BLOOD BROTHERS

They’ve taken over Oasis’ mantle as Britain’s biggest band. Approaching their 10th anniversary, Tim Jones charts the rise and rise of Coldplay, with a complete discography compiled by Sal Mohammed

Coldplay’s lead singer, Chris Martin, has become part of a celebrated movie/rock star couple with his other half, Gwyneth Paltrow. Not bad for the leader of a band that few had heard of before the millennium, and who Alan McGee once panned as ‘bed-wetters’. In reality, Coldplay – more than any other British group – caught the noughties zeitgeist. They’ve become the introspective, articulate favourites of the in-crowd, their celeb fans including Hollywood A-listers Jack Nicholson and Minnie Driver. But they’ve also achieved eight-figure sales and latterly been compared to the likes of U2 and even Pink Floyd. So how did their irresistible rise come about?

The band – comprising Guy Berryman (bass), Johnny Buckland (guitar), Will Champion (percussion) and Chris Martin (vocals/ keyboards/guitar) –  started life, briefly, as Stepney Green, then Starfish, in September 1996, when Buckland and Martin met as busking students at University College London’s Ramsey Hall of residence. They were accosted in its bar at the end of freshers’ week by Berryman, who demanded to join them, and after a couple of false starts with sundry tub-thumpers, Champion took on the drum role. They lifted the name Coldplay from a recently-defunct outfit formed by a fellow hallmate, who’d taken it from a book of poetry but …

by Tim Jones
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