Coldplay Celebrate 20 Years Of ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’
Coldplay are looking back at A Rush Of Blood To The Head on the 20th anniversary of its release. Bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion have joined Zane Lowe on Apple Music Hits to discuss their acclaimed second album — now available in Spatial Audio on Apple Music.
In the rare retrospective interview, the band shares stories behind hit songs and reflect on hearing Chris Martin demo The Scientist for the first time, initially having low expectations for the global hit Clocks, the group’s mindset going into the making of the album following the success of their debut, Parachutes, and more.
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Berryman reflected, “…Clocks was a song that we had to really battle with Mr Champion here to get it on the record.” Champion retorted, “In my obstinacy, I still stand by that, but it’s a bloody good piece of music. I think it’s brilliant. It’s one of my favourite pieces of music… I recall saying, as Guy said, I said, ‘yeah, this is not a song.’ And then someone else, our manager at the time, was saying, ‘if that’s a hit, I’ll eat my hat,’ that kind of thing… It’s just an ear worm thing, which was treated very subtly and we didn’t over egg it, but it’s still a mystery for me, that song. I love it.”
Berryman went on to discuss the first time he heard Chris Martin play The Scientist, “Chris says, ‘I’ve got this song to play to you.’ Just on the little upright piano, he just played and sang the whole song from beginning to end, and it was kind of finished. We were like, ‘Oh wow. Okay. That’s really great.’ I think we all felt a bit nervous because we were like, ‘Wow, this is so great. How can we add instrumentation to this?’ So, is to just basically not kind of ruin it and ruin that feeling that we’d all just had from listening to that amazing song. Actually, I think we kind of just jumped on it straight away and pretty much recorded, came up with the parts and pretty much recorded it that same evening.
“I always feel like those kind of songs, when you don’t have to overengineer it or overthink it or try three or four different versions before you feel it’s right. I always get suspicious of those songs. It’s the ones that come along, and you can fall in love with it or get it immediately and record it within a few hours.”