Hello? - Hi, hey, Chris, it's Mat.
- Mat, how you doing? - I'm good. Can you talk?
Yeah, it's a good time. How are you?
I'm good, I was just... I was just wondering
if you had a chance to see the film yet.
Uh, the truth is, Mat, I don't think I'm gonna be able to do it.
I feel like if I see it, I might just wanna remove myself from the film.
- So, if it's okay with you, could I just trust you on it?
- Okay. - If you don't mind.
I just feel like we've known you for so long
and we trust you and we love you.
You just make the film you wanna make
and all I ask is please could you not open the film
with one of those shots of the band walking to the stage,
'cause I feel like that's been done.
- Really? - Yeah.
Okay. Well, leave it with me. I'll see what I can do.
- Thanks, Mat. - Yeah.
- Speak to you soon. - Bye-bye.
I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I should like to help everyone if possible...
Jew, Gentile, black man, white.
We all want to help one another.
Human beings are like that.
We don't want to hate or to despise one another.
In this world there's room for everyone. The good earth is rich.
For those who can hear me, I say do not despair.
The hate of men will pass and dictators die,
and the power they took from the people will return to the people.
The kingdom of God is within men,
not one man, nor a group of men,
but in all men, in you!
You, the people, have the power!
The power to create machines, the power to create happiness,
you, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful,
to make this life a wonderful adventure!
A wonderful adventure!
A Head Full Of Dreams is somewhere we've been trying to go for a long time.
The journey has been so incremental and so episodic,
it's just a mountain that keeps getting higher.
If I ever turn round and look down,
I think will I just be amazed about how on earth we got here?
There's not really a day goes by
that I don't get a reminder of how very fortunate I am,
first of all, to have met the other guys
and that things just happened in the way that they did.
Our friendships have somehow survived
and stayed quite similar to how they were.
We've spent half our lives together now.
I've spent more time with these people than almost anybody else.
It's more like family, it's more like brothers, actually, than friends.
I think we all think about what we'd be doing with our lives
if we hadn't met each other.
I mean, it's almost terrifying thinking about it, really.
- Cool. - Nice.
Can you turn the lights down a tiny bit?
Just this one down a bit. Thanks, bro.
Cool, cool, cool.
What are we singing?
Nice.
Great work, fellers.
Yeah, that's it. That's it.
Wait, list... Listen to the applause.
If you don't like it, don't worry about it. I'm having fun. You know what I mean?
That's how it makes me feel.
Dad, I love this song. Thank you, baby.
And thank you for saying what I paid you to say earlier.
I was saying to the others,
to see things that were recorded 20 years ago, you know,
I had no recollection of anyone having a camera back then...
Is a really strange sensation.
What had become really distant memories came flooding back to me.
You know, our lives have changed in so many ways.
And when I think back to what our first album was...
You know, if you listen to Parachutesnow,
it's very acoustic and it's very small and it's very intimate.
And then if you fast forward to A Head Full Of Dreams,
it's a very different thing altogether.
Looking back at some of the old footage, underneath it all,
I still see the same people then as we are today.
To really get the full story, you've got to go back to when we met.
I mean, it really does feel like a lifetime ago.
We were friends for almost a year before we played any music together.
We all lived in the same student halls of residence.
Most people would've found their bandmates by advertising.
"Drummer required" in the back of the NME or something like that.
Fuck it! - I think in our case, it was different
because we all really knew this is the group that we want to form.
This is who we want to be with.
We met at University College London.
We were all studying to be in bands.
I've been expecting you, come on in.
Just your Jones person?
Let me show you around.
College was just a sideline, you know.
I thought it was a good place to meet people 'cause I wanted to be in a band.
I got there, got to this big place,
Ramsay Hall it was called, Tottenham Court Road.
That block hasn't changed a bit. That was where we lived.
- Looks quite bucolic now, doesn't it? - Yeah.
Didn't look like that then.
I remember the first day I got here, a tramp was sick outside my room.
Lots of musicians in this hall, weren't there?
Five or six bands were spawned in our year.
There was a lot of sniffing out at the beginning, wasn't there?
Like, who does what? Who's a guitarist?
There was a bass player on the third floor.
Chris was like this massive ball of energy and hair.
Yeah, I remember he had very long hair,
quite unlike anyone I'd ever met before.
I would always be showing off saying,
"I play songs, I play songs" to anyone that would listen, you know?
♪ I love you Jim you are a geezer ♪
♪ I don't mind in the slightest ♪
♪ That you look just a little bit like Julius Caesar ♪
He was very, very funny,
and, you know, he was the life of the party.
♪ I love Jim and everybody knows ♪
♪ Even though he's got a slightly Roman nose ♪
He was just waiting for someone to click with,
- and fortunately that was you. - Hmm.
Back in 1996 when we met,
I didn't think Jonny spoke at all.
He was just this stoned guy in the corner
that if you said something he would just, like, smile.
Yeah, we got on pretty well straightaway,
but you know, you can't start playing music on your first date.
I came to London solely to find some people to be in a band with and make music.
I'd wanted to do this from when I was a small boy,
but you never really imagine that it's possible.
One day I came into the room he was in,
and Jonny had a guitar, and I was like,
"I didn't know you played guitar."
Then he started playing.
And something in me was switched.
I was like, "This is the guy I've been looking for my whole life."
Chuck! Chuck, it's Marvin.
Like in Back to the Future where Chuck's cousin Marvin
calls Chuck Berry and says, "I've got that new sound you're looking for."
