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KAREN BLISS:You're really having fun with your live show now, putting bits of Nelly's "Hot In Herre" and Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" like you did in the Toronto show. Is that rehearsed?
GUY BERRYMAN: "Yes."
BLISS: And it just seemed so spontaneous.
BERRYMAN: "(laughs). It's an illusion (laughs). It works. Sorry to disappoint you (laughs)."
BLISS: Those specific songs are worked out?
BERRYMAN: "The Nelly one has been going for several shows now, but the 'Living On A Prayer' was new actually."
BLISS: (Singer) Chris Martin did say (onstage) that Coldplay's the new Bon Jovi.
BERRYMAN: "I think he's said that a few times in the past, yeah. There's a few that he throws in there. We were trying to think of all the Canadian artists, and we were coming up with all these stupid ones to do a bit of a cover of and I came backstage (at Toronto's Air Canada Centre) and he was trying to work out the Celine Dion song from Titanic (laughs). That wouldn't have even been funny!"
BLISS: I think it would have been. Couldn't have stuck a bit of (Canadian artist) Ron Sexsmith in there?
BERRYMAN: "We didn't remember him until we saw him at the after-show party. He's great. I love Ron Sexsmith."
BLISS: Chris sucked back helium from a balloon onstage. What were you doing with balloons in the dressing room or was that part of a previously done schtick too?
BERRYMAN: "No, that was good. The helium thing was good. I was really laughing at that one onstage. No, we hadn't done that before. The backstage catering was full of those balloons and we were doing it earlier on."
BLISS: So it's not part of your rider. Must have helium-filled balloons.
BERRYMAN: "Must have helium (laughs). No. It's not."
BLISS: Obviously, it has to become a shtick. It has to, if you're playing show after show after show and want to make it a different experience than listening to the album.
BERRYMAN: "Yeah, definitely. It makes it a little bit more special each one. We don't do the same thing every show. It's not quite as bad as that. But yeah, it's good to do things like that and it's good to stop songs and make them (the audience) sing along. It's good when you feel you are actually in a room with the band and not just watching them on TV."
BLISS: Of course there has to be a 'knowing' that if you try this, the audience is going to respond.
BERRYMAN: "Yeah. We gauge better how audiences react. We know what to do and what not to do."
BLISS: How does the Toronto show (to 6,000 people) compare to other cities? Are you playing typically to that sized crowd?
BERRYMAN: "Yeah, they're been kind of that size. We haven't played in any hockey rink before. It was weird because if that's the whole hockey rink, we were playing in this very small section here so when we came onstage we had to walk on this covered up ice and come on. So it was a bit strange. We played in Jones Beach in Long Island, which is a huge outdoor venue. They're all that size, but differing kind of functions."
BLISS: In Toronto, Chris invited the audience to "feel free to come down" and people came flooding down from the upper levels. Do you ever have safety concerns or at the very least, realize that security sometimes kicks kids out when they do that after spending all that money on a ticket?
BERRYMAN: "(Security) wasn't pleased at all. That's why we had to stop during one of the songs. They were just getting a bit heavy handed with some of the fans. And no one's doing any harm. No one's going to get crushed to death at a Coldplay show. We had it under control. If we saw that people were uncomfortable then we would have stopped and made everyone go back up."
BLISS: You say no one's going to get crushed at a Coldplay show, but if you have all those kids barreling down the stairs and jumping over people, someone could get trampled.
BERRYMAN: "To be honest, we don't often play in venues like that where there is that situation. People are usually right up at the front anyway. There's usually a barrier which is a few feet away from the stage and then people are right up there anyway. So it's not that much different anyway."
BLISS: When you talk about the flow, you're the type of band it would be awesome to sit on the floor for and get lost in the music. Is it weird that people treat you as a stadium act but your music is almost a Pink Floyd for the millennium.
BERRYMAN: "Yeah, yeah right. It does surprise me. We get so many different types and groups of people coming to our shows. We have the 15-year olds who come down to the front and I've had people well into their 50s come to me after the show and say, 'That was a great show.' We're not really an image band where people want to look like us or be like us. We're not the Strokes or something. We're all about the music and just the music and we don't really have anything else attached to us."
BLISS: But the bigger you get more possibilities open up to you. You already have your light and video show. When EMI launched A Rush Of Blood To The Head in Canada, it played it to the industry in an IMAX theatre in pitch black, like a planetarium without the lasers -- almost the perfect atmosphere to launch the record. Do you ever think, yeah, next tour, let's try this?
BERRYMAN: "When we go back to do the tour in Britain, which is quite a big tour for us, it's like an arena tour, we've got a curved stage like that (puts hands in curved - half-moon shape) that we'll be on, and, above it, we've got a curved projection screen. So it's sort of going to look like that (two parallel half-moons) and we're going to have much more stuff projected onto that. So, yeah, we're exploring all different ideas. We don't want to do things too over the top. We don't want to be popping out of giant lemons onstage (laughs). That's what U2 did, wasn't it."
BLISS: Don't want a giant floating pig?
BERRYMAN: "No (laughs). Well, that was more surreal. No, you've got to be tasteful, I think, because it's very easy to go over the top, but hopefully we'll always walk that fine line."
BLISS: You didn't hit Canada on the club tour behind A Rush Of Blood To The Head. When will you be back here?
BERRYMAN: "I don't know when we're coming back to Canada. In fact, I haven't got a clue."
BLISS: Are there places you'd like to go that you didn't with Parachutes?
BERRYMAN: "I'd like to go to South America and I'd like to go to Mexico. I'd like to go to Russia - just weird places. I think Russia's a fascinating place really because it's still mysterious. Nobody really knows anything about it. I bet it's great. I bet there's really interesting places to go to. We haven't been to Africa. It's the only continent I haven't been to. But unfortunately these places don't have an infrastructure built for touring bands."