Sunday night in Manhattan, at Roseland, backstage. The members of Coldplay have been to see their teenage heroes Oasis play a show, and now everyone's squished into a little room engulfed by the smell of beer and a cloud of smoke, with rock & roll blaring from a boombox on the side. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin is curled up on a black couch, talking with Albert Hammond Jr. and Fab Moretti of the Strokes. "You guys talk sense," he tells them. "All passion, all melody, no solos equals good music."

Across the room, the rest of Coldplay -- guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion (all four are in their mid-twenties, live in London and seem the sort of nice, earnest fellows who'll never wreck a hotel room) -- mingle at the would-be frat party. Oasis' Liam Gallagher strides around the room, aviator glasses on, a towel round his neck like a boxer. "I believe him when he sings," Gallagher says of Martin. "He means it. A lot of bands don't mean it. I don't know him, but I believe him." Later, he tells Martin he once saw him running through London (Martin loves to run). "I was buyin' baby food, so I ain't say nothin'," Gallagher says. "That's rock & roll, innit?"

It's been about two years since the release of Coldplay's debut album, Parachutes, which, led by the melancholy ballad "Yellow," sold nearly 5 million copies worldwide, making Coldplay one of the biggest bands overseas and serious contenders here in America. Parachutes was brooding, cerebral and moody. The band's follow-up, A Rush of Blood to the Head, balances out the sensitive acoustic guitars with more muscle and soul. "I'm really interested in the idea of having emotion that can make you feel sad while you're moving your legs," Martin says. On their first tours of America, Coldplay seemed overwhelmed. Now they seem ready. "The biggest difference between our two albums," Champion says, "is Chris' confidence in his own ability and our confidence in terms of playing our instruments. I think there's a bit more assuredness in it."

Martin is obsessed with "getting passionate music into the mainstream." He uses the phrase repeatedly. His own passion dates back to age eleven, when one of his teachers at Sherbourne School in Dorset, England, brought keyboards to his music class and told them to play. "He said, 'Just mess around and do what you want,'" Martin says. "And all of us were like, 'Wow! We can do music!'" Martin's parents promptly bought him a keyboard. "That's where I got the bug."

In school, Martin played in about ten bands. He also sat by himself for hours writing songs. But, he says, the songs were never that good. In 1996, at nineteen, he went off to University College London. He met Buckland the first week, but it took them six months to get around to playing together. "He sat on his bed," Martin says, "and I sat on a chair, and he had this riff, and I started playing this melody, and I thought, 'Fuckin' hell. This is it!' It was the best thing I've ever done."

Saturday night, in D.C., at the 9:30 Club, backstage. Coldplay are halfway through a club tour in advance of A Rush of Blood's release. It's just two hours to showtime, and all four of the guys are crowded in a little room the size of a middle-class teenager's bedroom. Buckland, an extremely quiet guy, is sitting in one corner, a messy mop of wild hair atop his head, eating potato chips. Berryman, who looks like a floppy-haired younger Ralph Fiennes, is on the other side of the room, sipping a Beck's. Champion's beautiful dark-haired girlfriend leans on his shoulder as he quietly strums a guitar. The room would be placid but for Martin. He rushes around, first using his portable humidifier on his throat, then dumping his daytime clothes in a corner and lying on the floor to do some stretches. He pays extra attention to his wrists, strained from banging the piano. "I love getting prepared," he says. "The whole Rocky thing."

Martin falls into a riff about Einstein. "You know, he wore the same thing every day," he says. "And he never wore socks. Geniuses don't wear socks."

"Do you?" someone asks.

"All the time."

"You weren't earlier today."

"I had a moment of genius," he says. "Yeah, I wear the same thing every day, but I'm not inventing relativity."

"But Einstein didn't write 'Yellow.'"

"Oh, great, you're calling me a one-hit wonder! Einstein never had to deal with Rolling Scientist saying, 'Einstein's lost it'!"

With the show just twenty minutes away, as the other three remain mellow (Berryman yawning, Champion sipping wine), Martin's talking ceases, but his movement and speed increase, and his intensity builds. He dims the lights. Just a minute to showtime, they have a four-way huddle, talking quietly. It lasts ten seconds. Then they turn and walk out the door toward the stage without a word, just Martin touching each of them on the shoulder or the arm, the way athletes and boys show love.

Onstage the guys attack with the ferocity of soccer players, and the audience -- which lined up for the show seven hours before the doors opened -- responds with delirious abandon. Martin bangs furiously at his piano during "Politik," the first track from the new album, then jumps up to dance, wild and free, making the most of the small stage, his energy enough to fill a stadium.

Monday night in Manhattan at the Bowery Ballroom, backstage. The Coldplay show has just ended, and the tiny yellow dressing room is filled with the group and many friends, including Liam and Noel Gallagher. Noel recalls running into his hero, Ian Brown of the Stone Roses, in the street years ago. "He [Ian] said, 'I pass you the torch,' and now," Noel says, glancing at Martin, "we're passin' it to them." The Coldplay party is less smoky and lacks the air of mayhem of the Oasis party, but when the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" flows from the boombox, Liam sparks a singalong, and everyone joins in. As the past and possible future heavyweight champions of British rock croon along with the greatest of all time, the mood couldn't be brighter. Martin looks at his mates and says, "We'd all like to meet the right person one day, but in one sense of my life, I've already met the right people."

[From Issue 906 — October 3, 2002]