Well, listen to this!
It was love at first sight for me.
He took a little longer to convince.
When I first started playing with Chris,
I thought, "He's so good, I think we might do something," you know.
Obviously you have a sense that something is starting,
but I don't think we had a sense of what that something was or where it would end up.
Within a couple of weeks, we'd asked Guy if he would join.
Me and Guy didn't like each other at first.
He thought I was weird 'cause I had long curly hair.
I thought he was arrogant, but he wasn't. He was just really quiet.
But then we bonded over a keyboard, so we thought,
"Ah, wicked. Well, maybe we don't hate each other."
What does it mean to me, music?
It's been my life since I was probably about five years old.
I found a box of cassettes my sister had, and I'll never forget that.
I became a bass player 'cause of my love of soul and funk.
And that was it, you know. I'd get home from school
and I would just play that instrument constantly for hours,
just lock myself away and play it.
He was the first person to put his whole life on hold
based on one song that Jonny and I had played him on two crappy old guitars.
It just blows my mind that he did that.
It soon became apparent that we needed a drummer
if we wanted to play a gig.
Chris Martin, these are your wheels of fortune.
What's up? I'm Cheese Hawk, I ride for Proco trucks
and Deutschentractors.
We went away for the summer and at the end of the summer,
we started really writing some good songs and we wanted to do a demo.
Today we can eat food that isn't come out of the bin.
We were cool in everything except the drums. We didn't have a drummer.
So, when we went to do our first photo shoot in Tesco's on Oxford Street,
I did mine, Jonny did his, Guy did his.
So it was just three of us and it was called the PanicEP.
So, we went down to Will's house
and Will was always our mate who played guitar much better than anyone
and knew about 100 songs.
He was a walking jukebox.
I met Chris... We were on a bus somewhere together.
We used to play guitars in the stairwells 'cause they had nice acoustics.
I was at the bottom of the stairs and he was on the fifth floor.
A five-story musical experience.
It's a very fundamental and basic memory that I have about being a child.
Music was all around. It's a legacy of my mum's.
I knew that Chris and Jonny had recorded an EP
and they wanted some drums on it.
My flatmate played the drums and he had a drum kit.
We set it all up and then, when it was ready to go, he wasn't around.
I think he'd disappeared.
I'm not sure how committed he was to being in a band.
So, Will said, "I'll do it."
I'm the only one here, I'm the only one left.
"I'll give it a go" and then he went...
I had the same feeling that I had with Guy and Jonny. "Oh, that's him. There he is."
We didn't actually know you were a drummer.
No, I wasn't.
That's the key, I'm still trying to convince the world that I am.
And Coldplay was born.
It's like when bacon and eggs
and mushrooms and chips
are put on the same plate
and become something greater than those individual parts.
It becomes a cohesive whole that's tasty.
Our sound is tasty.
Chris is the unstoppable creative force of the band
that we try our best to keep up with.
He's our best friend and a musical genius
and he never stops surprising you.
Music means everything to me.
I think when I was about 16,
I was performing and doing music at boarding school.
And I remember saying to people, "I'm gonna do this forever."
They were like, "Sure. And why don't you reanimate dinosaurs while you're at it?"
You know, it was that ridiculous.
But I've been really blessed in my life
with an ability to not give up, and it came from my dad.
He's the first person that said it to me,
and would often say it to me,
and I now say it to my son.
My dad is a circus ringmaster really,
but he was told to be an accountant.
And in my mum, I could feel a certain frustration
that she wasn't able to do what she really loved, which is music.
So, with both of them, there was a subconscious thing
that if you really feel that you're supposed to do something, go for it.
And it gave me this great sense of possibility
and then that philosophy became A Head Full Of Dreams.
He has a relentless and infectious energy for music and for life
and it's incredible to have shared a journey
because we're very different people.
Chris always has a very clear idea about where he wants to be,
what he wants to be doing next.
We, Jon Buckland, Chris Martin, Will Champion and Guy Berryman,
aka The Coldplay, are gonna go on to be such a huge band,
and this will be on national television within four years, four years.
This is now 26th June, 1998.
By the 26th of June, 2002,
The Coldplay or the band, whatever they're called then,
will be known just all over, man.
We're gonna be so big.
So Guy, Will, Jon, and Chris, Don't you forget, all right?
Massive. Absolutely huge.
Every record is your first and last.
That's the way you should really treat it.
We're not under the impression that we have a right
to just amble into these massive arenas
and play to the same kind of numbers that we played to on the last tour.
We're starting again at rock bottom.
- Well, not quite rock bottom... - Sort of drop bottom soft.
- Yeah. - But that's good, I think.
As ridiculous as it sounds, I still feel like we're trying to make it.
Hey, our friend Chris Martin is in studio with us now.
And he's from a little band called Coldplay.
Their new record is called A Head Full Of Dreams.
Aren't you so delighted, though, when you crawl out of the cave
where you boys make your magic that the world still cares?
Definitely. And right now we're going on tour for another 18 months or so.
That's when the real payoff happens.
You can't take anything for granted.
As fast as the ascent has been,
the descent can be four or five times as fast.
Having done like a week of rehearsing,
we did like a practice gig.
It was basically like us saying good-bye.
We're going away for a year and a half.
At the end of it, I got this overwhelming feeling
that everyone was being nice about it,
but actually we sounded absolutely terrible.
We definitely felt like we had to kind of earn our stripes again.
Hey, how are you doing?
The brand-new album is so different from the last album.
So much energy, so much color, so much light.
