Don't Ever Give Up

Alycia | 26 | UK

[dogpuppy]

[cherrylng]

YELLOW FEVER! - Coldplay interview [NME (July 8th, 2000)]

YELLOW FEVER!

Mere months after finishing their finals, Coldplay find themselves sitting high in the singles chart and contemplating “the bollocks that goes along with the record”. Like talking to NME? Cheers, lads…

Text: Piers Matin

Chris Martin stumbles into the pub in King’s Cross, leans on the door for support and squints into the beer garden.

His eyes are bloodshot saucers and he rubs a nail-bitten, dirt-stained hand across his three-day-old stubble. He spots NME and approaches. “Sorry I’m late,” he slurs, the stench of alcohol on his breath forcing us to wince. “Haven’t slept since Glasgow. Fuck knows when that was. But you know how it is on tour, eh? Lots of distractions, know what I mean?” And with that he sits down, fishes in his pocket for a half-smoked spliff and promptly sparks up. One minute later, he’s fast asleep.

Thought you knew Coldplay, then, did you? Had them marked down as the indie Westlife. Travis Junior. Nice chaps with nice songs. Well-spoken young men with a past so wholesomely squeaky clean it would have Enid Blyton reaching for the crack pipe. That’s the power of media misrepresentation. And although the band’s singer and chief songwriter Chris Martin didn’t really introduce himself in such a positively insalubrious fashion (that was a horrid joke; he bounds in beaming, looking sickeningly healthy), the fact is that while the Coldplay record might be hitherto untarnished, it’s nevertheless a record that needs to be set straight.

“Apparently,” sighs drummer Will Champion, cradling an orange juice and lemonade in the concrete surrounds of the Lucas Arms’ beer garden on the hottest day of the year, “we’re all teetotalists from Oxford who don’t drink or don’t smoke and we’re doing our Oxford finals.”

He picks out a Marlboro Light and joins guitarist Jon Buckland and drummer Guy Berryman in the joys of nicotine addiction. “Interviews always focus on backgrounds,” he adds, “and that’s quite annoying because then you start having to validate where you come from.”

“In an ideal world there would be no need for this,” agrees Chris. “Our problem is we hate that posture: it’s far more rock’n’roll for us to just be honest and, you know, we haven’t had a particularly rock’n’roll upbringing. It’s just hard to validate why we’re here, and I hate that. Apparently Joe Strummer was a middle-class boy.”

“It’s much better that we’re honest about it,” says Will. “There’s nothing worse than people pretending to be something they aren’t. You’ve got to be true to what you are. Shouldn’t have to feel guilty about where you come from.”

“The problem,” Chris considers, “is you mention the word ‘university’ and you’re just screwed. Well not screwed, I mean, we’ll transcend it. Our dilemma is that we’ll always be honest about a question, but we know that can be the noose around our necks.”

Of course, these things shouldn’t matter, and to a large extent they don’t. But as Coldplay’s rapid ascent into the nation’s heart continues apace – first ‘Shiver’ pierced the Top 40 in February, current single ‘Yellow’ is set to do far better, while their forthcoming debut album, ‘Parachutes’, is a thing of considerable, peerless beauty – so their tolerance of media intrusion subsides. It’s not that the group are bored after just under a year of constant attention, rather they can’t fully comprehend why people would be so interested in them as individuals when the music they make, to them, says everything anyone could possibly want to know.

“The only thing that gets in the way with us is the bollocks that goes along with the record,” Chris will say, chirpily; himself one of the most endearing and amusing and classically charismatic frontmen we’ve encountered for some time, and therefore a subject ripe for investigation. And if this is the bollocks, Chris Martin is quite a tease.

Coldplay could not have wished for a more fruitful seven months. If last October’s ‘The Blue Room EP’, their first single since signing to Parlophone in April 1999, hinted at the band’s potential for stadium-destined greatness with a wholly civilised and occasionally dramatic take on the Radiohead/Jeff Buckley melancholic acoustic method of mass seduction, then with ‘Parachutes’’ 11 assured songs we find that potential almost fully realised and a distinctive Coldplay sound developing.

Recorded between tours “in spits and spats between September and April” at Rockfield Studios in Wales, Par Street in Liverpool and Highbury, north London, and produced by Ken Nelson (of Gomez and Badly Drawn Boy fame), Parachutes is an album shot through with the band’s Infectious optimism and keen ear for melody.

“I can’t believe we finished it,” Chris says, at least twice.

“It was hard work,” confirms Will.

“Well, not hard work like being a miner,” the singer says. “But in terms of music it was the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do, and in terms of friendship and our commitment. It was more a case of frustration. Some of the album’s really good. But we’re ready to move on. The most important thing is that every song, we’ve really got a feeling into it. And that’s the first priority. I’m happy we’ve got as much feeling into it as possible. Obviously music-wise or song-wise or tempo-wise, you’re never gonna be happy with it.”

And if you thought the searing splendour of ‘Yellow’ was Coldplay’s finest track to date, wait ’til you hear the unarguably beautiful likes of ‘Don’t Panic’ and ‘Trouble’. Of course, if you’ve seen Coldplay’s astonishing live shows, you already know what we’re talking about. But what about parachutes? Well, they’re famously useful objects…

“They get you out of a bad situation,” says Chris. “So some of our songs you jump out of a plane and everything looks bleak, you know, and then you pull the parachute and you enjoy it: ‘Aahhhh, it’s not so bad.’ But that is bollocks. It’s called ‘Parachutes’ because we had to decide a title. But it works, it fits. Often the things that fit best are the things that have to be decided very quickly, or a bit of an accident. A good analogy is when you’ve got to rush out of the house and get something to wear, you often pick up the first thing that looks any good and then it sticks.”

“In 20 years it’ll be really interesting to talk to us. Come back then.” – Chris

This year, Coldplay haven’t had much time to think about anything. Tonight they play the final gig – and biggest headlining show – of their fourth UK tour this year at King’s Cross Scala in front of a typically cynical 800-strong London crowd who will leave the venue grinning like Cheshire cats, heads spinning.

The touring began in January with a stint on the NME Premier Tour alongside Shack, Campag Velocet and Les Rythmes Digitales. They then paired up with fellow bright new hopes Terris and, in May, supported Muse. But it’s with their own string of shows that everything’s finally started to slot into place.

