Coldplay biography

Coldplay couldn’t be more representative of Britain if they tried. Chris Martin came from the West and Will Champion the South of England. Guy Berryman started off life in Scotland and Jonny Buckland hails from Wales. How appropriate that even their geographical makeup is easy to pigeonhole.

The foursome met in their first week at university in London during the mid 90s. The halls of residence resonated to Oasis’s ‘…Morning Glory’ and Blur’s ‘The Great Escape at the time. While the biggest bands in Britain were having a very public fight, Chris and Jonny started to write songs, Guy joined in on bass and Will gracefully put his guitar down and picked his drumsticks up. Early incarnations of the band had them perform as Starfish (for those of you who think that ‘Coldplay’ is a wet word, be grateful) but the name switch occurred after some friends who were in a band called – yes! – Coldplay split up. For the record, the name comes from a poetry book.

500 copies of a three-track EP were pressed, which in turn got them a gig at 1998’s In The City festival in Manchester. The right kind of people were impressed leading them ultimately to a major record deal with Parlophone, via Fierce Panda. Debut album ‘Parachutes’ had critics and fans salivating alike in the Fall of 2000. Those wholesome melodies contained within the likes of ‘Yellow’, ‘Trouble’ and ‘Shiver’ had clearly struck a chord - and not just in the UK. Americans “got” Coldplay at an early stage and also appreciated their tireless promotion work. Two years later, the band entered the premier league with ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’. Here was a seriously heavyweight work, full of crunching guitars, sweeping strings and a (fairly) charismatic front man in Martin. His subsequent wooing of Gwyneth Paltrow made them rock royalty, sold millions of tabloid newspapers (Apple, anyone?) and gave new meaning to Britain and America’s “special relationship”.

As record sales increased and Brit and Grammy Awards came flooding in, the band became more politically aware. Martin would more often than not be seen with the words ‘Make Trade Fair’ on his hands or clothing. Visits would be made to developing countries and he would see with his own eyes the difficulties faced by people less fortunate than he. The band’s admirable charity work is now as important to them as their music. Speaking of which, a live album recorded in Sydney came out in 2003, which plugged the gap before the release of ‘X & Y’ in June 2005. The familiar themes (love, paranoia, as many strings as possible) were all in place but as the band grows so does the quality of their work: ‘Talk’, ‘Low’ and ‘Swallowed In The Sea’ were among Coldplay’s finest songs and their tribute to Johnny Cash, ‘Kingdom Come’, proved that their 17 million album sales to date couldn’t have happened to a more decent, talented, hardworking and thoroughly nice bunch of people. How very British.