Absolutely. We wanted to just make the album we always dreamed of.
But now we're a little nervy, of course, 'cause we don't know what anyone will think.
But it's just like a dream come true, the whole thing.
This might just work.
It was just time for us to make an album
about hope and love and togetherness,
you know, embracing all the sounds that we love
and all the styles that we like.
I think some people will just say, "Oh, fuck off. This is hippy nonsense."
But that's okay.
This is the first tour where we feel like,
yeah, that's how we want it to be.
I think every other tour up to this one has been,
"One day we'll have this kind of song and production."
This Head Full of Dreams tour is the first time
we've got what we were always hoping for.
There's four of you in the band. Who's in charge? Who's the boss?
We have a fifth member called Phil.
Nobody sees him because he's too good-looking,
and he pulls all the strings.
- Does he actually exist? - Phil is real.
I would like to rephrase that. Phil is real.
He's... Can you not see him?
He's sitting right there.
He's next to Guy. He doesn't speak much.
No, he doesn't show up on TV.
So, Phil Harvey was our first manager.
He paid for us to record our first EP.
He's a sort of outsider on the inside.
He's able to view with a much better perspective than sometimes we can.
The difference between having four and five people
in a democracy is actually crucial, because someone will win.
You don't get a stalemate.
It's probably even healthier than a democracy because no one can be voted out.
There's no elections.
It's like a democratic five-way dictatorship.
So, how much for... 400 each.
400 each? Yes, sir.
What? You make it done sir, three pieces for...
1,000 four. Let's call it 600.
Take. 1,000.That's terrible negotiating.
The important thing when you're in a new city is not to look like a tourist.
Right, Phil? Just blend in.
Just make sure you're prepared
for any eventuality.
Yeah, be safe and be discreet and...
I think we'll be okay. All right?
So, me and Chris, we got sent to the same boarding school when we were 13.
That was how we met, and, uh, he's been my best friend ever since.
I think, subconsciously, I spent a long time,
almost in denial of my upbringing.
I was raised very religious,
so there's a sort of constant self-doubt.
I came from a very small school in Devon
and then went to this much bigger school in Dorset.
There, I realized, "Oh, this is gonna be tough."
In retrospect, it was great preparation
for being in Coldplay, the abuse.
I think people were pretty fucking mean to him.
I think there was also a certain vulnerability about him.
There was a few guys in my year who seemed to have it a bit more together
and were twice as big as everybody else,
and one of them was this guy Phil with the most perfect hair.
And he basically took pity on me, I think.
We were in a couple of bands together at school, but I never lasted long.
I wanted it so badly, but I just had zero talent.
Our blues band was called the Rocking Honkies,
and it was as bad as it sounds.
We're gonna go backstage with the Honkies.
Add your comments on it.
Well, Tim, we're the rocking, tonking,
rocking, fucking honkies.
Chris Martin on the piano!
We know each other so well now that we know what buttons not to push.
Honestly, I feel better friends with the four of them now than I ever have.
Chris kind of explained it to me the other day,
'cause we had a band meeting, and he said, "It's really nice nowadays",
I know when I don't have to say anything 'cause I know when Will's gonna say something,
"I know when Guy's gonna say something."
So, major disagreements are rare.
We've had our moments as a band, but we came through them.
A four-way marriage is a tricky proposition.
It's difficult because we work so hard on keeping each other happy, the four of us.
But sometimes things do need to be said,
and I've learnt over the years that that has to be me,
the sort of unofficial "spanner in the works thrower."
What songs are going on A Head Full Of Dreams?
I think we all agree that...
we might not all be in agreement.
But I think there are eight songs
which I would like to think that we won't have any disagreement about.
- Yes. - This might be too much for me.
Okay.
I'm worried that we might be about to really piss each other off.
We've gotta be honest. This week we can't...
- We have to have this. - All right. What are they?
My feeling is "Hymn for the Weekend."
- All agreed? Agreed? - Agreed.
- Carried, carried. - Yeah.
"Everglow"?
Agreed.
"Amazing Day."
But I don't wanna be a dick. My part is to keep the band together.
Of course, but... I'll do whatever you say.
I'm not gonna walk out of the band just because...
So, that is on the definites.
"Up and Up." That's on my definites.
I would like it on there.
It has to be, really, because that's an example of a crucial story bit.
Well, we've definitely made an EP.
None of us are particularly confrontational,
but sometimes it can absolutely be fraught
and there are definitely arguments.
Everybody has a say, you know,
that's the foundation of our band really, is equality.
We decided that down in Camden from the outset.
This is our area. This is our area.
I'll show ya.
Just over there, that road up there.
Just up here is where it all happened. It's our Cavern.
This is where it began.
- Camden? - Yeah, at Camden.
Beginning of rock legend.
- This was it. - Wow.
So...
- 268. - Yeah.
- Been repainted. - Looks a lot nicer.
This is where we first started rehearsing when Will first joined the band.
My old flat where Chris and I used to live.
We are in Camden Road, we're The Coldplay.
Come on through, I'll show you.
- There goes Guy. - To the left down there.
- Who lived in there? - This was Chris's room.
- We played in here. - Yeah.
Basically we go through a simple stretch routine
while singing some songs as well.
I don't know if you can see that where you are.
This was Jonny's bedroom and our band rehearsal room.
Uh, Chris and I normally stand together. We raise the right arm.
Right one. Just bring it round to the side.
Did you just get your arse out, Jonny?
- It's pretty small, isn't it? - It really is.
