One of the world's great bands have finally learnt to enjoy their
success. Paul Connolly meets Coldplay

It's not supposed to be this way. Here I am in a chic Washington DC
hotel and Coldplay's lead singer, Chris Martin, has just bounded up
to me and proclaimed: "I'm really happy, I really want to do a happy
interview."

This from a man who is portrayed with tedious regularity as a
depressive, passionless namby-pamby. Were previous interviewers so
totally inaccurate? Am I special? The answer to both questions is
probably "no" as evinced by Martin's next utterance: "You're the
first interviewer out of about the last 150 who's caught me in such a
good mood. It's mad, it's bonkers."

Such candour and enthusiasm are disarming, although the first
question that needs to be asked is obvious. So, Chris, why are you so
happy? Martin's bright blue eyes sparkle. "I was so frightened about
our new record coming out and I was gutted that Darius has beaten In
My Place (the band's current single) to No 1 and I was worried about
the reviews and about whether the new album (A Rush of Blood to the
Head) was going to flop. Today I'm not worried about it for various
reasons.

"Rolling Stone gave the album a really good review and, just as
important, I met this absolutely amazing girl recently and I spoke to
her on the phone yesterday, and all that together has put me in a
good mood." The "girl"

Thank heavens for the "absolutely amazing girl"
(who I find out later was Gwyneth Paltrow).
The last thing I'd wanted to encounter was the bleating rock
star of music press lore. I mention this to Martin. "Yeah, you guys
have to have your angle and the angle with this band is that I'm this
depressive - i's not true at all. I don't see the glass as half-full
or half-empty, I just always think it could be more full. I'm a
pessimistic optimist. It doesn't matter how good things are, I think
they could be better. I always focus on the bad stuff, no matter how
small.

"There are two sides of my brain: one half goes, 'why aren't we seen
as the best band ever because we are?', and the other half is like,
'how have we done so well because we're not that good?' I get so
excited about this band but it also makes me more depressed than
anything. It doesn't always come across but I do get very excited
when things go well."

By the end of this breathless monologue Martin is so animated he
nearly falls off his seat. He and the rest of Coldplay (who met at
the University of Central London in 1996) have every reason to be
excited because A Rush of Blood to the Head is set to establish the
band as one of the world's premier rock outfits.

It's a huge advance from the charming but limited debut album,
Parachutes. In My Place may be prime melancholic Coldplay but it was
written around the time of Parachutes and is already a live
favourite. In the words of Guy Berryman, Coldplay's darkly handsome
and sardonic bassist: "It's what the critics would say is a typical
Coldplay song. The rest of the record will mess with their heads."

Indeed it will. The leap from Radiohead acolytes to a commercial Echo
and the Bunnymen for the 21st century is remarkable. (Ian McCulloch,
Echo's lead singer, paid the occasional visit to the Liverpool studio
where the album was recorded and, unusually for him, gave it a
ringing endorsement.) Songs such as the exquisitely acute The
Scientist still offer stripped-down sadness, but there are also songs
that tackle wider issues. Politik, for instance, a thunderous but
delicately tuneful attack on political apathy, is stupendous.

Coldplay are in America to build on their already impressive base
here. Parachutes has sold as well in the US - 1.5 million - as it has
in the UK. They are in the middle of a "buzz tour", playing small
venues before a bigger tour. According to the drummer Will Champion,
they're coming back in September.

"We're playing Jones Beach in New York which is a 14,000-seat venue.
And that's because of Yellow (their breakthrough single). It received
good airplay over here and so when we first started touring we didn't
have to start at the bottom; we were immediately playing to 800
people rather than eight."

Unlike may other bands, Coldplay are not embarrassed about their
biggest song. Martin's song-writing partner, the guitarist Jonny
Buckland, a shy, diffident but thoroughly lovely chap, says: "If
Yellow hadn't been a hit then none of this would have happened."

Berryman is a little more emphatic. "We don't get tired of playing
Yellow. If it wasn't for that song we wouldn't be here now. That song
has been a passport for us travelling the world, playing to thousands
of people. How can we be sick of it?"

Coldplay's sudden success startled many people. By their own
admission it was not expected. Champion says: "The record company
would have been happy with us selling 30,000 so the pace with which
it took off was a little frightening.

"When Parachutes went to No 1 in the UK we were playing this rock
festival in Sicily and we were sandwiched in between all these local
heavy rock bands. We were No 1 in the UK but nobody there had heard
of us."

Buckland offers a more rock'n'roll take on their success. "When
Yellow became a hit I was in a pool in the south of France on holiday
and I thought, it doesn't really get much better than this."

However, Martin is concerned that his present happiness could spell
the end of Coldplay. "If I keep feeling like this we're never going
to record an album again," he says with a grin. "I can't write happy
songs. My favourite songs are sad and melancholy."

That hasn't stopped his record company suggesting he write for other
artists. "I said I'll give it a bash. But it was impossible. Because
you either come up with something too miserable and too Coldplay
which is s***, or you come up with something too cheesy, or you come
up with something too good which you don't want to give away."

Martin is very pleased with A Rush of Blood to the Head. "Now I'm not
frightened about walking up to Noel Gallagher or Thom Yorke or
Richard Ashcroft, all people I think have written great songs. I
don't feel inferior any more."

All this is a far cry from Martin's first attempt at rock stardom at
Sherborne public school in Dorset. "I was in a band called Identity
Crisis with a friend called Dom. We got booed off stage, not because
of Dom but because of me. I came on stage, 15, wearing a long black
coat and my voice hadn't broken and my lyrics were appalling, to say
the least, and I was trying to be a cross between Bono and the guy
from the Fields of the Nephilim.

"I destroyed a whole year's work by trying to be a rock star in front
of people who had seen me in a jockstrap in the changing rooms. I'm
sure if you saw Bono in a jockstrap it would shatter the illusion."

Chris Martin the new Bono? Coldplay the next U2? Don't bet against it.