion has been toying with new technology – specifically new drum software that’s encouraged him to make sounds exponentially different from the (good) plodding of memorable Coldplay songs like, say, “Clocks.”
There’s even been speculation that the band is considering making dance music, which, as any Coldplay fan knows, is a complete turnaround. (People used to joke that if you wanted to put an end to a raucous party in your apartment, put on some Coldplay.)
