Coldplay finds the need for speed

Kirk Baird

Friday, Sept. 6, 2002 | 9:10 a.m.

Burgeoning Brit rock stars Coldplay received a bit of advice from the old guard while opening for U2 last year.

"Bono told us that there were too many slow songs on the last record ('Parachutes')," Jon Buckland, guitarist for Coldplay, acknowledged in a recent phone interview from a New York hotel room.

"He said it was easy to write a nice slow song, but those fast songs, (they) always seem cheesy, but stick with 'em because they're good."

On the band's sophomore effort, the just-released "A Rush of Blood to the Head," Coldplay took the advice to heart -- sort of.

"There are certainly more up-tempo songs than there were on 'Parachutes,' Buckland said. "But not many."

Spearheading a new wave of Brit-pop, along with Travis and Starsailor, Coldplay (which makes its Las Vegas debut in a sold-out show Saturday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel) is heavy on ambient guitars and plaintive vocals. Both were used effectively on the band's breakout single "Yellow," a simple love note set to music, of "Parachutes."

The album was embraced by critics, who likened Coldplay's sound to both Travis and '90s Radiohead, before that band lost itself in a void of electronic experimentation.

"The thing is with saying someone sounds like them, kind of confers that people try to sound like them, and I don't think that's always true. I think sometimes you sound like people by sharing the same influences and things like that," Buckland said. "We were, and still are, really big fans of Radiohead. A lot of our stuff, especially our early stuff, (does) bear some resemblance. I'm certainly not denying that at all.

"If (comparisons are) still going on with the same bands in 10 years' time, then I'll be really frustrated. At the moment, I don't mind."

With "A Rush of Blood," however, Coldplay has separated itself from the Brit-pop pack.

Debuting this week at No. 5 on Billboard's Top 200 chart, the album displays a maturity by the band as musicians -- Buckland especially -- and Martin as a songwriter.

Consequently, "A Rush of Blood" is a much stronger, competent album as a whole than its predecessor.

Entertainment Weekly rewarded the album with an A rating, while Rolling Stone gave the disc four out of five stars, raving: "They surpass everything they've done up to this point, making first-rate guitar rock with some real emotional protein on its bones."

Not surprisingly, Buckland is also enamored of the album.

"We certainly wanted to make every song good, but we did on 'Parachutes' as well," he said. "And also, I think songs like ('Yellow') just kind of happen. Most songs just kind of happen.

"We just try and write the things that we like and excite us, or the things that basically happen to us. Whether they become singles or not is never up to us. It's up to radio people and listeners. I would never like to presume what people want to listen to. I think we just write what we want to write."

Even if that writing process takes considerably longer for them than many other artists.

During the recording of "A Rush of Blood" in December, for example, the band thought it was close to having the album completed.

But the more the four members of Coldplay (including Will Champion on drums and Guy Berryman on bass) listened to the songs away from the studio, the less they enjoyed what they heard.

So the group elected to delay the album's release date by several months to re-record some of the tracks and jettison others in favor of new material.

The final result is considerably different than its earlier incarnation, Buckland said.

"There are probably five or six new songs on there, and of the five that were from before December, about two of them remain as they were," he said.

"The pressure came from us. We wanted to make the best record we possibly could. We wanted to make, or try and make, the best record there is. And that's quite a lot of pressure."

At the moment, though, the only pressure the band is feeling is just to complete its monthlong North American tour.

In Coldplay's first attempt at playing the States as a headliner in 2001, the tour was rife with problems, including lead singer Chris Martin's bouts with a lingering cold and subsequent vocal troubles.

As the troubles persisted, the band was eventually forced to cancel many of its U.S. dates, as well as its entire European tour.

"We never want to cancel a gig ever again," Buckland said. "Chris took a lot of singing lessons to strengthen his voice and to learn how to warm-up properly. We also make sure he doesn't do too much talking during the days and stuff ...

"We're just trying to keep going as long as possible without having to stop. And I think we're getting there now. We're becoming more reliable."