For a full band and a bed.
It's funny to think that it all stemmed from this bedroom.
A few days after the Panic EP, we had our first rehearsal
and on that evening, I phoned up this promoter
at the Laurel Tree in Camden and said, "Can we have a gig?"
Thinking it might be in six, eight weeks' time.
He said, "Yeah, next Sunday."
"What's your name?" "We haven't got one yet."
That was it. We had to think of a name 'cause we were printing flyers.
So, we came up with a really terrible name.
There's an old piece of paper that Chris has.
It's like a list of things for the band.
One is to get a drummer.
Gig one, gig two, gig three, gig four, get signed.
It wasn't until Phil came along that things started to change.
I was always going down to visit Chris down in London
and I would share a bed with Jonny.
Obviously I came down for the first show when they were Star Fish.
It was in a total dive in Camden.
Our first gig in the Laurel Tree was, I think,
probably the most terrifying experience I've ever had in my life.
I felt so sick before it.
I've never been so nervous, I don't think.
We expected about 20 people.
It was sold out and we thought, "Wow, this is a bit weird."
That's the great thing about college, you know. It made us look popular.
Whereas, in fact, they were just there to pull.
It's really small, isn't it?
My pedal board wouldn't fit on this stage.
It's fantastic, though. - It doesn't feel like 20 years ago.
We did a couple of gigs here, didn't we?
I think this was just one without a drum kit.
Yeah. The band that was supporting us had a kit,
and so we asked them if we could use theirs and they said yes,
but then the promoter cut their set short.
Yeah. They got quite cross and they took their kit home.
I was pleading with them, "Please, don't take it.
This is only our second-ever show."
Absolutely terrifying in every way, but incredible and wonderful.
Our second gig as people, but our first gig as Coldplay.
- The Coldplay. - Oh, The Coldplay, yeah.
Where did our name come from?
A friend of ours had a band called Coldplay,
and they decided they didn't like the name, so we just stole it.
They said it was a rubbish name and they didn't want it anymore.
Turned out to be a really hard word to pronounce to people.
You say you're in a band. "What's the band called?" Coldplay.
"What Goldblade? Cold Cut?"
- It's really hard. - Gold Blend.
I still don't feel that we've quite got the name right,
but I think we might be a bit late to change it.
Every show seemed like a milestone really.
I remember the feeling and the buzz in these rooms,
the sweat dripping off the ceiling, smoke, and the sticky floors.
The toilet circuit, as it's known,
that kind of made us realize, this is gonna be hard work.
You do have to put the time and effort into it.
We were prepared to do that for as long as it took,
just carrying on and getting skanked
by money-grabbing, shady Camden promoters.
I think in the back of my head, I must've been thinking,
"Yeah, I'd like to be involved in this."
And then I remember Chris telling me how they were getting ripped off,
and I thought, "Maybe I could do a better job."
He dropped out of university to come and manage us,
which was an extraordinarily selfless move.
Then it went to the next level.
Deep in the lair of rock and roll, we find Mr. William Champion.
- Bit nervous? - Uh, little bit.
- Where's the Harvey character? - Where?
I think I took it pretty seriously from the moment I came on board.
I had a book, I remember called "How to Manage a Band."
I had the longest list of people to approach,
but no one wanted to take my call and I was quite down on myself.
I think what kept us going was the songs kept getting better,
the shows kept getting better.
I think Chris always had enough self-belief for all of us,
you know what I mean?
The Falcon was the first time that Steve Lamacq came.
Fuck me. Steve Lamacq's in the audience, so we're, like, wow.
He's like the Yoda of radio in Britain.
He came to us before anybody else.
I couldn't believe it. I started sweating. Steve Lamacq, Steve Lamacq.
I remember Lamacq calling me.
"Phil, this is the first time I've ever offered"
a Radio 1 evening session to an unsigned act.
"Are you guys up for it?"
- Sorry, mate, thank you. - Cheers.
Got accosted by some autograph hunters.
They weren't looking for our autograph. They were looking for Bryan Ferry's.
Apparently, he lives round here.
It's Lamacq Live from Radio 1,
and we can go across now to our Maida Vale studios.
Hello, Coldplay?
- Hello, Steve. - All right, Steve.
You had a single out, didn't you?
I didn't even know you had a record out.
We put it in your pigeonhole.
You didn't listen to it, you bastard.
I'm not gonna say that.
What's the first song you're gonna do?
We're gonna do a song called "Bigger Stronger," which was our single in May.
It might've passed people by.
All right, it's Coldplay then, live on Radio 1.
Thank you, Steve.
It was a really intense period of time
because we were so determined to not fail.
We just weren't gonna give up until we got somewhere
and made an album and got a record deal.
I could tell the songs... They were real songs,
and I just thought,
"Okay, this could be something that becomes part of my life."
And then within a few weeks, it was everything.
I was in the bathroom in my mum and dad's house,
reading the NME.
It said "20 New Bands for 1999."
And sure enough there was Muse, Elbow,
Gay Dad, Bellatrix,
and then it came to Coldplay and I fainted, basically.
Yeah, Chris fell off the toilet.
I basically had a Doc Brown from Back to the Future moment.
And I called Will, I called Jon, I called Guy.
I was like, "Have you seen this?"
It said, "Bigger Stronger" was their no-key debut release.
Expect copies of it to be worth a small mortgage come Christmas."
Fucking hell, man.
One paragraph changed our entire lives.
The next show after that NMEtip...
I just remember it being rammed wall-to-wall.
