[Interview/Article]Finally, interview with Guy Berryman by the very erdanton (the twitter guy)

[Zeya]

Remember the twitter guy who said that he prefer to interview Chris over Guy? Well this is the interview:

Coldplay Plays May 23 At Comcast Theatre In Hartford

By ERIC R. DANTON | The Hartford Courant
May 22, 2009

Coldplay



Coldplay: from left, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer Will Champion, singer-keyboardist Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland (JAY L. CLENDENIN / LOS ANGELES TIMES / June 2, 2008)

Playing in huge arenas before thousands of people has been known to alienate musicians seeking to establish a connection with their audiences, but Coldplay has taken steps to keep things on a human scale.

"Our relationship with the audience is really quite intimate at the moment, because if you bought a ticket way in the back, we'll be coming out to you," bass player Guy Berryman says from home in London, before starting the U.S. leg of a tour that stops in Hartford Saturday.

Indeed, shows on the English quartet's tour last year included a segment where the band raced to some distant section of the venue to perform a couple of acoustic songs. Coldplay plans to reprise the feature this summer, provided the group figures out a way to modify it for the amphitheaters it's visiting.

"I'm sure we're going to be running to the back of the amphitheaters if we can," Berryman says. "We're kind of trying to break down the barriers of a conventional rock performance, with the band at one end of the venue and the audience all the way to the back."

Keeping that sense of intimacy with the audience is important for a band whose members regard each other as family. It shows in the way Coldplay has evolved over 11 years and four full-length studio albums together. The most recent, last year's "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends," was the top-selling album in the world in 2008 and won the Grammy for best rock album in February. It was also the first album on which Coldplay collaborated with producer Brian Eno, who has also worked with Roxy Music, Talking Heads and U2.

"Working with Brian Eno has really helped us quite a lot, and everyone is contributing ideas more and everyone is singing more," Berryman says. "We've spent so much time living together and traveling together, we just know each other better than ever, and we all have a good relationship and are very open-minded to everyone's ideas."

Each of the four members — Berryman, singer/pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland and drummer Will Champion — contributes to the songwriting, which has become a free-flowing process that adheres to no set formula.

"Sometimes a song will be something that Chris has written one night on his own on piano, and he brings it in, and we all try and work out some parts to play on top of it, or it could be a studio-based session where Will is playing a certain drumbeat or Jonny is playing a riff on his guitar, and we kind of build things up from that side," Berryman says. "There's no specific way it functions anymore, which is really quite exciting, because it means everything is coming from a slightly different place."

In some ways, writing "Viva la Vida" was a reaction to stinging criticism from New York Times music critic Jon Pareles, who described Coldplay as "the most insufferable band of the decade" in a blistering review of the band's 2005 album "X&Y."

"It was a big deal. It's the first real attack on your band, and from a publication we all respect," Martin told Rolling Stone last year. "I agreed with a lot of the points. It was like, 'Yeah, I do sometimes go for the obvious, and I do sometimes fall back on old tricks.' So, in a way, it was liberating to see that someone else realized that also."

Berryman says he doesn't remember any specific talk about the Times' review while recording "Viva la Vida," but allows that criticism can be a motivating force.

"Sometimes somebody has decided they don't like you for no other reason than that you're popular, but then sometimes, if there's negative comments, you can read them and go, 'Do you know what? I agree with that,' and you kind of use what people have written about you in a positive way to make constructive changes," he says.

All the same, it doesn't take outside criticism to make the members of Coldplay self-conscious.

"We're a band that's riddled with insecurities anyway, so it doesn't really help us that much to be written about in a negative way," Berryman says. "We just never believe that we've done anything good, and whenever we set out to make a record, we always have it in our heads that it has to be better than the last one. It's those insecurities that drive us to keep going back into the studio and to keep trying to improve our live show and to try and become better musicians and better writers. It's the driving force behind why we're still here doing what we do."

•COLDPLAY performs Saturday at the Comcast Theatre (formerly the Meadows) with Pete Yorn and Howling Bells. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. show are $97.50 and $79.50 for reserved seats and $35 for the lawn. Information: 860-548-7370.

Source: http://www.courant.com/entertainment/music/hc-berrymancoldplay0522.art0may22,0,3246084.story

[tauiwi]

My god that pic looks so photoshopped...

"We just never believe that we've done anything good" - Bull.

[Ab]

Meh, nothing exciting in that interview, not even a new pic of Guy.....thanx a lot Eric**t!
But thanx for posting it, Zeya!

[Zeya]

yeah i kinda agree, it's quite mundane...
and no worries

[tauiwi]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Loud Meditation;3047229
Meh, nothing exciting in that interview, not even a new pic of Guy.....thanx a lot Eric**t!
But thanx for posting it, Zeya!

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lol if there had been less going on with coldplay recently (like 2 weeks ago) you would have RELISHED this article...

[LBerryman]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zeya;3047123


"Sometimes somebody has decided they don't like you for no other reason than that you're popular, but then sometimes, if there's negative comments, you can read them and go, 'Do you know what? I agree with that,' and you kind of use what people have written about you in a positive way to make constructive changes," he says.

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Twitter guy: 0 - Mr Berryman: +10000000000000000000

[squareonefivesix]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LBerryman;3047240
Twitter guy: 0 - Mr Berryman: +10000000000000000000

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Hahaha - I clocked that comment from Guy too....haha you tell him, Guy !

Seriously, though what a lame ass interview - maybe Guy was fore-warned that this bloke was an arsehole (seeing as so many of us twitted Coldplay about it!) so he didn't give too much away...sounds like it was a short interview

Guy's so cool

[illuvcoldplay]

thanks for sharing........
it would have been great to have just a pic of Guy as well..................

[technicolor_love78]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LBerryman;3047240
Twitter guy: 0 - Mr Berryman: +10000000000000000000

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hahah so true laura! good for Guy to subtly tell this jackass off!

[JustSpies84]

The other Guy interview that was posted yesterday was much better than this one, just by the questions asked. ..There's a lot of "what do you feel about your music?" stuff in this one, which is surprising, considering he's writing a preview of the tour. What happened to asking questions about expectations for the tours, what fans could get a kick out of, any surprises planned, what they did last tour that they didn't want to do this tour, anything planned right after the tour ends, etc...Dammit, I should have written this, lol.

(And on a side note, that New York Times critic is forever going to be known as the pretentious dude who used $50 sounding words to describe Coldplay to show that he's too cool to praise a band like that. He's a one phrase wonder, and I can't believe so many Coldplay articles feel the need to quote him.)

[JM-SP2]

Actually I kinda like it. But yeah, too short and there's only one topic. Yesterday's interview was way better.

[Crests]

what a boring interview
But i love guy for that comment

[Corkus]

It's not a bad interview, but I still believe this guy should never have had the privledge of interviewing him in the first place.

Oh well, I'll take what we got from it.

[xxKels]

"Our relationship with the audience is really quite intimate at the moment"

Uhmm, yes- as long as you keep tweeting bed shots, it will remain so, too!