“We’re made up! This is the first tour we’re not losing money on. Apart from the first show, they’ve been sold out, sold out, sold out, sold out! Wicked!” Chris gushes. “Can’t believe it! You know, we got to Manchester yesterday and the student union was dead ’cos no-one was there but it was sold out! Wicked! It’s very exciting, you know.”

Chris Martin, 23, doesn’t drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or take drugs. He’s pretty unusual. The others? Sure, they like a drink and chug away merrily on Marlboro Lights, but as a band they’re completely anti-cocaine. Chris, too, has a Christian-like zeal about him, as if he’s very much enamoured by life and its myriad opportunities. Tall, eminently engaging and blessed with a dry sense of humour (he slips into a faltering Harry Hill voice when describing sticky situations; his Alan Partridge is fast becoming legendary), Chris was raised in a small Devon village called Whitestone, halfway between Exeter and Okehampton. His mother’s a teacher, father a chartered accountant. His teenage years were spent at public school in Dorset (he won’t say which one – “it’s honest enough to say I went to public school”) but four years in London, at University College, where he read Ancient History, have shaved the aitches from his regionless accent. Chris loves cricket, swimming, “running around in general”. Come to think of it, Chris loves everything. Enquire about the Velcro support on his right wrist and he’ll say, “It’s just for show. I’m trying to be like Jonny Greenwood.”

It was at UCL that he met Will, Jon and Guy. They all lived together in Ramsey Hall, all played instruments and met “just through the standard inane way you meet people in halls”. In their case, that involved such wholesome activities as sitting in stairwells playing Simon & Garfunkel songs and “obscure Irish folk stuff that Will knows”. But that was OK because it was the reason the four came to London in the first place; Will from Southampton, Jon from North Wales and Guy from Canterbury. They all had “real Dick Whittington-type ambitions”, according to Chris: “Go to London, make your fortune. Well, sort of. And when you go to college you’ve got a clean slate, no-one knows who you are and you’ve kind of decided pretty much who you want to be.”

The four bonded over a love of “music that’s quite soulful and emotive. Real. Timeless”; bands like The Flaming Lips, Radiohead, The Verve and Mercury Rev. “In a way,” says Will, “we’ve all been influenced by everything we’ve ever heard.”

Two years ago, they self-financed their debut single, the ‘Safety EP’, and last summer released a single, ‘Brothers & Sisters’, for Fierce Panda. A bidding war ensued, with Parlophone the victors. Sensibly, the lads knuckled down and completed their finals. And now? Well now they’re seen by some as educated middle-class white boys with nothing to say. Which really isn’t far from the truth.

“I hate talking about this. It just doesn’t read well, does it?” says Chris, sipping his OJ and lemonade. “We met when I was busking. Jon came up and he was another busker.

“There was a brilliant advert pinned up the other day,” he says, steering the conversation elsewhere. “It said, ‘Acoustic guitar, good condition, one string broken, £25.’ Hahaha!”

So Chris, are you religious?

“No.”

You seem to have a humanist outlook on life. An unfailing optimism which manifests itself in songs like ‘Everything’s Not Lost’ and ‘Life Is For Living’.

“Yeah, but we all do. None of us are hunters. I eat meat just like anyone else. Kill those cows. I mean, I just… dunno. I just don’t drink. I hate it.”

(Later on, NME tells Chris that an anagram of Chris Martin is Mr Christian. He looks at us with pity).

Have you ever been drunk?

“Yeah, a couple of times. Had a really bad week in our band last year and largely it was my fault – well it was my fault – there was a lack of communication. And to mark the end of this bad, bad week, the worst week ever, I decided I’d get hammered just to make myself even more miserable. It was Guy, Guy was feeding me. I don’t know what it was, all I remember is playing harmonica on the street trying to eat his chips and then just sleeping on their bathroom floor with this weird red stuff. What was that red stuff? Vodka and cranberry…?”

“Ribena,” says Guy.

“…and just feeling really not great and then trying to sleep in Will’s room ’cos he wasn’t there. And it was freezing cold.

“I know it’s not normal not to drink, but I just don’t wanna do it. Why should I have to? Some of our best songs have come out of going home while everyone else is out, just being miserable. But not really. Y’know, I have a great time! I mean, it’s not like I go, ‘Oh I’m not drinking this evening, I’m just gonna read my book.’ I have a brilliant time. I see girls just like everyone else.”

Ask Coldplay if they think it odd that people should listen to what they have to say, that people might even expect them to have something to say, and you’re greeted with a long pause. Lorries roar past. Mobile phones ring.

“Away from the music?” asks Chris. “Yeah, yeah. ’Cos there are people with far better things to say. We’re not orators. It’s interesting. We all enjoy reading about people we like musically. But we’re only young (the others are 22). We’ve got a lot to see and a lot to learn. Reading an interview with Tom Waits now, 30 years into the music and the things he’s done, that’s fascinating. Reading about another new band, it’s gotta be done, it’s not as interesting. In 20 years it’ll be really interesting to talk to us. Come back then.

“We’ve got a long way to go. Haven’t even started yet. It’s weird because there’s not that much to say about us, that’s why I worry because we’re extremely nice blokes and extremely interesting when you get to talk to us properly but, you know, I would be fed up to the back teeth of reading, ‘Oh they met here, are they the new Radiohead?’ Yawn, yawn, yawn, can I go to sleep now please? I find it boring reading about us. But I don’t find it boring listening to us or watching us or getting involved with us.

As if on cue, a white van pulls up outside. ‘Yellow’ blares from the stereo.

Chris shakes his head, smiling. “Listen to the vocals – too quiet. That’s our philosophy: never happy, always aiming for more.”

Later that day, during the show, it’s transparently obvious that Coldplay are far, far more than this year’s next big thing. Even before they’ve taken to the stage, screams and cheers ring out in fevered anticipation. And when they finally arrive, strumming into ‘Spies’, they’re greeted with the kind of rapturous applause traditionally reserved for bands with years more experience and material. On top of a speaker stack, stage right, is Coldplay’s illuminated globe of the world. It travels everywhere with them and appears on the cover of ‘Parachutes’.

“It’s our thing,” said Chris earlier, by way of explanation. And as a modest symbol of the band’s ambition, it couldn’t be more apt.