Things happened really quick after that.
Loads of different record companies, the ones that had stonewalled me,
they all came back and said, "Oh, found your demo again."
It was amazing.
Yeah, April 15, 1999,
we signed, didn't we, in Trafalgar Square.
We got loads of offers, but it was always gonna be Parlophone,
the home of the Beatles.
And they had Radiohead, they had Supergrass.
I remember it very well,
the feeling of, "We have something now."
But it goes back to Chris's list. It was a tick done.
Now let's get on with the important work.
I definitely don't remember
it being a sense of, wow, we've made it.
It was more like a sense of, okay, this is the beginning.
Yeah, boys.
We did our first UK tour with seven guys on a bus.
We couldn't believe our luck.
It's amazing to still be doing the same thing almost 20 years later.
It's been a constant evolution.
So, it doesn't feel like
we've suddenly jumped from playing a small pub in Camden
to a massive stadium in Saão Paulo.
I think sometimes it's that gradual process
that clouds your feeling of quite how far you've come.
But the scale of things going on around us is absolutely immense.
Hoppy, where's Hoppy gone?
Would you come up on stage a second?
Everyone, this is Hoppy, he's been doing our guitars for 20 years.
He's been with us since we were traveling around in a tiny little van,
smaller than this stage and playing to maybe 20 people.
And all that time he's been with us and been patient, and so have a lot of our crew,
and we wanna send love out to them
because they work so hard to make this thing possible.
The crew have been incredible.
There's been a handful that have been with us from the very beginning.
They're legends within the industry now,
which is wonderful.
Everyone has this conception of us,
sort of like we've been made up by a big record company,
like some sort of indie boy band,
but we've done it all ourselves really.
Our manager's our best mate, and we produce the record.
That's what we get a buzz off,
is the sort of homemade-ness of it.
But no one really sees that
'cause they see the slick TV adverts and stuff.
So what other lyrics could go on T-shirts?
It'd be a bit morose to have "We never change, do we?" Wouldn't it?
That would be funny if you wore it all the time.
"Can anybody fly this thing?" Good one, Hops.
That's my favorite line of any of our songs.
Yeah, same.
When you're on your first album,
a 14.99 WHSmith globe is about as big as production gets.
But now we have, like, a multimedia, 3-D thing.
What's the scale?
One to one.
- So, the real thing will be bigger? - Twice the size.
Twice the size. At least.
So, these are the tickets we've sold.
Pretty much everyone's still there.
We've just kinda kept adding people along the way,
one big family.
Musically in the past,
I think we felt a lot of pressure
to have everything come from the four of us.
We started collaborating with people
just 'cause it opened up a new way of making music.
Can they film this? Course.
It's Chris's phone.
We still have that homemade philosophy,
but now we have a very open door policy.
Basically if you show up, you might get a shot.
But it helps if you're, like, a legend.
Oh, that sounds so great. Thank you.
Let's just do that right now.Okay.
The studio we recorded with Beyoncé
was actually my son's bedroom,
so we had to make it look like a studio a little bit.
He wants me to do it softer again.
And just make her feel as special as she is.
It might be strange for some people
that Stargate are producing a song
which Noel Gallagher's on, that Beyoncé is also on.
Even for me it took a while to get my head around it.
Oasis was such a pivotal band for us in the mid-'90s.
So, it was just like, this is called A Head Full of Dreams.
It should be about making dreams come true.
And one of our dreams was to have Noel play on something.
Noel Gallagher, by his own admission, is a bit of a grump
and doesn't share my worldview in any way at all.
That's the whole point of the album. It's like, everyone's all right,
even the people that don't really like the concept of this album
have shown up to play on it.
So, thank you, Noel.
I noticed that your kids were credited.
Right, for better or worse,
if you want your kids to appear on your album you have to strike a deal.
First of all, they have to like the song.
Second of all, there has to be maybe a pizza involved.
It's basically bribery.
That was so beautiful.
Generally with A Head Full of Dreams,
we just asked anyone who was around if they would sing.
We wanted to try and embrace all the things that we love
and the people that we think are awesome.
Just the idea of inclusivity.
You started off as four friends just playing together,
and you became the biggest rock band in the world.
I was wondering, what did you lose in that process?
Our drummer.
Very early on, I learnt that without the five of us,
we just can't be Coldplay.
I lost sight of what makes a band a band.
The only thing we have going for us is the friendship.
And the course of our band could've dramatically changed
because we basically kicked Will out.
It was kind of like the darkest and worst point
in our time together.
The excitement, everything we'd done was focused on getting signed.
We got signed and thought, "Oh, God."
Yeah, what do we do now?
I got to a certain point whereby
I didn't know enough about how to play the drums
in order to keep up with the music that was being written.
I certainly wasn't good enough to go through the rigors of recording.
Shall we leave it and go on to another one? Yeah.
We were working with a producer that was very meticulous about perfection.
And it was all about, "Will's drumming isn't up to scratch."
And we believed it, you know, we believed it.
Things got very difficult.
Chris and I had a...
I left the band, which was absolutely miserable.
I was just a bit of a dick to Will,
and, you know, we didn't know what we were doing.
So, Will left, and we did some auditions.
And I think probably doing those auditions,
it really kind of struck us that this was awful.
I just woke up and I was like, "This is totally wrong."
You know, we said, "Look, please will you come back?" Um...
And thank God he did.
If we'd gone down a different path,
I just know that we would have at some point failed.
This is it. Woof!
Coldplay!
