Happy landings

As you read this, Chris Martin of Coldplay is elsewhere worrying about it. That's guaranteed. He's always worried, but you don't actually have to meet him to know this. Just listen to his records. It's an instinct loudly pronounced by the songs of romantic longing that powered Coldplay's debut album Parachutes to 5m sales across the globe, while the mood of mortality panic that informs their second album, A Rush of Blood to The Head , hardly quenches that hunch. Meeting him is still quite an eye-opener, however.

'Why are you doing this,' he demands, bounding into a hotel bar overlooking Westminster Bridge, 'you've always hated us.'

How he's arrived at this conclusion is unclear. There's no documented evidence to support such an idea.

'Really,' he asks, softening but still disbelieving. 'Sorry, it's just me. I do worry.'

It's true, he does. Some things about which Chris Martin, 25, is currently worried: his hairline. He thinks he'll be bald by the end of the year and will require a weave ('Could I get away with that?'). Women are also a concern, in particular his inability to hold on to girlfriends because he's 'a self-obsessed, uncool fool'. He worries about death, about the mosaic of opportunity that lies ahead of him, about the need to get as much done as possible before he expires. He worries about this interview, about how the opportunity to make himself look 'like a total knobhead' may be too great to pass up. He worries about the British public, too. He desperately wants to provide an alternative to boy bands and disposable pop. He wants instead to make music of depth and soul that chimes with the masses.

And this brings us to his greatest worry of all, the worry that underpins his entire kingdom of worries. He worries about Coldplay. Last year he was really worried that he'd always be 'the "Yellow" guy', the author and singer of a massive hit single that he believed could dwarf anything the band subsequently attempted. He loves the song and what it achieved. He's proud of how it helped turn Parachutes into the most successful British debut in aeons. The romantic in him was flattered by the knowledge that people had fallen in love to 'Yellow', to ' Look at stars, see how they shine for you ' - words he'd written. He found all that very enjoyable. How could he not? Parachutes made them lots of money, took them to exotic places, introduced them to amazing people, garnered critical garlands and produced a collection of international hit singles. But...

At night he sleeps alone. And when he's alone at home, away from the fuss, he's only certain of three facts. 1) Parachutes is a good record, but it's done. 2) For many, many people he's 'the "Yellow" guy'. 3) The only way to stop being 'the "Yellow" guy' is for Coldplay to make something better.

So that's what Coldplay did. They made an album that's louder, more experimental and more daring. There are still bittersweet piano-fed melodies, Martin's plaintive vocal moan remains intact - although his range has broadened considerably - and his gift for a good tune hasn't been sacrificed at a conceptual altar. But Martin wanted to make a record that challenges his favourite epic rock benchmarks, Radiohead's The Bends and U2's The Unforgettable Fire. That's just what A Rush of Blood to The Head 's grand majesty does. Indeed, Parlophone, Coldplay's label, is pretty certain that by the end of this campaign Coldplay will be as big as these two acts: they've nominated them as its worldwide priority this year. Coldplay's much-coveted slot on the stadium circuit looks assured.

Despite this, Chris Martin continues to fret. His main worry this lunchtime is he's slipping because, really, he isn't nearly as worried as he used to be.

'Yeah, I've let my guard down,' he admits in the clipped, ever so slightly estuary tones of a renegade royal, his big blue eyes burning with an intensity that never dims. 'I'm not nearly as hung up about things as I was. Do you think that might be a problem?'

He came to the conclusion that all his worrying had become a bit of a worry when the glare of Parachutes 's success started to blind him 18 months ago. He'd gone from Sherborne boarding school to University College London (where he met band mates guitarist Jon Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion) to signing a record deal with Parlophone to huge international success, and he felt an impostor.

'I'd think: "Gosh, I'm just some public-school boy with my house colours. I've got a degree. I'm from a middle-class family in Devon (mum: teacher; dad: chartered accountant). I've got no story. We're just a bunch of students. I don't drink, I don't take drugs, I don't smoke. I can't be compared with Liam Gallagher or The Sex Pistols, or anyone real. I haven't got any experiences as valid as the Wu Tang Clan." I was incredibly insecure about it.'

When former Creation Records president Alan McGee wrote an angry, somewhat cruel piece in The Guardian in response to their 2000 Mercury Prize nomination that dubbed Coldplay a lily-livered excuse for a rock band staffed by 'bedwetters', Martin was hurt, angry... and afraid that it might be true.