CHRIS MARTIN ON THE MONTH IT ALL WENT MAD…

How was Glastonbury? “Glastonbury was just brilliant, probably the happiest weekend I’ve ever had. My childhood dreams came true: playing in front of loads of people, getting to sit with Jo Whiley on a bale of hay, getting to see David Gray. It was such a cool experience, so many things going on, so many types of people. It was by miles the biggest gig we’ve played and God, we were nervous. Because we knew it was important for us not to muck it up too badly and we thought we played well. We were determined to be ourselves and not try and conform to any preconceived ideas.

“Badly Drawn Boy was brilliant, and Idlewild. Moby I really enjoyed. I missed The Flaming Lips which I was gutted about. But I also watched Travis who I thought were really good. I think we’re probably the next Travis. I’m going to change my name to Fran. Fran Yorkely. Hehehe!”

Some say you could be headlining next year? “I say, ‘Nonsense.’ Obviously we’d like to be playing in the same slot as Moby but headlining would be too much too soon. You’ve got to have a bit of a history to headline, but similarly it’s got to be of the moment so obviously we don’t want to be first on the Circus Stage. We’ll see how it goes.

“Playing in the daytime, when the pressure’s not so on, you can just enjoy yourselves. We thought we did alright. The more people who have a go at us for just being who we are the more we’ll just be who we are to a higher degree. There’s been some press recently about what I say between songs, but I mean, come on, does it really matter? I really like it when Badly Drawn Boy talks away between songs, it makes you feel like he’s playing for you. Maybe it’s not very rock-starry or whatever but I just can’t stand to see people up there thinking they’re much better than the audience.”

What have you been up to since Glastonbury? “We went to Holland for the first time to do a gig, which was a bit of a comedown really because obviously we’ve done our own tour in England and then Glastonbury and it was like, ‘Yeah, yeah!’, and then we do an industry showcase in Holland. And then we come back through French customs and they had a field day: you know, a rock band on their way back from Amsterdam. It just goes to show that in England we’re not rock’n’roll but everywhere else we’re just the same as everyone else. I’d been running around in the car park before we went through customs so I took my top off and I was sweating and it must have looked so dodgy. So they searched us pretty thoroughly. No rubber gloves though…”

As we write, it looks like ‘Yellow’ will be a Top Ten hit. “Yeah, in Holland we found out the midweek chart positions and we were like, ‘Oh my goodness!’ It’s just amazing! Because we want to get good music back in the charts. Great! We just thought, ‘Great!’ Higher than we expected. You just never know and you try not to be too cocky about things like that. But funnily enough I woke up thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to be Number Two?’, because so many good records have been Number Two: ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Common People’. Classics.

“We’d like to do something different for Top Of The Pops but, because it’s our first time, we’ll probably just do what they tell us. You’ve gotta wait a while to be subversive.”

Are you and Travis responsible for the death of New Lad? “It’s all bollocks, isn’t it? It’s just good songs with a bit of emotion. People have been doing it for years – since the dawn of history, innit? Nothing wrong with it at all. It’s very earnest to go on about it, though.”

Translator’s Note: I strongly recommend that people should just read the text here rather than attempt to read the scanned pages.

In case you’re wondering, yes, that’s how the pages were physically printed out. The paragraphs that were printed onto the brown parts were readable, but were so blurred to the point that even when magnified up close, my eyes felt the strain in trying to read the words to make sure that I could correct the parts that the OCR couldn’t. Frankly, I’m amazed that such a format was allowed to be mass printed like this and not get complaints from readers.

Please do support me via my ko-fi! ☕

[apricops]

*trying to pitch public transportation to Americans* it’s like a legal form of texting while driving

[anphivenas]

i need to get into cars

[dontsaythatillcry]

they have doors which help with this

[podcastwizard]

sorry boss can't come in today i was on my way to work and then a gentle spring breeze kissed my cheek and reminded me it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world

[newscoldplay]

Jonny & Chris at a concert for Charlottesville, Scott Stadium, Virginia - September 24

[skullcatzz]

april 30, 2007

can we tell from the tags i know more about pokemon than hello kitty?

[i-am-a-fish]

I want everyone to have universal basic income please

[cherrylng]

¡LA VIDA LOCA! - Coldplay interview [Q Magazine (July 2008)]

Coldplay

¡LA VIDA LOCA!

According to Chris Martin, Coldplay haven’t done anything good yet. Hence Viva La Vida…, the band’s very own revolution in sound, inspired by paintings of watermelons and “Mrs Battersby’s scones”.

WORDS: SYLVIA PATTERSON | PICTURES: STEPHAN CRASNEANSCKI

‘WE WANT TO MAKE THE SONGS THAT DEFINE THE DECADE. THE GREAT SONGS OF THE TIME.’ CHRIS MARTIN

Chris Martin has a dream, brothers and sisters.

“I always dream about other musicians,” he smiles, with a blink of those sky-blue eyes the size of almond-shaped dinner plates. “And with U2 or Radiohead it’s always [enthusiastically], Hey, how you doin’? And they’re never that interested in hanging out with us. It’s a permanent feeling of being at school and the bigger boys don’t want to play with you. Check out this chord I can do! Just leave us alone. I dreamt about Radiohead last night and Westlife the night before. Which I think is the perfect blend of what we’re trying to do musically.”

Chris Martin is, surely, the most self-deprecating frontman in the history of rock’n’roll. If the first thing he did the moment he took his first Grammy Award (for Best Alternative Music Album) home was to draw a comedy moustache on it, you wouldn’t be surprised. It’s 12 March 2008 and perhaps dream-state neurosis is understandable as Coldplay begin the task of choosing which of 25 completed songs, and 16 more tracks, unmixed and in various states, will form their globally anticipated fourth album. We’re in Hampstead, North London, in their very own studio, The Bakery, and the deeply indecisive Martin has arrived wearing a crafty indecision aid, a stern black tie and dark blue shirt. “I thought if I wore a black tie I would feel like I had some authority,” he announces in his soft, gracious voice. “Like, if I say today, Well, that one’s definitely a B-side, people might listen.”

Three years on, then, from X&Y – the 10 million-selling album that cemented Coldplay’s rise from winsome indie kids into this decade’s biggest band – and we learn from the outset that dictatorial rock star megalomania has failed to claim the soul of Chris Martin, who remains as far away from despot as it’s possible to go without actually becoming Saint Francis Of Assisi. A statuesque 31-year-old, he is supernaturally friendly, profoundly gentle and radiates with the excess energy we know as human charisma.