I am glad it happened
because I think it was an incredibly important lesson
as to what we should hold on to most of all.
This is what we started, this is what we're gonna continue.
Will, Will.
The drummer always gets a lot of stick,
if you'll excuse the turn of phrase.
If I've got any advice to give to any aspiring bands,
it's just don't fuck around with your drummer.
A band is a magic thing, and everyone improves together.
That's what's since given Will his power.
He's like the base of a statue,
and without that, the thing topples.
The truth of it is that, really, without the other three,
each of us would be kind of screwed.
I just couldn't do it on my own.
I couldn't do it.
Jonny.Yeah.
Great track. I love that.
Well...
This is great.
Great. Thanks.
Do you want us to speak French? Yeah, that would be wonderful.
Parachuteswas made at a time when we had a lot of emotions
without necessarily knowing what they were or how to deal with them.
Will's mum was really sick.
None of us had any idea how to help him through that.
He didn't know how to express it.
She was ill for a couple of years and doing really well, in fact, got much better
and then unfortunately, got much worse again.
And it's a very strange time.
She was in bands. She loved music.
It was her life, you know.
It's telling that where I went was to go
and hang out with the band.
I went up to their flat and told them what was going on.
I didn't really have any kind of tools to deal with it,
I think I just threw myself into this extraordinary new life that I had.
I mean, it's obviously massively significant
when you lose a parent anyway,
but definitely more poignant for the fact
that it was something that she was so passionate about.
She died in May of 2000,
and our album was released in July of that year.
You're speaking to us in quite a nervous state
because we're just approaching crunch time.
It's kinda make-or-break for us in the next two weeks.
We'd had quite a hard time in the studio
and our confidence was kind of wavering a bit.
We didn't really know what we were doing
and we didn't really know what sort of band we wanted to be.
We almost split up over those songs.
The amount of times we'd play and go, "That was really good,"
and then we'd listen to it and one of us would get upset.
Chris called us in and said,
"Listen to this, I've got this new song."
And it was kind of acoustic-y and sounded a bit like Neil Young,
slow and countryish.
Jonny played a big, distorted riff over it
and then it was born, really.
We went through hell recording that album.
But when our confidence or our enthusiasm was waning,
it'd always be Chris that was like, "We've gotta get this right."
We care about we do to a stupid degree.
We care when people slag us off.
We care about being told we're not this and we're not that.
There were so many miserable hours in the studio,
but it was all worth it in the end.
I didn't push for it in any way, but it was a lovely gesture
that the guys wanted to put a little line in the album sleeve
about the album being dedicated to my mum.
So, I'm grateful for that
and it's something that she would've been very proud of.
All right, our album's out! Our album's out!
We never thought we'd see the day, to be honest.
Times are not that great these days, but
there is a beacon of light now and again.
The album itself is called Parachutes,
the single is "Yellow," and the band is Coldplay.
Two boxes of Kitekat, Coldplay Parachutes,
some Hobnobs. Please.
Mat, hi, it's day one of this one-day video shoot.
I feel good. I feel skinny.
Another Top of the Pops debut now for four London lads
fresh from their very first headline tour.
This is Coldplay.
You guys sold over 35,000 copies in Holland already.
Yesterday we just hit one million in the world.
Three years ago, girls wouldn't even sit next to us at a bus stop.
And now they surround us.
The highest new entry and a brand-new number-one album:
Coldplay andParachutes.
I don't know how to introduce this right, but hopefully this time next year,
you'll sing along with it because it'll be a hit,
and it's called "Yellow."
Their debut album Parachutes
has clocked up an incredible three million worldwide.
Not bad for four lads with an average age of 22.
Merci tout le monde, thank you so much.
People always said, "You'll get fed up with that song,"
and I haven't yet.
But I just... I'm not sure if it's a classic.
My name is Chris, the singer of Coldplay.
The multimillion platinum
super-selling record of all time
was Parachutes.
And we need to do a follow-up.
And in order to do this follow-up,
we need to work extremely hard.
This is the nerve center of Coldplay
where everything gets done.
Let's go in and see who's doing what.
Will.
You're the drummer of Coldplay. What are you doing?
I'm just doing some work on the new album.
That has to be his favorite sound, an orchestra tuning up.
What's the verdict in there? It seems like no one really...
- We think it's great. - Okay.
- I mean, there's no room for mediocrity. - No, absolutely not.
- If it's shit, then tell me. - It's fucking great.
Keep going, man.
But I'll say this even if everyone hates it, you know,
I wanted us to make a record
that we could die happy after we've made it,
and that's what I absolutely mean,
and it sounds incredibly pretentious,
but there's no point in being in a band
unless you're trying to make the best thing ever.
The Phil-har-fucking-monic.
The Phil Harvey-monic.
- What? - It sounds great.
Just come in with attack, as if you really love the band.
Imagine.
Here we go.
I don't think we were satisfied with the first album
which made us work harder for the second one, I think.
There's no recipe that we were trying to repeat.
Oh, man, did you hear it?
Did you hear Jonny's riff? It's amazing. It's amazing.
It's just Guy's bass playing that lets the whole shop down. You know?
'Cause you spend all your time videoing them, that's why.
Guy, please, man.
There was much more gusto on this
to just forget your sort of personal, mental,
or physical health.
We just wouldn't stop until what we were trying to do was right.
We could get someone else. Pino Palladino.
Is there a downside? I mean, you as...
Anyone who says there's a downside to what we do is talking utter shit.
Of course we stress and we worry about it
and we put everything possible into it
at the expense of friendships and everything.