'I'd always hoped that, you know, writing good songs that mean something would be enough. And here was a guy who'd put out really important records by the likes of Oasis and Primal Scream saying, "No, it isn't enough, you loser." Christ, I thought, I don't do these things. I'm not an old-fashioned, booze and drugs rock'n'roller. I'd rather go swimming or running or kite flying...'

Kite flying?

'Oh yeah. It's great. My brother gave me a kite for my birthday. I asked him, "What are you doing? I'm 24. I can't be buggering about with kites." He said, "Come on, give it a go." So we went down to the beach and he was right. It was amazing fun. Anyway, I was really worried about whether I did have the credentials to be in a band playing gigs for kids. I didn't have any leather pants. I haven't been to the Priory, we're not members of The Groucho. Could I really go on Top of the Pops ?'

But it was actually on Top of the Pops that the scales fell from Martin's eyes. He'd always imagined that famous people, be they John Lydon or the Queen, were from some distant, magical planet. These were the aliens he saw on television, and he wasn't an alien. He was just a provincial posh kid who'd learnt to play piano at boarding school. He didn't belong in the rock stars' club.

'But then you find yourself on Top of the Pops and you start meeting these people and you realise they're just humans like you, like me. We're all ordinary, it's just what we make that makes us extraordinary. That's all that matters. Why be scared of anyone because of where you're from or what you do? When I realised that, it was like somebody had opened the window and I could breathe again.'

He realised that life was too short to worry about others' perception of him. He'd just have to get on with living. And it's this notion that fuelled the songs he wrote with his band in a studio in Liverpool at the end of last year, the idea that life flashes by and that the time for living is always slipping away.

'The ideas behind the new album are all to do with love and death,' he says, slipping a bottle of water into his jacket pocket and standing up from the table. 'It's about not knowing anything and the freedom that gives you to try anything. And girls. It's about girls, too. Isn't everything?'

At which point he decides we should step out into the Sunday afternoon sun and head over to St James's Park to ponder these important matters some more.

Pausing to buy some nuts from a vendor on the bridge, Martin considers his remarkable good fortune.

'Dreams come true,' he laughs, passing a bag of nuts over. 'They really do! I grew up watching Neighbours and I was totally fixated by this one character, Beth. I really fell in love with her. Years later I'm in a band and who do I meet? Beth, Natalie Imbruglia, and she's a fan. Of me, well, our music. That... that... that...'

He gazes out over the Thames, shaking his head and rubbing his dome frantically.

'That's amazing. She's a mate of mine. She's my friend. It's too strange. Tremendous, though.'

Whether he's told her that he fell in love with her as a teenager must remain a moot point. 'You don't really think I can talk about that with you, do you,' he scoffs.

Sitting on a park bench with his bag of nuts, however, he does take a moment to consider his love life. It's not shaping up too well.

'Romantically,' he decides, 'I'm a complete cunt [please note: this is the first recorded instance of Chris Martin swearing in the public domain. The previous night he'd apologised to his father in the audience when he took the Lord's name in vain on stage.] Absolutely. I'm a complete loser and failure in all things romantically.'

The reason for this is the obstacle hogging his one-track mind: Coldplay. He's obsessed with the band, and for a hopeless romantic, that's pretty hard to balance. He says it marks him out as a very, very bad date. 'I mean, I don't want to put anybody off. I don't want Rachel Weisz to read this and be deterred, because I really fancy her. Actually, put that in. She probably reads The Observer . I've just seen The Mummy and she's beautiful in that.

'But the problem with me and romance is that I've watched too many films - too many Woody Allen films, specifically. There's always the big build-up to people getting together, then they get together and you never see what happens next. I'm obsessed with that build-up, with the moment when the violins are playing and it's soft focus and unusual. I'm ashamed to say that after that I lose interest. I'm no good at the bit when it all becomes real.'

For that reason, Martin says he develops crushes all too easily. He's only fallen truly in love three times, however. His first love was Beth from Neighbours , when he was 16. His second love was around the time of the Parachutes release and 'it felt like being hit by a ton of bricks', although they've subsequently parted. And the third time was last week, in the restaurant of the St Martins Lane Hotel.

'I spent three hours watching this amazing girl across the room, plucking up the courage to go and speak to her. It really was intense. Eventually, I'm ready. I go over, introduce myself and start talking. After about two minutes I started to think: "Right, well, I'd better go ring my dad because some kind of arrangement needs to be made." Then I saw... she had a wedding ring on.'

He crumples back against the bench.

'I've got to seize the moment quicker. You can't go through life just floating. I'm only 25, but I don't want to miss the boat.'