‘WE FEEL LIKE A NEW BAND AGAIN, RATHER THAN SOME CORPORATE MACHINE.’ JONNY BUCKLAND

The Bakery is a musician’s dream HQ, bought in early 2006 and the place where “everything” (music, art work, arguments, jokes) happens in Coldplay; a fully functional studio downstairs and a large open-plan lounge area upstairs bestrewn with sofas, flight cases, a circular wooden dining table and black and white prints of The Beatles and The Clash on the walls. The Other Three are also here, chuckling at Martin’s quips and chipping in, most often the winningly wry drummer Will Champion. He contemplates their “eagerly anticipated” album. “When you haven’t done anything for a while you get to thinking, Does anyone, really, actually give a flying fuck?” he wonders, gamely. There’s Guy Berryman, the outrageously handsome Scottish bassist, saying, “I ran 18 miles this morning,” which isn’t a quip; he’s in training for the London Marathon. There’s Jonny Buckland, beatific guitarist, smilingly serene. X&Y saw the end of the band Champion officially calls “Oldplay”, an album Martin now feels was “too long”, which Buckland feels was “finished under pressure [from label EMI], but then they were under pressure, still are”. This time, adds Buckland, EMI have applied zero pressure, “they’ve been fucking brilliant and we’ve been feeling like a new band again, rather than some corporate machine”.

Downstairs in the studio (the traditional two-room affair – twinkling, technological Control Room and chaotic, instrument- strewn Live Room), a number of song titles are chalked onto a wall: Viva La Vida; Death Will Never Conquer; Death And All His Friends; Postcards From Far Away; Thought You Might Be A Ghost. A wooden desk bears the scratched-in message: “Brian is great.” After 2000’s Parachutes, 2002’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head and 2005’s X&Y Coldplay were ready, says Martin poetically, “to try new colours”. Enlisting Brian Eno for production, an acquaintance of Martin’s since 2001, they spent 2007 running through a dazzling spectrum of Eno’s fabled techniques: “musical gym”, playing together without recording a note; Oblique Strategies, using Eno’s “oracle” deck of cards that hold perspective-bending instructions (examples: “Allow an easement of stricture”, “Emphasise the flaws”, “Do we need holes?”); the swapping around of each other’s instruments, abandoning their career-long tradition of starting a song with an initial idea from Martin, which the singer saw as “liberation”, as well as Friday night sessions of what Will Champion calls, “Uncle Brian’s Storytime. Tell us something great about Talking Heads or Bowie!” Q steals away to listen to nine possible album tracks beginning with 42, a mesmerising three-part contemplation of death, while Q’s favourite, Chinese Sleep Chant, features a tsunami of guitars and a shimmering vocal force-field you cannot decipher one word of. By the mixing desk, Martin perches on a swivelling black leather chair and fondles his tie as his chipper mood begins to unfeasibly and rapidly disintegrate. We talk about the album’s seeming emphasis on death.

“Well, a lot of people around me have died recently,” he says, plainly. “Just, y’know, family and friends. I don’t want to get specific. Isn’t it disrespectful to say who died? But I always see it as an optimistic thing like, OK, well, what can we do before that punch line, y’know? A lot of people have been born as well [all of Coldplay are now fathers]. There’s so much to do. We haven’t got time to waste. Carpe diem.”

We talk, inevitably, about public expectation, about assumptions this album might be Coldplay’s experimental Kid A, at which he cringes, saying, “You can’t beat Kid A!”, and besides their intention is the opposite: “I want to make the best Number 1s in the world – and we’ve never had any.” We contemplate Coldplay’s position as the Biggest Band In The World and he cringes even more.

“I’ve just been excited about writing,” he finally manages. “After the last record I felt like, God, I can’t believe we’ve got away with becoming this huge band. And we still haven’t done anything I think is that good yet. So it was almost like, We’ve got the job, now we’ve got to kind of prove why we’ve got it. [Ruefully] The World’s Biggest Bland. Y’know… I haven’t thought about this stuff since two years ago.”

Martin is struggling, hands darting into tufts of blond hair. Q, it seems, has inadvertently brought into Coldplay’s environment the opinions and expectations of an outside world they’ve forgotten exists.

“Because of this place,” he says of The Bakery, “we don’t feel like we’re at all successful. Or hated. We don’t feel anything but, OK, how are we going to make this song sound better? I live one minute away. And I come here. So… the only thing that makes me remember that we’re in a big band is when I remember that I’m married to someone famous. Everything else in the day is exactly the same as it was 11 years ago. When we would just meet and play.”

You feel your fame is mostly to do with your marriage?

“Well, it’s a different kind of fame, that we do everything to avoid.”

So you feel, in your head, you’re still the boy from the indie band in the Yellow video?

“Maybe. You’re bringing some home truths. You’re greatly helping.”

We also talk about coping with criticism, about how he felt when the New York Times ran an actual thesis in 2005 on why Coldplay were “the most insufferable band of the decade” (self-pitying lyrics, sonic delusions of grandeur, opined the writer; “Very informative”, says Martin. “I thought, I’ll get better, then”), and whether it’s the religious sound of the music that people find easy to criticise, their sense of import, a seemingly spiritual search for The Light.

“I have no idea,” he replies, in a tiny voice. “I’m sure it’s every aspect. What can we do? That’s just what comes out. I don’t think we’ll ever make evil music as well as Rammstein. And I don’t want to write obscure little songs. I mean… I can’t. Well, fuck ’em. What can I do? What d’you want me to do?”

And so Q finds itself in the bewildering position of trying to reassure Chris Martin, four times Grammy-award winner, seller of 30 million albums worldwide, internationally beloved musical icon, husband of an Oscar-winning Hollywood beauty, that there are many more millions of people who love Coldplay than are writing scathing theses in the New York Times.

“Well, all that stuff is very positive… [buries head in hands] I’m only human!”

Q tells him about friends in Scotland who love what Coldplay do, especially live.

“It’s always fun playing Scotland,” he replies, perking up. “Anywhere that likes singing is fun to play.”

Scotland loves the communal experience.

