The story of “Parachutes”, the Coldplay debut album
On July 10, tomorrow, the first album of the Coldplay“Parachutes “ (Read the review here). The record debut of a band that would have left a mark – and what a sign! – in the following quarter century. The quartet composed of Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman And Will Champion It was a group of four young people of beautiful hopes just left the university.
The four had met at the university in London in 1996 and had played their first concert in 1998. The idea of recording an album innervous them a lot. Despite their label, the Parlophone, with whom they had signed a contract during a boat ride on the Serpentine pond in Hyde Park in London, had given him a year to play and improve. They did not feel ready yet.
A few years ago Chris Martin In a radio interview he explained: “Those first concerts were fantastic, we were really rough and fresh, we knew nothing, it was really positive that our label let us go for a year to make these little concerts. They did not force us to do our album immediately after signing, they let us learn to know the study, we realized the EP ‘The Blue Room’. In that period we were really trying to find our voice”.
When the time came to create a real album, the presence of the manufacturer was fundamental Ken Nelsonas mentioned by the guitarist Jonny Buckland. “‘Parachutes’ was an experience of great learning for us. We did not really know what we were doing and fortunately we had Ken Nelson to guide us because we were practically kids. He was really reassuring. Chris can be susceptible to the songs and he was quiet and kind.”
It was during a night of recording in the Rockfield Studios in Wales that Nelson inspired the band to write their first great success. The work session was not going well, trying to relieve the growing anguish, the producer gave the band a advice: “Get out and look at the stars”. Chris Martin He was listening to the album “Harvest” (Read the review here) Of Neil Young And a melody suddenly won in his head, returned to the studio singing it with a nasal accent that imitated that of the Canadian musician. Then he sang it with his voice, Buckland added a guitar line and the band realized that he had just brought out something special.
This is the memory of the bassist Guy Berryman: “It was obvious from the first bars, when singing it, that we had something that would have been a crucial moment of the album, because it was a really beautiful and simple melody. We recorded it quite quickly. The arrival of ‘Yellow’ consolidated the rest of the album and allowed us to have more peaceful moments”.
“Yellow”published as a single two weeks before “Parachutes”he arrived in fourth place in the United Kingdom sales charts and launched the album that reached the first position. But success also brought some problems with it. Chris Martin In fact, he worried about what he declared during the interviews and how the band could be painted. At the beginning of 2001 speaking with Select said: “We are a little serious, simple. Everything we know is to play is playing songs. I worry that our image becomes more important than music. I like to see the posters of the album on the subway because it is our album that is famous, not we to have come out with the Appleton sisters. We seem boring because we do not want to reveal too much. Much of nothing. “