But there's no downside to being in a band.
Is there a downside though to being the face of the band?
No.
Chris has done nothing but think about the album for seven months,
striving for absolute perfection.
He doesn't sleep really.
He's been so incredibly focused,
probably to the detriment of a lot of other things in his life,
whereas I find it quite easy to just walk away and go home.
Especially when we're mixing and you have to listen to the same song 80 times in a day.
By then, it all sounds exactly the same.
Well, Chris just went in one weekend, he was in the studio on his own,
and then we all came back on the Monday and he goes, "I got this song."
And we just recorded it straight down as it was
and we kept that original take.
This is new. "Scientist."
It was just all there straightaway,
in such an immediate, exciting moment.
Best moment of the entire record for me
was when we'd come back to this song
and I just heard through a wall this riff,
and that's my favorite bit of music on the record.
Hello, boys.
Before we went to America we just thought, "Really?"
"Are we sure? No one's gonna like us there."
There was no false modesty here.
I had no fucking clue how to promote a record in the States.
I was lucky enough to meet Dave Holmes,
and he came on as the US manager.
Very quickly he was just the overall mastermind.
I was a fan of their music from the first couple of EPs,
but I'll never forget the day I got a master copy of A Rush of Blood.
That's when I really did believe,
"Okay, these guys have the ability to go to great heights."
Dave very quickly took the reins.
Now he's just the big daddy.
They were up for whatever it took.
Let's take America.
But initially the reaction wasn't great.
Modern rock radio station would put on a big festival,
and we'd be sandwiched in between some of these really heavy bands,
and it was pretty demoralizing.
We'd have a lot of projectiles thrown at us.
Has anyone here got our album?
Right, flipping you.
Nice job, great. One person.
I remember we played a radio show in DC
and someone chucked a CD at Chris and hit him in the head.
And came back in the dressing room and he went, "Thanks a lot, Dave."
I felt awful. Here I was telling them that this was a good idea,
and I'm sure they were like, "What the fuck are we doing this for?"
I think at the time we felt completely different to everybody else,
but I think that actually worked for us rather than against us.
If somebody said a year ago we were gonna do
well in America, we probably would've laughed,
because it's not the kind of music you'd associate with the American music scene.
They've never said no to hard work
and I'm sure there were times that they hated my guts,
and I'm sure there were times when they were really wondering if this was worth it.
Is this actually gonna result in anything? But it did.
Plowing across America, it felt difficult at the time,
but looking back on it now they were, in many ways, the most rewarding days,
the days I look back with most fondness.
We were just kids, we didn't know what was gonna happen,
but we never gave up.
So, American success, does it matter to you guys?
As long as everyone that buys one of our records is into it,
we don't care if it's 10 million people or 30 million people,
as long as it's over five million people.
I'm not gonna sit and talk about any bad times
because there wasn't any bad times really,
not in the grand scheme of things.
But it was weird, you know, when it crossed over into that mainstream media thing.
We started our band together
and there was a democracy and this kind of concept of equality,
and then it was slightly strange when the press focused on Chris
and his relationship with Gwyneth.
I think for a brief moment it felt like, "Well, what about us?"
But I think it's probably been pretty awful for him at times.
As amusing as it might be at first,
after a while, it can feel pretty intrusive, pretty claustrophobic.
The thing that you've dreamt of your whole life
has turned out to not be quite as happy and as innocent
as it might have felt.
I always wanted to be in the NME. That's all I really cared about.
I think we all did.
I never really wanted any other recognition
other than what we were doing on a musical level.
But tabloid attention, as awful as it is,
it's a sign that you're sort of doing something right.
When I get recognized, I love it. I do.
You know? That's why we're at a cool level.
Because the novelty hasn't worn off
and, you know...
It's really exciting, 'cause the only people that really recognize us
are people who actually like our record.
I don't know how people like Madonna or someone
could handle that level of fame because...
you do have to just become a recluse, I reckon.
Okay, mate, you go first.
Sorry, I didn't... I'm sorry. I didn't...
Music is just everywhere.
The whole universe is music.
You can just walk down the street, it's a kind of music.
There's always something in the day that's inspiring.
When we first started recording,
Chris had a little four-track cassette machine
and that's how we put things down.
It's before we had mobile phones and laptops and stuff to record on.
I'll show you my book.
Huh? Huh?
Look at that. See? Huh?
If I should lose that, we'd be... What would we do?
- What's in the book? - Get Travis to give us some songs.
Just girls' numbers.
And designs for stage costumes.
My way of making sense of the day is to sit down and sing about it.
I suppose it's like writing a diary.
No one really knows where songs come from.
You don't know how, where, or why,
or whether any more will come.
All of our biggest ones take 10 minutes,
but you only get them by sitting for hours and hours on the other ones,
and then suddenly one comes through and you just receive it.
You might take it to Jonny, Will and Guy,
and they add their bits and it's like a production line.
And sometimes they say, okay, and sometimes they say, no way.
It's the "okay-no way" spectrum.
When we hear a new song,
Chris and I have a tendency to be relentlessly positive.
They're always like,
"Yeah, I like it, yes. I think it could be good. Yeah."
And me and Guy are sat, sort of fuming, saying,
"Boy, this is a fucking waste of time. Let's get on to the next one."
It's difficult. If Chris comes in with a song, if I'm just not into it,
that is the thing that I just hate the most.
You're putting yourself in the firing line for somebody to say,
"Well, you go and write a better one then."