“Well, that’s where I feel most alive,” he says, suddenly springing back to life. “In answer to your question, the thing that probably most annoys people about us is the only thing that makes me feel alive. Singing together and feeling like you’re there and present. And so I can’t really apologise for it. I went to see John Williams, the guy who wrote all the Star Wars music. And they played Star Wars, and this was in a room of thousands of people in tuxedos. And as soon as that music came on, the place just went mental. More than I’ve ever seen in a rock concert. Everyone was completely transported. Some people like the challenge of an audience not being completely with them and other people just want to kick the goal all the time. We’re definitely the latter. We want to make the songs that define the decade, the great songs of this time, the music that makes people come together and feel good. That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to try and make the standards. And with that comes a certain amount of flak. But we’ve just got to take it. And talking to you has made me realise that. And it’s good! Time to put the old armour on.”

Down a quaint, olde London cobblestone mews, Brian Eno opens the door to his studio while waving across the cobbles to a figure at the opposite window. “I’m just waving to my friend,” he smiles. “Jason Donovan.” Q peers over at the sight, indeed, of Jason Donovan on the telephone by a window. “Don’t stare!” scolds Eno and bundles Q inside.

In a large, high-ceilinged work space, two nuclear-white Apple Mac computer consoles throb along a table with screens the size of plasma TVs. Wearing a shiny blue and white polka-dot shirt, pop culture’s best-known boffin is, unexpectedly, an exceptionally cheerful man. Over the years of their burgeoning friendship, he’d let Chris Martin know he was no longer particularly interested in full-time producing for anyone.

“So I’d implied I wasn’t interested,” he says, “and then I had a very funny lunch with Chris and Gwyneth at their house. Chris said [begins bumbling], Look, um, I dunno, maybe, y’know, I think we really need some help on this next record, someone we can bounce ideas off, and he’s going on and on, Perhaps you could suggest someone? And finally Gwyneth interrupts and says, Look, why don’t you just tell him you want him to produce the record!? It was very sweet. She’s very nice. And so is he. They’re all nice people actually, charming and intelligent and if I’m going to work with people it matters that I like their company. And I like some of their songs, a lot.”

The sound of X&Y, thought Eno, suffered from excessive digital tampering, “though I liked a lot of the material on there.”

“They’d slightly mis-stepped,” he says, “which often happens with the digital, cut’n’paste, ProTools-type technology. It increases perfection at the expense of life in my opinion. It evens everything out. Dead music.” His lone intention with Coldplay was to create “musical life, the only thing I care about in music, now, is life”. To this end, as a non-musician himself, mostly he “encouraged”, suggesting freeform “experimentation, stupid ideas, prattish things, some of which worked, some didn’t”, Eastern instrumentation (Martin can now play the zither-like hammered dulcimer), and outright discouraged any moribund “perfectionist ethos”. Ask Eno if this album will take Coldplay into the pantheon of The Greats and he modestly demurs, much like Coldplay themselves.

“History is so quixotic,” he muses, “so I don’t really think in that way. I personally think that some Coldplay songs will endure for a very long time. But it’s life that lasts. When you sense somebody living at the edge of their possibilities. And that’s something I think you get with this band sometimes. I think you get it a lot on this record.”

‘I LIVE IN FEAR OF SOMEONE LEAVING. IF YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR SQUADRON YOU’RE FUCKED.’ CHRIS MARTIN

The Bakery, 15 April, 2pm. “I’ve got something to tell you,” announces Chris Martin, “but come out here because it’s a bit soppy.”

We loiter on the stairway leading into the lounge.

“You’ve directly influenced the album.”

I have?

“With the running order and bits of sequencing. After I’d spoken to you, it was obvious we hadn’t yet got the order right. It was very death-heavy at the beginning and that’s not the message we want to get across. It’s like editing a film. So it was very useful. So thank you.”

You’re very welcome. Just put me down for a royalty.

“Hur hur!” chortles Martin, while Q is acutely serious.

Today, Chris Martin appears to be an art-school student, his all-black T-shirt-and-trousers ensemble dotted with purple paint, hair sprouting ever-further upwards. Sitting at the circular dining table, he’s painting the bodies of two acoustic guitars that have been covered with masking tape. Strewn around the guitars are pots of paint and two open art books on early-20th-century Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Madonna’s favourite). Today he’s a verbal sorcerer, intent on blurring the lines between reality, fantasy and art-pop flights of tomfoolery. Not widely regarded as a rock’n’roll Lothario, he’s bawdier than you might imagine. “I’ve got a Girls Aloud fixation today,” he announces. “I want to do a cover of Call The Shots. It’s the combination of being extremely physically attractive with songs that are great, it’s more than any man can take. I think it might be the ultimate form of life.” He’ll invent outrageous lies, “and then I did a line of coke with some hookers and had sex with Neil Tennant”, and while contemplating the concept of a world without music yelps, “Well, there’s still sex, so you’ve still got one of the best things left, don’t take that away, please!” He attempts to explain the concept of his artistic endeavours.

“It’s not really a concept,” he decides, wielding a purple-dipped brush. “It’s just the idea of everything being home-made. That’s the whole purpose of The Bakery, that everything we do comes from us. We realised we were at the centre of this big corporate business so we were, We’re going to set up, basically, a church-fête stall. And make our own cakes. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Musically. Make Mrs Battersby’s scones.”

He’d rather tell you that, in fact, than fully explain the startling name of the album, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, other than Viva La Vida (“Long Live Life”) is the name of a Frida Kahlo painting of watermelons that the band discovered in Mexico in early 2007. Martin is a fan of Kahlo’s “incredible optimism; she had a very tough life, was in a back brace through her life and was very influential, brave politically and also very sexy. And the other half… [of the title] I don’t want to explain it! It’s just a title. It could be called The Frozen Chosen. Or, Heroes Of The Ice-Cream Brigade. What colour shall I put on next?”

Viva, as it will become known, almost featured Kylie Minogue, who recorded vocals for one song. “Kylie is awesome,” he beams. “She’s like Girls Aloud rolled into one. And then I took the song apart. Like a Corby trouser press. It’s now one of those half-finished models in a garage.” When Kylie was in the vocal booth, the four Coldplay members were, he adds, “like that” [feigns an enormous swoon]. It takes Will Champion, eventually, to explain the concept behind the art-rock vision, a sort of Monty Python Goes Up The Revolution Down Mexico Way, Possibly Wielding A Catapult.

