SURREAL SUCCESS

COLDPLAY may be the bookies favourites to win the Mercury Music Prize, but the group’s drummer Will Champion is certain who he wants to see win and it’s not his band!

“Badly Drawn Boy,” Will coos. “It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in years. Brilliant. I saw him at Glastonbury. Absolutely fantastic, shambolic, perfect, the songs really shine through, all the quirkiness seems to work so well too.
“Like us, he’s trying to get a live feel across with emotion and energy.”
Whoever wins when the announcement is made on September 12 there’s no doubting the incredible strides Coldplay have made.
In the space of a few short months, the unlikely chart-toppers have gone from playing tiny pubs and bars to major festivals in front of crowds numbering thousands.
For Will, it’s all come as a bit of a surprise.
“The record company was quite pleased with the album and told us it could do quite well, but no one expected it to do so well so quickly,” he explains of Parachutes, their debut LP which shot in at number one the week of release.
“We always thought that bigger venues suited our sound more. Again though, it is still quite unbelievable. We’re in this sort of limbo at the moment. We haven’t had a chance to step back and think about things, it’s weird. Almost surreal.
“There have been loads of great things this year so far, and not only the album, but also playing at T In The Park and Glastonbury. Certainly we’ve had our problems and had our arguments, but in general it’s all been great. Now we’re just waiting for the backlash to start.”
Coldplay’s recent sold-out appearance at Ronnie Scott’s gave fans their last chance to see the band up close and personal, and despite Will’s worries, the Brummie crowd made it all happen.
“We’d never done a full acoustic gig before. It was a real challenge to get the songs across in a way we hadn’t done before.”
As critics rush to declare the band as this year’s Travis, holders of the Jeff Buckley torch, and post-Radiohead guitar saviours, Will sees their appeal in simpler terms.
“Hopefully it’s just strong songs,” he says. “That’s our philosophy.”
Despite their new found fame, anthropology graduate Will remains level headed about success.
“Graduating from University College, London last year was important to all of us. This is such a fickle business. You can be the flavour of the month and then it can all disappear very quickly. We’re not being pessimistic, but there’s no telling what’s going to happen and it’s nice to have that degree as a safety net, although we’d love to keep doing this for as long as we enjoy it.”
For the time being though, their future is certainly secure.
“We have the big UK tour coming up then we’re off to Scandinavia, Australia, France, Germany, then hopefully in the new year we can have some time to live, and write some new songs, which we are itching to do.
"At the moment, our priorities have been reversed - we've got four hours of interviews to do everyday and not much music. We're trying to reorganise ourselves so we can do what we do - write music and play music."
Dave Freak, September 2000, Go2Birmingham