Chris Martin is the most well-mannered of rock stars.

When the Coldplay front man calls from Los Angeles because his band is playing the Philadelphia area for the third time since last June's release of Viva La Vida, he's like a job candidate intent on asking as many questions as he's asked.

The leader of the world's biggest soft-rock band (and husband to actress Gwyneth Paltrow) was eager to talk about Kanye West and Woody Allen, as well as to defend himself from allegations he plagiarized parts of Coldplay's No. 1 hit, "Viva La Vida." (The band Creaky Boards, singer Cat Stevens - now known as Yusuf Islam - and guitarist Joe Satriani have all claimed similarities between the song and their own work; Satriani has sued in Los Angeles.)

Tonight, Martin will perform with band mates Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion at Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, and on Tuesday the foursome will be at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden. What follows is a Q&A with the 32-year-old English songwriter and musician, with some A's and Q's reversed.

Answer (Martin): So what's the news in Philadelphia?

Question (DeLuca): Well, I saw Leonard Cohen last night.

A: Wasn't it amazing? I saw it in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. I mean, kind of phenomenal.

Q: Did you desperately care about him growing up?

A: Yeah, very much so. There's something about him that we're sometimes seen to suffer from - taking yourself too seriously. I always thought that Leonard Cohen was Mr. Serious. Or Mr. Miserable. But I love his music. Then I saw him in concert, and I thought: This guy's like a stand-up comedian.

It's funny, because my favorite comedians, like Woody Allen, actually turn out to be miserable. So it's nice to know that misery and comedy go so well together.

Q: Are there funny jokes in Coldplay songs people just aren't getting?

A: They're coming. We're not as lyrically mature as all that yet. We're still dealing with teenage angst. We're working our way up to witticisms.

Q: Speaking of Woody Allen, you did a Rolling Stone interview last year, and the writer brought up a review Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times savaging your album X&Y. But when you were supposed to say, "All critics are scum," you agreed with a lot of his accusations. Aren't you taking the Woody Allen self-deprecation too far?

A: I was just thinking that with each album, a challenge arises which makes the fire burn even hotter to write good music. So in some respects these big challenges turn out to be huge blessings, because it stops me ever becoming complacent or lazy.

The last album, X&Y, it was the New York Times thing which made me say, "OK, I've got to work harder and get better." This album, it's that we're being sued, and wrongly. We're being accused of not writing our own music. So it's like, "Well, I'll just write better music." So these things that seem to be quite worrying, within a couple of weeks we're blessed that we've managed to see the positives in them.