“The visuals behind the album,” says Champion, “is the idea of a slightly shabby revolution, not very organised but with intensity and passion and colour. The idea of this ragtag bunch of people storming into a palace and trying to overthrow whatever is there. Which is possibly an analogy for the way we approached the record, really rebuilding everything. Home-made.”

Nothing at all to do with Mrs Battersby’s scones, then.

“I can’t help you with the scones.”

Back at the wooden table, Martin abandons the purple guitar and contemplates his now supernatural fame. He loathes the tabloids, refers to their employees as “fascists” and has long maintained a zero tolerance approach to talking about Gwyneth Paltrow, his wife of four-and-a-half years, who he never mentions by name (their children, Apple and Moses are now 4 and 2). This month, Paltrow announced in public that her husband has “a fit” if she talks about him. The pair live in both London and New York and are connected to the stratospherically famous; Paltrow is a long-time friend of Madonna and Guy Ritchie while Martin forged new friendships in 2006 with both Kanye West and Jay-Z, both of whom he recorded songs with, providing backing vocals on West’s Homecoming and Jay-Z’s Beach Chair. He calls these collaborations “fun infidelities”. In September 2006, he sang backing vocals for Jay-Z at the first-ever hip-hop show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “Pretty great,” he says of the night, “I was on with Nas and Jay-Z. Wasn’t bad. For a little posh boy from Devon.” He admires the invincible hip-hop spirit.

“A lot of these people aren’t British so they don’t have this inherent insecurity,” he smiles. “And apologetic…ness. Hanging around with people who don;t worry about anything, that’s what I love. It’s such good energy to feed off, that confidence. It’s very free-ing. I just think I’m very drawn to talent.”

There’s a spectacular amount of crotch grabbing in the Homecoming video.

“Not from me I hope! I’d love to be a crotch-grabber but I can never find it.”

Have you had a try, just to see what it looks like?

“I’ve tried all kinds of things in the bedroom.”

Jay-Z was being shot at when he was nine, what were you doing?

“Going shooting,” he quips, royally. “I grew up with shepherds and dairy farmers, y’know?”

Do you share any characteristics with Jay-Z?

“I feel funny talking about him. It sounds so ridiculous.”

Mention his attending of Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s recent wedding (the couple supposedly married in secret in New York) and, much like Jay-Z himself, he feigns no knowledge of it.

“What wedding?” he deadpans. “I don’t know anything about that, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

You’re friends with the biggest hip-hop star on the planet, it’s exciting stuff.

“Well, someone has to carry on the tradition of Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, The Girl Is Mine. Y’know, there’s a side of me that comes from where I come from that is, Oh, you can’t do this, be friends with that person, wear this, y’know? And if you listen to all those rules you can’t do anything. You can just read Country Life.”

Earlier this year, a heavily-hooded Chris Martin appeared on YouTube after a mobile phone video was taken of a scuffle in New York, Martin wrestling a camera from a photographer after he and Paltrow left hospital a few moments apart (she reportedly had a stomach complaint, igniting unsubstantiated speculation over a miscarriage) saying, over and over, “you’ve got to have some respect”. It looks pretty grim out there sometimes.

“The last thing I want to do is talk about them,” he says of the paparazzi, aggrieved. “But listen, we’re not living in Nazi Germany, y’know, so I’m not going to complain about anything. But I will say that you should ask politely before trying to take a picture of someone’s… haircut.”

This week, the newly-back-to-work Paltrow (we’re 10 days before her “super-stiletto” shoes, worn to the premiere of Iron Man, make front-page tabloid headlines) announced they deliberately never go out in public together to thwart the idea of the “celebrity couple”.

Isn’t that, logistically, very difficult?

“I’m afraid I have no comment on anything to do with that.”

Surely you’d want, sometimes, to walk down the street with your wife? And your children? And be slightly normal?

“Well, I have my cereal. And my lawn mower. That’s very normal. Even though not many people have cereal on their lawn mower. Who wants to complain? I’m a rock star. I’ve got nothing to complain about. I can cope… with anything except hair loss.”

Before he leaves this evening, he’ll produce a slim, credit-card-sized, silver case from his trouser pocket (it’s his version of a wallet, “my wife gave me this”), flick through his cards and stop at a photograph of two blond-haired children tottering down a pathway, holding each other’s hand, with sun-light bouncing directly off their golden heads. A Walt Disney animator, directed by Steven Spielberg, could conjure no bigger “wow” factor. “There’s my kids,” he says.

It’s good to see these children do exist.

“Actually, it’s just some random kids,” he smiles and clicks the case shut.

The Bakery, 16 April, 2.30pm. Today, Martin has turned into a rock’n’roll field marshal, bustling to and from the lounge and the studio, changing in and out of clothes that recall the military feel of The Clash in their Sandinista! finery. Coldplay are filming live rehearsals of the new album “for the internet” and the rest of the band have redecorated the Live Room with wallpaper and murals. The beige back wall has transformed into a landscape of snowy Alpine peaks by deep blue water, other walls show autumnal woodlands and around the window that separates the rooms Planet Earth rises up in kaleidoscopic splendour amid a starry, hand-painted universe. On the walls the word “VIVA” and the phrase “THE KING IS DEAD” are painted in red and black alongside a framed print of Woody Allen. “So we get our music from there,” beams Martin, pointing to the universe, “and our lyrics [points to Woody Allen] from there.” Above the mixing desk sit photographs of Jay-Z and Mozart. Chiming through a bouncy Afrobeat cavalcade Q has never heard before called Strawberry Swing, Martin shouts an encouraging “brilliant playing!” and, keen to get on, “next!” Today, the album is finally finished. It now has a radically changed running order, three different songs (Strawberry Swing, Reign Of Love and the phenomenal Life In Technicolor, the opening instrumental) and shimmers with life. Chinese Sleep Chant, meanwhile, has become a hidden track buried in the album’s centre. “We’re just trying to squeeze as much as possible into something that’s small,” twinkles Will Champion. Coldplay’s Tardis? “Basically!”

The great dichotomy of Chris Martin – angel of belief on one shoulder, devil of damnation on the other – is, say all of The Others, what lies at the core of Coldplay.