If the hopeless romantic in Chris Martin can be heard burning through big torch songs like 'The Scientist' and 'Green Eyes' on the new album, the desperation in his last statement drives the rest of the vehicle. You can hear his hunger for the immediate on songs like the opening 'Politik' where, over a blast of discordant keyboards and guitars that power forward like a warming jet, Chris demands that he be given 'life over death'; or on 'Clocks', where he details missed opportunities flashing by through a piano's frantic whirl; or on the album's mournful title track, a song that catalogues life's fragility, its unbearable lightness. The music is big, bold, moving, cinematic. And the lyrics reveal a seriously neurotic urgency in their author.

'Yes!' he shouts approvingly. 'I am. That's me. Urgent, urgency. It's the word that sums me up. All this is fun, but it's nonsense. So is our music. When human life ends, what will it all mean? Who'll listen to all the great records, who'll read the great books, watch the great movies? Nobody. So do it now. Do it now!'

He grabs my sleeve and stares deeply into my eyes for a moment. It's weird. 'Now, now, now,' he implores. 'Don't put anything off.'

Drummer Will Champion has an insight into his singer's lust for life. 'When you start anything new, the first year or so is always weird and disorientating. Be it your first year at secondary school, your first year at Uni, your first year in London. I think we all found that first year in Coldplay, with all the success and acclaim and criticism, bewildering. We didn't lose it, but we lost our bearings, probably Chris most of all. Now we've got a handle on it and we're confident about who we are. We all feel very excited about what we can do. There are limitless possibilities.'

Chris agrees. Although he says that death is a theme on the album, he thinks it's a positive theme. He hadn't realised that we die until recently, or if he had, he hoped it was an option that he might not have to pick. Now he knows that's not true. It's not a problem any more.

'I don't want to get morbid on you, but people keep dying. So do things while you can. Up until 23, the concept of death hadn't occurred to me, then someone asked me if I'd heard about Jonty, this friend from school. I said, "No, what?" "He's dead." I used to play football with him. That's amazing, isn't it? Life is right now. It's not a morbid realisation, it's exciting. I find that feeling of time constraint very liberating. Nobody has an answer. We all die in the end. So come on. Let's do something now.'

What we're going to do now is walk back to Martin's hotel through the park so he can meet his parents for lunch. Martin actually lives in north London but he always stays in a hotel when Coldplay play in London, as they did last night. He likes to feel as if he's on tour before a show even if he's not. He loves that sense of adventure, that sensation of heading off to make camp with your friends, that companionship with band and crew. But the band and crew aren't here. They're staying in their homes around London. So he's heading off on his own adventure, making camp alone in a hotel room a few miles from his Primrose Hill home. Isn't this all a bit odd, Chris?

'Well, I am odd, I suppose. You know, I'm in a rock'n'roll band and people think it's weird because I don't do anything remotely rock'n'roll - apart from playing it. People think it's weird I don't take drugs or drink. But for me, rock'n'roll is all about doing whatever you want. It's about defying convention and being who you are. And that's me.

'I'd have a hard time convincing you Coldplay are the direct descendants of The Sex Pistols, but I watched The Filth and the Fury and I felt a lot of empathy. People say they were yobs or whatever, but Johnny Rotten had so much compassion. He said that he didn't do the things he did because he hated the British people but because he loved them and thought they were being sold short. That's exactly why we do what we do! We want to make music with heart and soul because culturally people are sold short in this country. We just want to prove that you can be a massive group and have some meaning, some feeling. I don't want to be bland.'

We walk on. Martin talks about all the brilliant people he's met in the past couple of years. He explains how sweet Kylie is, how encouraging PJ Harvey was and how Liam Gallagher came back stage at one gig and told him 'Yellow' had inspired him to write 'Songbird' and had then leant into Chris and sung it in his ear. It was a big step towards believing Coldplay belonged in the same club as the Gallaghers. But there's one more person he'd like to meet. He'd love to meet Alan McGee. He'd love to ask him what all that was about and tell him how helpful the flak was, personally ('It stopped us from making our very own Attack of the Clones '). He'd also explain that we all die, so let's make the most of living and not get so angry with those really trying their best.

At the traffic lights, Chris says cheerio. He's got to meet his folks, hasn't seen them all day. Aren't families great, he asks. He loves his mum and dad and his five siblings, and one day he'd like a big family of his own. He'd love that to happen. But there's so much to do in the meantime.

Then he's gone, bobbing through the traffic with a big, wild smile; his eyes fixed on the skies, looking for life and love on his way back to Westminster Bridge. Worried, too, about what might happen should he find either.