Cross - Coldplay: the secret history

Coldplay is one of those bands which, for whatever reason, found millions of fans almost immediately. And not only at home in the UK, but pretty much everywhere in the world.

You have to admit that in todays musical climate, Coldplay sticks out. No de-tuned guitars, no hip-hop influences, no screaming singers. The frontman spends most of his time at the piano singing ballads! But at the same time, no one would mistake Coldplay for a bunch of rejects from American Idol.

Theyve found a niche in todays new rock worlda tiny corner that most old-time alt-rock fans thought had disappeared. A place where texture, delicate dynamics and gentle melodies still exist. No wonder people call Coldplay the new U2, the new R.E.M. and the new Radiohead.

How did this happen? Even people who get Coldplay are surprised at how big they became in such a short period of time. Lets see if we cant dissect how this all came to be.

Coldplay is an offspring of the Britpop revolution of the middle 1990s. All four members were big fans of that golden age of British music. The guys in Radiohead were their idols.

Chris Martin was born on March 3, 1977. His dad was an accountant and his mom was a biology teacher. He grew up in Devonshire, which is in the southwest of England.

And heres an odd fact about Chris family: his great-great-grandfather was the guy who convinced Parliament to introduce daylight savings time in Britain in May 1916. His name was William Willett. His idea spread around the world, so whenever we move our clocks ahead in the spring and back in the fall, we should think of Chris Martins great-great-grandfather.

Growing up, Chris played in a bunch of different bands with names like The Rockin Honkies and The Red Rooster Boogie Band.

For a while, he was in a techno-pop-ish group called Identity Crisis. They werent very good and were sometimes booed off the stage.

Then theres guitarist Jon Buckland. Hes Welsh by birth. In his family, his dad was the biology teacher while his mom was a music teacher. He was in a bunch of different groups growing up, including a rap act and a metal bandseriously.

Will Champion is the bands drummer. Hes originally from Southampton. At one time, both his parents were music teachers. The only band he remembers being in was called Fat Hamster.

And finally, theres bass player Guy Berryman who grew up in Fife, Scotland. His high school band was called Time Out. They spent all their time trying to learn Genesis songs.

In the middle of the 1990s, all four guys found themselves at University College in London. Chris enrolled in Ancient History, Guy got into Engineering so he could learn how to be an architect like his dad, Will studied Anthropology like his father did and Jon opted for Astronomy and Mathematics.

The first two guys to meet were Jon and Chris. It was frosh week in 1996 and they were in the student residence playing pool.

They spent the rest of the school year trying to come up with a plan for a band. And get this: Chris thought their best chance was to create some kind of boy band like N Sync. He even had a name for them: Pectoralz.

Eventually they ran into Guy on campus who convinced them that he should be a part of their projectwhatever it might be. Will came along a few years later when Chris, Jon and Guy were stuck for a permanent drummer. They had someone keeping time, but he didnt think the original songs were any good. So he quit. No one knows where this guy is now.

Will was actually a guitar player, but when the drummer decided hed rather head down to the pub than rehearse, Will was drafted. And from that dayJanuary 6, 1998Coldplay was formed.

Now theres that name: Coldplay. Where did it come from? Actually, the band borrowed it from another student who had been using it for his group but found it too depressing. Had he not given up the name, Coldplay might have been called Starfish, or Stepney Green.

The first official Coldplay song was something called Ode to Deodorant. Dont bother looking for it anywhere because they wrote it as a joke. The first official Coldplay gig was held at a pub in Camden in the spring of 1998, and the first official Coldplay recordings took place at around the same time.

The band spent about 1,500 on three tracks that would show up on what they called the Safety e.p. They had no record deal and no way of distributing their record. All they could afford to do is print up 500 copies and give them away to friends. Needless to say, original copies of the Safety e.p. are worth hundreds of dollars.

Coldplay continued to play whatever gigs they could get for the rest of the yearand a lot of them were disasters. People just didnt get what the band was trying to do.

That all changed on December 7, 1998. They were playing another show in Camden when a guy from a small indie label called Fierce Panda approached them with an offer to release a single. So the band went back into the studio.

The result was another three-song EP called Brothers and Sisters that came out in April 1999. Only 2,500 copies were pressed, so once again, we have another Coldplay collectors item.

The music on that EP was enough to convince a scout at EMI to come calling. As soon as everyone finished their final university exams in June 1999, Coldplay signed their major record deal. That summer, they recorded another EP, this time with the title The Blue Room.

There was a lot of tension and pressure during these sessions. Will actually walked out for a week. Chrisa non-smoker and non-drinkerresponded to the stress by getting blind drunk. (He hasnt had a drink since, by the way.)

In the end, things were worked outbut not before a few rules were laid down. Number one: the band was declared a democracy. Everything, including all profitsno matter who wrote the songs or how they were writtenwould be split four ways, just like they do in U2 and R.E.M. And number two: anyone caught using cocaine would be immediately dismissed.

The band spent the rest of 1999 playing as many gigs as they could. Things were going okay, but no one could have guessed where Coldplay was going to be just 12 months later, thanks to a song that had been thrown away two years earlier.

Coldplay had three EPs on three different labels, but hadnt even come close to having any kind of a hit song. The record label was a little concerned because they thought The Blue Room was kind of flat. It was definitely time for a hit single.

Thats when Coldplay trotted out a two-year-old song that Chris Martin had wrote when he was in a particularly glum mood. And on October 1999, it was released as the lead track on yet another EP (in case youre counting, this is EP number four). It was called Shiver.

Shiver was Coldplays first hit single in the UK. Okay, it only made it to number 35, but it was a start. At least it got more people to pay attention to them and landed them some British TV gigs.

On one of those appearances in May 2000, Coldplay performed a new song that Chris had written while sitting outside one night. Its a depressing song that just happens to be in a major keythe kind of thing Radiohead is so good at.

The video helped, too. It had this unique minimalist feel, featuring Chris walking down a beach. That, however, was an accident. The rain was awful that day, so they shot whatever they could in twenty minutes and went home. And the reason Chris is all by himself in the video is because Wills mom had died, and the video shoot was scheduled for the same day as the funeral.

The result was a number four hit in the UK and the beginnings of a worldwide reputation. Coldplay has no clue why Yellow became so huge so quickly. It became something of a worldwide anthem throughout the summer and fall of 2000. And when Coldplays first proper album was released (after four warm-up EPs and just 32 months together), things exploded.