Coldplay at Super Bowl 50: The Guitar Wrangler

Coldplay at Super Bowl 50: The Guitar Wrangler

Travelling with Jonathan M. "Jonny" Buckland brought out the best in me as a guitar player, but it's time to move on.

For three years, almost like an understudy, I’ve been his instrument “Wrangler” in charge of all his 20+ guitars: repair, maintenance, packing, moving, tuning, cleaning, and readying each one, for each song, of each set in Coldplay concerts.

Playing alongside him in rehearsals, bouncing riffs back and forth like Lebron James’ practice dummy: catching the ball, throwing it back… catching the ball, throwing it back… riff after riff after riff. While I’m actually doing Jonny’s mundane tasks I don’t think about it; it’s events like the NFL's Super Bowl 50 that make me think about what's next?

Wearing all black from head-to-toe, the best part of the job is bringing Jonny guitars onstage, sometimes changing in the middle of a tune. I pick up a little extra cash from Under Armour, one of the Coldplay tour sponsors, by wearing everything they make from shoes/socks, pants, hooded sweat-top, even black, sticky, football receivers gloves all sporting the interlocking “UA” symbol—I can’t drop guitars!

With the white-hot spotlight on the star and me in all black, I slip on and off the stage cat-like, never tripping on pedals, cords, amps, or speakers; each guitar is tuned-up, set to the right volume, and ready for another solo. The cat-burglar gets away.

It’s not quite like a NASCAR pit crew, but we have to keep accurate timing for a performance choreographed much like a Broadway play; what looks like a free-form, extemporaneous detour by one of the world’s best guitarists, has been practiced and tweaked like a daytime soap opera. 

The timing of a concert is exact, down to the last song. Only the encores are off the clock… The audience earns the encores, which are truly made-up as they play them. Coldplay’s Super Bowl 50 halftime is scheduled by the second, and we’ll probably only play three songs (that's a secret). 

http://www.levisstadium.com/

As big as the band is, we're just a few chaps from University College who'll get to perform in front of 100 million people on a stage in the middle of a bloody football field. (They're so humble they are performing for free; ironically, Jonny's favorite "football" team is the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, which plays a different kind of game):

"I think we're firmly split down the middle between those of us who know absolutely nothing about football, and those of us who know almost absolutely nothing about football," said Buckland.

The instruments are Jonny’s tools, like a surgeon, and he principally uses a '72 Telecaster by Fender, which is like a Strat. Jonny Boy occasionally straps on a Gibson Les Paul, and sometimes even a Rickenbacker. More than 20 guitars used by Buckland provide a unique sound to accent Chris Martin’s lead vocals. 

In the last two CDs there have been guitar solos revealing his incredible talent:

Look to "True Love" off of Ghost Stories CD at 2:57 on the track; compared with "Up&Up" off their latest album at 3:19 in the song. There are more guitar solos I could quote you, but those two will do the trick.

Through the years, working with Jonny helped me develop the craft of songwriting, mostly considering the context of my work and the audience for whom they played. But songs are also written to express my own thoughts as a reflection of my ideas, or an expression of my personality. In a purely binary, economic analysis, songs are considered only on popularity or commercial success; but that structure has changed, music has more channels now in which to be discovered. My creativity cannot be too heavily influenced by my background as Coldplay’s guitar wrangler, as enjoyable as that experience has been. The music means more than the medium.

For me it has always been about the guitar. As an aviator or driver it is all about the vehicle, for a singer it’s about the voice, and in coaching, the victories. For me it is about the instrument. The rhythm, which provides structure for the song, the tone, which provides melody, and the chords, which undergird the accent of the words; all come from the lead guitarist: he’s the straw that stirs the drink. My inherent talent uses my eyes, ears, and fingers in coordination to play one of the most important instruments in the music industry. It was what I was made to do, and now I must be more purposeful about this gift.

After our 15-minutes of fame end with the halftime of Super Bowl 50, and I take off my black ninja suit; we’ll probably finish the evening back at the hotel playing our guitars, inventing new riffs. I may not even remember who won the game?

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#FanFiction (2016) ©Mark H. Pillsbury

Up and Down the Radio Dial

My car’s SiriusXM® satellite radio musically illuminates my long commute to work and back home. 

Every day I’m amazed at its wide variety of music stations; I'm carried like a time-machine to realistic memories which make up the tapestry of my life through the decades. The main lanes are: #70sOn7, #80sOn8, #90sOn9, #OutlawCountry, and #DeepTracks.

Magical alchemy takes place mostly in my sub-conscious; but today it was so startling that I had to write about it. The particular song, and the back-story in memory are too long to tell; but even in the age of the iPod® digital device, a simple car radio still provides emotional feedback on timeless wavelengths, bearing a gift beyond price, almost free:

“All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted;
Not so coldly charted. It’s really just a question of your honesty?”    Lyrics by Lee ©UMPG

I’m allowed the privilege of  sliding up and down the radio dial; virtually placing the needle down on an imaginary spinning vinyl record of a prior age. In the first few seconds of listening, even hearing a few bars or words of the song; narrative prescience of memory recalls exactly where, when, and with whom I associate this tune.

