In 1998, Coldplay took the first step with Safetytheir debut EP. The album contains only three songs, one of which – No More Keeping My Feet on the Ground (I don't want to keep my feet on the ground anymore, ed.) – will return as the B-side of Yellow two years later. It will be that great leap into the void that will begin a decades-long free fall during which the songs will seem to arrive at Chris Martin as if from some secret source to be transformed into Coldplay hits. And it was about that moment that the frontman realized what awaited the band at the end.
Martin outlined the plan in the Coldplay cover story on Rolling Stone. At some point in the not-too-distant (but not even explicitly defined) future, Coldplay will release their latest album. It will be their twelfth, and it won't be much different from Safety. “I've known the cover of this latest album since 1999,” Martin told Rolling Stone. «It's a photograph by the same photographer who took the cover of our first EP». The cover of Safety it's a blurry, black-and-white image of Martin. It was taken by John Hilton, a school friend of guitarist Jonny Buckland.
Coldplay only released 500 copies of the EP. It's one of the first physical findings of their career. Martin described their latest album as a kind of homecoming in terms of sound and, with the reference to the cover, also in a visual sense. But he doesn't feel too sentimental about it. The musician has known for some time that the beginning of the end of Coldplay as a recording group will be the animated musical he is currently writing with his best friend and creative director Phil Harvey. Then Coldplay will call it quits, more or less.
There will be no more blurry albums or cover images to choose from. But there will still be live shows – and maybe a few songs, if bassist Guy Berryman gets it right. “Chris will never stop writing, so I take it with a grain of salt,” Berryman said. «We are still years away from any type of retirement. But I think you have to have a plan. If you're running a marathon, you know you have to run 26 miles. But if someone tells you, 'Okay, start running and don't stop,' it's pretty hard to stay motivated.”
Martin added: “One day we will release a collection called Alphabetics which will be made up of a lot of outtakes and songs that didn't make it anywhere, it will be a compendium. We'll do a song that starts with A and a song that starts with B, because there's enough to do that – we just don't have any songs with Q. That stuck with me.”
In 2010, Hilton reflected on the cover story, recalling, “There were blurry photos and sharp photos, but that one just looked weird. I guess at the time I justified it as an attempt to capture Chris' onstage movement, his madness. It was something dark, Radiohead-esque, an aesthetic that everyone liked at the time.”
The photographer further explained that the title Safety came from the word written on camera film, hidden until revealed on the printed image. “They were happy to leave her there. So the name came from the image,” he said. «It's not a brilliant photograph by any means, but the reason I like it is that it's a photograph of a kid in college, or rather, some kids in college who went on to become a great band. So, from this point of view, I am very satisfied.”
Translation from Rolling Stone US.
