Elbow: these soulful art rockers aren't just drawing crowds��they're moving bodies - This Month's Big Noise - Guy Garvey interviewed - Interview

Six years ago, at a tiny festival for unsigned artists in Manchester, England, two bands performed on the same bill: One, the melodic art-rock quintet Elbow, went on to burn through two record labels, twice record their ambitious debut album, Asleep in the Back (V2, 2001), tour with Blur and Grandaddy, and rack up a trailing posse of slavishly devoted fans. The other band was Coldplay. With the release of Elbow's most recent effort, Cast of Thousands, Coldplay front man Chris Martin thought it high time for a reunion. Here, he talks to Elbow singer Guy Garvey.

CHRIS MARTIN: Guy Garvey!

GUY GARVEY: Hey, Chris. How're you doing?

CM: This is the first time I've ever interviewed anyone. I'm not sure what to do. I guess we should talk about your new album, Cast of Thousands, because I think it's the best album by anybody except Coldplay. Ever.

GG: [laughs] That's very kind of you. Thank you.

CM: This is the first time in ages that I've been able to listen to an album the whole way through. Most albums are rubbish, but yours really isn't. You must be proud.

GG: [laughs] Nice one, Chris. Yeah, in actuality, I am proud. But the album was a bit of a struggle to put together. We went to me mate's house on the Isle of Mull in Scotland for about three weeks. We just pissed off, the five of us--you know, fished, cooked our catch, hung out, got drunk. Sometime in there we wrote about 20 basic starting points of songs that became the album. We were playing in a converted church, so it was really posh inside. There was just enough room to set all the gear up and the recording stuff, so it was really cozy. But lyrically I was a bit behind because I lost all my journals.

CM: Did you go off to the Isle of Mull to get away from some of the mechanics of being in a band, like doing interviews, press shoots, and all that? Sometimes you just need to escape to get anything done.

GG: Yeah. But I'm sure it's a lot more difficult for you. I mean, I remember learning how much a photograph of your girlfriend [Gwyneth Paltrow, to whom Martin is now married] was worth and thinking, He can't get a minute's peace! Incidentally, Chris, I think you have handled all of that remarkably well. [Martin laughs] I don't know how I'd cope with that kind of pressure.

CM: Oh, there is no pressure. I think there's much more pressure being Tony Blair.

GG: [laughs] He has aged, hasn't he?

CM: Everyone says he has, but every time I see him, his hairline seems to have come forward. [Garvey laughs] Anyway, I want to ask you about "Grace Under Pressure," which to me, is the truly classic song on Cast of Thousands. It's like a great gospel song. When you were recording it, do you remember working with any of the following people: Udeth Dematagoda, Robert-Paul Van Hardeveld, or Mr. Biscuits? They're all in the credits of your album.

GG: Well, no, they were all in the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in 2002. We were playing some festivals, and at one of them I tried to make an antiwar statement in a very roundabout way. I said, "Is everybody having a good time?" and the crowd went, "Yeah!" I said, "Everybody drunk?" They all went "Yeah!" And then I said, "You're all going to let your elected leaders know that nobody's dying in your name, right?" And there was stone silence. This was before opinions on the war in Iraq had polarized, way before the demonstrations--which is great, because eventually people were forced to have an opinion. But the next time we played a festival, I didn't want to send the same sort of lead balloon out to the crowd. So, I was thinking, What's a good way of getting antiwar sentiment across that will get the crowd involved?

I decided to bribe the audience. I said, "Do you all want to be on our new album?" and 8,000 people said, "Yeah!" I told them what to sing, and they sang it back to me, and I knew the BBC was recording it.

CM: You told them to sing, "We still believe in love, so fuck you," which is the best anti-anything statement I've ever heard. I'm always scared to ask people to sing along because you know that half of them aren't going to do it. But on your album, it really sounds like the audience was belting it out. How did you get their names?

GG: We put out a press release saying that if you were at the show you should send us your name, and people did--although I'm fully aware that Mr. Biscuits probably doesn't exist.

CM: Regardless, when you've got a thing like that on your album, you're okay. So what are you working on right now?

GG: I'm writing a duet, and there's a chance that Jane Birkin is going to sing it with me, so I'm really chuffed about that.

CM: Wow! The lady who sang with Serge Gainsbourg! Are you as much of a womanizer as he was?

GG: No, Chris. I won't be putting no saucy trousers on again.

CM: But you have done what a lot of sensible singers do: You've started wearing suits.

GG: I got the idea from that scene at the end of The Hustler [1961] when Minnesota Fats [Jackie Gleason] goes into his dressing room and puts on a clean shirt and powders himself, and Paul Newman rips into him and tells him he looks like a big baby because he's all freshened up.

CM: Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips said all it takes to be a great front man is some confidence and a good jacket. In fact, the only difference between our first and second album was that we started wearing suit jackets. The suit is rock "n" roll's big secret. If it worked for the Beatles, then it'll work for Elbow. [Garvey laughs] Anyway, good luck with the album. It's fucking brilliant.

GG: Cheers, Chris. We'll talk again soon.

Chris Martin's band, Coldplay, is currently at work on a new album, due later this year.

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