“Chris’s energy is what drives the whole thing,” concludes Champion. “He’s an amazing mix of total panic and worry and self-doubt, and confidence and absolute hysteria and fun. And you can’t really predict who you’re going to get. In him is a microcosm of the band; incredible self-confidence behind closed doors but also we’re quite surprised when people agree with us. We don’t expect to be adored.” Ask Martin where his “gift” for self-deprecation comes from and his theories are multi-fold: his dad (their personalities are similar), sex-free teenage years (“I think when you’re remarkably unsuccessful with women for 21 years it affects you”), but mostly it’s his country.

“I just think it’s a British thing,” he decides. “I feel the same way about my band that Bono feels about his but I just can’t say it. Well, I obviously just did. It’s feeling like you can always do better. Like I never quite catch up with where I think we should be. It’s a permanent chase. Great-lag? Exactly! We have Great-lag. We’re always three degrees of Great behind where we should be. That’s my life. So if I sit down at a dinner and Elton John’s next to me, I’m not going to feel that good cos I haven’t written Rocket Man yet.”

Brian Eno, naturally, has the grandest theory of them all as to why Chris Martin – the man he calls “one of the funniest people, he has a very quick, associative mind” – would appear to find it almost impossible to take himself seriously.

“Because I think one lives in fear of it,” he avers. “Because you see what it does to other people. It narrows you down. I was just reading this lecture by the scientist Richard Hamming [late mathematician who worked on WW2 nuclear weapon programme, the Manhattan Project]. And he said a consistent feature of science is that when people win big awards, like the Nobel, they stop doing really first-class work. And one of the reasons is, because they now take themselves very seriously, they don’t address themselves to small problems any longer. They address themselves to big, established problems. But, a lot of the most interesting things happen from addressing tiny things. A lot of the greatest songs come not from people thinking [gravely], Now I’m going to write a song about a nuclear holocaust, they come from someone tinkling away going [merrily], Ding ding diiiii….. oh, that sounds good. And if you take yourself very seriously, you don’t revisit these places. You feel you’re above them. And I think a lot of people intuitively grasp, even if they don’t articulate it, that if you lose touch with those things, you’ve lost touch.”

With Chris Martin, I don’t think I’ve come across genuine humility to this extent in any musician before.

“No, I don’t think I have either.”

Friday, 18 April, the day EMI release Viva La Vida… into the computers of a handful of media reviewers worldwide and Chris Martin shuffles up to the glass entrance of the circular IMAX cinema complex in Central London and looks even more bewildered than he did on Day 1. Today, he’s in disguise, black hoodie up over his hair, eyes as big as ET’s. “There’s been a band fight,” he whispers, forlornly. About anything important? “No, it’s stupid!” he wails. “We’re all just coming out of that little cocoon. We’ve let the album go now.”

We’ve come to see the Martin Scorsese-directed Rolling Stones tour documentary Shine A Light, at his suggestion. Sitting towards the back, the IMAX logo flashes onto the 65-foot tall screen, possibly as a personal message to the fractious members of Coldplay: “THINK BIG.” Martin keeps his hood up throughout and as The Rolling Stones finish each song is the only person to clap along with the crowd in the actual film.

Afterwards, in the IMAX café, he’s considerably cheered.

“I’m inspired,” he smiles. “I wanna go on tour immediately! I’m sick of being cooped up. What I love about The Rolling Stones is their confidence and their wry smile. And clothing. And they just seem so close. If you stick together, nothing’s a problem. That’s why I live in fear of being told to go solo, of one of the rest of the band leaving. Unless you have your squadron, you’re fucked. I’m going to go in on Monday and we’ll make up.”

We catch a black cab to North London and contemplate why Coldplay are quite so keen on the celestial soundscapes Q calls The Sound Of God.

“I wouldn’t go that far!” he baulks. “But there’s quite a big church influence. Because we all grew up singing in assemblies every morning. Of course. When you think about it, the most music we heard up to the age of 17 was singing hymns every day in school. Didn’t most people? In assembly?”

Not where I come from.

“Oh. Well a lot of places do! Here are the day’s notices. Here’s who's been expelled. And this is the hymn for the day. My favourite hymn is My Song Is Love Unknown. How does it go? I don’t want to do it. I’ve gone all shy! [The title appears in the lyrics to A Message on X&Y.] And I think it just comes out naturally cos it’s been fed in so naturally.”

OF MATTERS LIFE AND DEATH

The complete guide to Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. By Coldplay.

LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR Glorious instrumental. Originally a full song with lyrics, but when described by a stranger as an “obvious single”, the words were removed. CHRIS MARTIN: “It’s nice to not have a singer on the first song come in and ruin it. This is our milkman song, the most whistleable thing. We took all the lyrics off because this song was our only safety net.”

CEMETERIES OF LONDON Folk-tinged ghost story written overnight after Brian Eno’s assistant, Markus Dravs, deemed a song of Martin’s “good” but not yet “great”. CM: “I was mortified. But if you tell me to write a better song, I’ll do it. He said it was good but said it in a German way, If you come in wis ze song, it’s finished, complete, great, I will say it’s great. Zis is not finished, not complete and therefore I cannot say it’s great. So I was, OK, fuck you, man! And the next day I came in and played Cemeteries Of London.”

LOST! Church organs swell over an earthy vocal where Martin is, “Waiting till the shine wears off”. JONNY BUCKLAND: “We recorded some of it in a church up the road that’s now a studio. In a huge room with a piano and organ going at the same time.”

42 The three-part epic. Profoundly moving piano riff nods to Lennon’s Imagine before strings swell and Martin hollers, “I thought you might be a ghost!” CM: “Hitch Hiker’s Guide… related (The number 42 is revealed as the meaning of life in Douglas Adams’s sci-fi novel)? It is and it isn’t. 42 is my favourite number. 42 is just perfect. We’ve got two John Lennon songs, this and Violet Hill.”

LOVERS IN JAPAN/ REIGN OF LOVE Joyous indie-pop sparkler bleeds into bell-ringing hymnal. GUY BERRYMAN: “Couldn’t we make our minds up? No, it’s because we didn’t want to have an extra number on the CD. To keep it concise at 10 tracks.” WILL CHAMPION: “We just preferred to have less titles and more stuff. The album as a whole has got the most on it, but it’s the shortest. We wanted to make it almost impossible for you to not listen to it all in one go.”