Songwriters have very little time to move toward their chosen endings, structuring parts of the music to match the lyrics. In reality, this confinement means that every song is over before it begins. Wouldn't it be nice if our life stories had the kind of “up” ending that writers hope to bring to their songs? Often the story just doesn't allow the kind of ending we’d secretly hope for.

It is Aristotelian to describe a story (or a life) like this: “A beginning requires nothing to precede it, and an end is what requires nothing to follow it; however the middle requires something both before and after it.”

One of our strongest human desires is that Aristotle’s equation is not true; we want our “middle” to count for something and we know the significance of what came before us and what succeeds. Our lives play like the radio dial I mentioned before: our beginning comes from the histories, biases, character, education and family circumstances.

The big middle, the life we lead, is made of years of lined-up in particular points, like grooves on a record. Set us down in any one of those grooves and the rest of the story plays like music. No specific song is better or worse than any other one; in fact, maybe these musical notes compose all the riffs of one song: our life.

What follows the end? That’s another topic for another post.

“Sing me back home with a song I used to hear,
Make my old memories come alive.
Take me away and turn back the years,
Sing Me Back Home before I die.”
©Merle Haggard

©Mark H. Pillsbury (2015)

Let The Wave Say

"If the surface of the ocean is this time that we’re alive;

Then this rising wave in motion, is this moment that we ride.

If you don’t move when it’s moving, then your life leaves you behind.

If you can’t see what it’s doing; trust the wave more than your mind.

When the wave is all around me, I got no other plans;

I just balance through the changes, and let the wave say who I am.

From a thousand miles of water, from the wind beyond belief

Every wave roars out its power, as it rises on the reef

And the high blue wall can break you; you can never fight the sea…

You just learn to let it take you, to the place you want to be

Now the wave is all around me, I got no other plans;

Keep my balance through the changes, let the wave say who I am."
--David Wilcox

Watching Dave again Saturday night brought back sweet memories of 18 years ago in Dallas, when I first got the nerve to talk, one-on-one with a beautiful brunette with blue eyes who a couple years later would become my wife! He once again gave wonderful comments, poetic lyrics, and amazing guitar riffs to a small audience of faithful followers who needed the advice as much as ever. Going to a David Wilcox concert is cheaper than therapy.

One of America's premiere songwriter/singer/songwriters, the poetry in the song above (featured on his album: Reverie ©2010), “Let the Wave Say,” led-off the concert. As usual, this winsome show included a few oldies I remember from the past shows we’ve been lucky enough to see; nevertheless, Saturday the same quality instrumentation and wisdom shined through to all in the audience, even if it was their first show.

His voice and pace were vibrant, clear, and robust and this new gaggle of tunes just as appealing as others from the 1990s we know and love. Sharing the journey with his fans, never too proud to admit he doesn’t have it all figured out, Dave muses on things changing in his life, helping sort out the confusing parts from the ridiculous. The self-parody, “Capt.Wanker” was a delightful admission that Super Dave is just a human like we are. No one likes to give money to a “perfect” person or cause; even a young Adele resonates with all ditched lovers, and David Wilcox has grown up with these groupies; indeed 80% of the enthusiasts at the concert this weekend were the over-40 crowd. David Wilcox is a sober, simpler, erudite version of the post-James Taylor singer-songwriter era.

In this song, “Let the Wave Say,” the words spoke to me in a special way as I try to grapple with the rising tide of change. Our 5 world oceans cover 139.5 million square miles of the world's surface area of 197 million square miles; and excluding insects, 4 fifths (80%) of all species live in the oceans. Even though I am a land-lubber, the metaphor of the ocean is powerful; and if you have ever been crushed under a salty wave it is humbling. One cannot fight the sea. It is one of the reasons I love the novel: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (Random House/Canada 2001).

As I tweeted last week (Twitter@markpills), art is the free-flow of creativity from deep within; expressing truth often without out words; it can be a song, a painting, sculpture, clay pottery, or photography, just to name some of my favorite. Music says things that other communication does not. Dave's guitar plucks the heart-strings.

Poetry like this resonates over days, crowding-out other thoughts. My mind goes back to the wave today; I don’t see what is going on right now, in fact, I don’t really have a very good plan. The song inspires me to jump on the wave because the worst thing I can do now is let this moment pass me by, missing the opportunity for adventure. The art shows that the song is talking to me directly, in the very first song of the show; so you can imagine that Dave got my attention. Good art is a teacher.

As I focus on the next few months, out into the black unknown; I concentrate on quiet reflection, mindfulness, and waiting on God. Trying hard not to control the wave (I would be foolish to think that), I am learning to let the force of time, future, uncertainty, anxiety, all swirling about me, take me with it, to the place I want to be.

Previously I blogged (Mar. 12, 2012) about underwater panic being deadly to a Scuba diver; however it is also detrimental to a human being caught in a vortex of doubt. All I can do is be obedient, show up, work hard, and keep my balance: in golf the swing is like a metronome; in fishing, you can’t stand-up in the canoe and fall in the water. It's all about balance.

Instead of worrying about what people think about me this time, I am going to let the wave say who I am. Thanks Dave.

©Mark H. Pillsbury