Parachutes - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

The band started working on the album in 1999 and produced an EP with British record producer Chris Allison. Allison was asked to ‘come in and give the band a bit of a direction sound wise. Both the band and the A&R department – both parties wanted that’. Things got off to a productive start with the song ‘High Speed’, which ultimately proved good enough to make it onto the Parachutes album. Allison describes it thus: ‘You’ll notice it is quite a bit different to the other tracks, because there are other sounds going on in it: we wanted to mix a soundscape in with the classic rock sound on that particular track. I thought ‘High Speed’ was a really good marriage between the classic rock sound and the new sound that was developing out of it, something that was more atmospheric’. Seven tracks in all were recorded during the sessions at Orinoco studios in London, three of them ended up on ‘The Blue Room (EP)’.

The band took a break to write on more songs for the album, a few months later it was arranged that Allison and the band meet at a rehearsal room to start on the album proper. ‘They started up playing in the rehearsal room and they really weren’t together at all. And I was very honest with them, I just sort of said ‘Look this simply isn’t good enough. Allison adds, ‘The interesting, the most significant thing that did occur out of the fact that we didn’t end up starting the album on that day of the rehearsal was that Chris Martin had not written ‘Yellow’ by that time’.

Several months later British record producer Ken Nelson was chosen, producing all but one song on Parachutes. He was introduced to Coldplay by his manager Pete (who gave him a copy of the band's Fierce Panda-distributed debut single in 1999). Nelson has claimed that, as soon as he heard vocalist Chris Martin's voice on the song "Bigger Stronger", he "realised that he was something special". Nelson was offered the job while Coldplay were performing in Liverpool with English indie rock band Gomez (whose debut album, Bring It On, was what he had produced at the time).

Coldplay initially planned to record Parachutes in the space of two weeks. However, tours and other live performances caused the recording to spread out between September 1999 and April–May 2000. The band began work on the album at Rockfield Studios in Wales, Matrix Studios, and Wessex Sound Studios, although the majority of Parachutes' tracks were recorded at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios. The band worked in three studio rooms at Parr Street, and tracked much of the album in one of these rooms—the project studio which producer Ken Nelson describes as "basically a demo room". The Chris Allison-produced track "High Speed" was also included on the album, and originates from earlier sessions at Orinico Studios in London. The album was mixed by American engineer Michael Brauer in New York. Coldplay's record label, Parlophone, had originally intended to use a mixing engineer for the tracks they picked as singles, but eventually hired Brauer to work on all songs on Parachutes except the song 'High Speed' which was mixed by Chris Allison.

At the Liverpool concert where he was offered the production job Nelson had noted that Coldplay's performance was "very very uptight they rushed through the set and it was quite difficult to listen to". Once in the studio Nelson and the band went through each song, learning how to play the piece live and deciding what tempo to play it at in an attempt to get the group to "calm down" ("Trouble", for example, had to be reworked to eliminate the cacophony included in its early versions).

The album's cover features a photograph of a globe taken with a disposable Kodak camera. The globe had been purchased from W H Smith for £10; it was featured in the music videos for "Shiver" and "Don't Panic", and also accompanied the band on their tours. The album was dedicated to drummer Will Champion's mother, Dr Sara Champion, who died of cancer in 2000.