VIVA LA VIDA Strident, string-led cinematic opus featuring lyrics about cavalries, missionaries and kings. GB: “It’s a story about a king who’s lost his kingdom, and all the album’s artwork is based on the idea of revolutionaries and guerrillas. There’s this slightly anti-authoritarian viewpoint that’s crept into some of the lyrics and it’s some of the pay-off between being surrounded by governments on one side, but also we’re human beings with emotions and we’re all going to die and the stupidity of what we have to put up with every day. Hence the album title.”

YES Mournful strings coil around the lowest singing register of Chris Martin’s recorded life so far, played and arranged by musician Davide Rossi (discovered when Coldplay toured with Goldfrapp). WC: “Dav is like a one-man orchestra, he plays an electric violin that has everything, from the top note of a violin to the bottom note of a cello, all that range on one thing.” CM: “We’ve become very good at collaboration. And passing if off as our own work.”

CHINESE SLEEP CHANT (HIDDEN TRACK) Juggernaut guitars and what sound like a choir of Angel Gabriels, along with utterly incomprehensible lyrics. CM: “The lyrics aren’t Latin, no! I will say this, if you take away all the guitars, what you’re left with is quite ordinary. But Jonny will always make things less ordinary. Without him we’d be fucked. It’s true!”

VIOLET HILL The first single and the song least like everything else: thumping Beatles-meets-‘70s glam-rock featuring Jonny Buckland on “guitar synth”. WC: “We really tried to make it sound like this great big machine that was slightly knackered. Something that’s slow and grinding. I’m sure people won’t get that! A psychedelic title? Violet Hill is a road in St John’s Wood (North-west London).”

STRAWBERRY SWING Twinkling Afrobeat, Eastern guitars and a phenomenally chunky bassline that appears to turn into a didgeridoo. Astonishingly, this works. WC: “A lovely, joyous song. Guy and I have managed to get more groove into this record than we’ve ever managed before. A bit more swagger.”

DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS Melancholy piano segues into spangling guitars and a male choir exalting, “I don’t wanna follow death and all of his friends!” Vocals recorded in an art gallery in Barcelona that was once the medical room of an ancient nunnery. WC: “This is us singing all together and then another us singing together. The Coldplay Choir. And it had an echo that lasted for a long, long time. When we did a lot of group singing we just roped in whoever was around. Studio engineers, whoever.”

THE ESCAPIST (HIDDEN TRACK) Church organ floats into a transcendental ambient instrumental written by Brian Eno’s friend John Hopkins, who “donated” it to the album. Over the top, a plaintive Chris Martin sings of escape. WC: “I think with everything this time, the recording, the artwork, the live shows and videos, people will see there’s more to us than they imagine.”

LIFE WITH BRIAN

Rock star? Stuck in a rut? Give the follicle-free producer a call.

“HEROES” David Bowie [1977]

BEFORE ENO: Rock’s foremost chameleon, Bowie had already put his inimitable spin on glam rock and funk, yet by the mid-‘70s drug addiction and an inability to distill all his best ideas onto one album were taking their toll.

AFTER ENO: Revitalised by the Cold War frisson of West Berlin and Eno's unorthodox recording techniques – including the use of cryptic “instructions” contained in the Oblique Strategies cards he devised with artist Peter Schmidt – Bowie emerged as the decade’s last great rock visionary.

HOW HE DID IT: Eno laid out Oblique Strategies cards around Hansa studios that he and Bowie selected at random – “Emphasise differences” formed the basis for Sense Of Doubt.

FEAR OF MUSIC Talking Heads [1979]

BEFORE ENO: Tuneful, if lightweight, new wave New Yorkers led by angular nerd David Byrne. Debut album Talking Heads 77 suggested merely that they had the potential to be America’s answer to XTC.

AFTER ENO: More Songs About Buildings And Food had its moments, but here Eno manoeuvred them to the vanguard of post-punk experimentation, taking on wiry guitar pop, electronic funk and even World Music.

HOW HE DID IT: By treating each song as a separate experiment: while recording Drugs Eno had Byrne jog on the spot to create a suitably breathless-sounding vocal.

THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE U2 [1984]

BEFORE ENO: Four highly strung young Dubliners on a mission to save rock'n'roll. Three impassioned Steve Lillywhite-produced albums had swayed middle America, but they were seeking new frontiers.

AFTER ENO: The biggest art-rock group on the planet. The studio “treatments” devised by Eno and co-producer Daniel Lanois turned down the bombast, adding a widescreen sonic shimmer to songs big enough to take on the world.

HOW HE DID IT: Never one to neglect the details, Eno spent days recording and re-recording Edge’s guitar, even mic-ing up an amp in the grounds outside Slane Castle.

Translator's Note: Finally got around to dealing with this behemoth of an interview. Even though I'm improving over time with the methods that I'm using to scan the magazines, I'm still frustrated that I haven't gotten the scans to not be too tilted. That said, this article had so many pics that I love it. And the interview is far more substantial compared to the NME one.

Please do support me via my ko-fi! ☕

[pinkiemme]

He's insane

[razmerry]

"dc is darker" "marvel has more fantasy" "dc is mystery and marvel is sci fi - " all of you are wrong. dc comics is when a man has black hair and blue eyes. marvel comics is when a man has blonde hair and blue eyes.

[mydeaddaddashdot]

[keydekyie]

"It would have been easier if you'd just said yes."

original

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

it's really funny how the entire world basically just blew the fuck up six short years ago and nobody wants to admit that that may have had some lasting consequences lmao

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

like so much of Everything today is premised on the idea that the earth-shattering catastrophe which happened within living memory of everyone older than a third grader has had no meaningful material or psychological effects on the general public and i don't think that's good, lol.

"(some of) the top-line economic indicators (sorta) recovered (in most places) so everything is fine and we don't need to talk about it" is not a sustainable framework for interfacing with reality

[kidzbopdeathgrips]

"why is everyone so angry and paranoid now?" "why is politics so dysfunctional now?" "why is [x] [y] and [z] now? blah blah blah"

2020:

[agender-ryland-grace]

rocky may be the size of an earth dog but he is 168 kilos and strong as hell whereas grace is a wet paper bag. one of these two is being carried by the other and it is not the one you think

[agender-ryland-grace]

grace go far.

[hailed-marys]

an ode to prometheus

[hailed-marys]

an ode to prometheus