You've got the life or death of the song in your hands, 'cause they're quite sensitive.
But any kind of inkling that it's not the best song they've ever written,
means it tends to get chucked out.
I'd say my hit ratio within the group
is probably one in ten maybe.
Any one of those fucking cunts can veto it.
It is heartbreaking, but they're always right.
I know that once we put a song out in the world,
we're gonna have lots of people who say it's not very good,
so it's probably best that the five of us at least agree.
We can't have one of us say, "I told you it was shit."
♪ Play him a song that you think is fun ♪
♪ He'll say, "I don't really like that one" ♪
♪ I'm scared of Phil ♪
♪ I don't know why ♪
♪ But not as scared as all of us are of Guy ♪
That's the one!
♪ Sometimes it feels like We're just their minions ♪
♪ Will and Guy and their fucking opinions ♪
Oh! That's too good.
Generally, that's how it works. Normally, either ideas
or sort of fully formed songs always came from Chris.
Most often, he'd play it to Jonny first,
Guy would have a listen,
and then it would come to me.
It's our job as, you know, the rest of the band
to just basically sort of not fuck that up
because it's really good.
We're gonna jump together.
We gonna... One, two, one, two, three, go!
What's it like being Jonny in Coldplay?
Uh, I don't know. I've never been anyone else.
Well, Jonny is just my hero.
I spend my entire life trying to pull him out of the shadows
because he's very humble about himself.
I love playing live and I love playing the songs to people,
but I love making new music most of all, I think.
Okay, ready?
Two, three, four.
♪ Lovers ♪
Jonny was always very shy, but with no reason to be,
because he was the most talented.
That's the key of our band, really,
the way that Chris's melodies and Jonny's guitar sit together.
No!
Oh, fucking hell. Is there a keyboard anywhere?
Our personalities fitted together.
We couldn't have two of us like Chris,
and we couldn't have two of us like me. It just wouldn't work.
It's gonna be great when we record it properly.
The songwriting has changed, I think.
These days it depends who's there,
because we live in different parts of the world.
Did it get anything in there?
When we started recording A Head Full of Dreams,
Guy, Will, and I were in the studio in London,
working on a track which was "Legends,"
and we could never quite get it right.
I went to LA, worked in Chris's house,
trying to get a good guitar riff for it.
Just sort of fumbling around in the dark.
He started playing this melody, like, slow.
His guitar just gets me going.
I was like, there's something amazing about that.
You could take the rest of the song away and I don't think anyone would notice.
And that's what happened.
Okay, trust me everybody. This is gonna be great.
Everybody go low.
Everybody get down. Shh!
Everybody go low.
Stay low.
One, two, one, two...
Thank you, everybody.
Okay, hands up, who wants "Adventure Of A Lifetime" to be our first single?
Our friendship's really changed, definitely, from the early days.
Okay, that's great. So, we agree.
It's very free communication. We kind of talk every day.
But, yeah, that can involve a lot of locking of horns.
Often the atmosphere in the studio is very tense, yeah.
And there's lots of laughter, but it can get quite heavy.
Sometimes I get called in and there's, like, stony faces and no one's speaking,
and I can tell they're in the middle of some argument.
That's the bit of my job that's hard.
Hey, Phil?
We've had a terrible fight.
We had a terrible fight.
Sometimes I look back and I don't think I've changed at all.
I just don't. Not in the way that Chris has changed.
He's evolved so much as a person.
But then there's loads of things that haven't changed,
like his ability to make me laugh like no one else.
If you look at this Venn diagram that I'm doing,
it splits the set into old Coldplay songs,
new Coldplay songs.
What do you think about singles to album track ratio?
Well, at the moment, it's like a 60/40 split of new.
But if you minus the metric we took from the first quarter against merch sales,
it's the basic fractal that we learnt from REM and U2,
who we now refer to as RE2,
the band that we're aspiring to be,
plus Radiohead and Beyoncé and Jay-Z at the same time,
moving through to Young Thug.
That leaves us with this, which is our set list.
There's definite pros and cons
to working with someone that you're that close with.
Chris would be the first to say that as well.
It can get a bit messy, definitely.
Well, I've left the band probably two times, I think.
The first time was 'cause I got really ill. It was basically exhaustion.
I'll always remember. It was the day of the Brit Awards.
The Best British Group.
- Yes! - Coldplay.
We won Best Band and Best Album
and I'd had this feeling inside me
that it should be the best day of my life,
but I just felt so totally exhausted.
It was not a happy memory at all.
This is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to us.
And we're really made up. So thank you very much.
But then I came back
and we made A Rush of Blood to the Head.
That was even more stressful than the first one
and my relationship with Chris in particular was quite strained
and something had to give.
I think the dynamic between singer and manager is a specific one,
and it just didn't really suit our friendship.
So I quit.
Phil got a bit burnt out
and wanted to do something different.
He moved almost as far away from us as he possibly could
by going to South America and then Australia.
I think he was trying to tell us something.
He wasn't with us for one album,
and that was when we sorely missed him.
We made decisions that weren't as good as they could've been.
We seem to sort of give up before we've...
No, it's just... Does that sound right?
I don't understand. Is that the right pattern?
I don't think we were very functional in that period.
I think we lost our way a bit, yes.
I think we felt a lot of pressure
to make some kind of grand album.
There were strange headlines in the press
about the EMI share price and all of that stuff.
We didn't even know what a share price was back then.
We spent day after day after day of getting nowhere.
It came out in addictions and it came out in tension,
and at the time, it was a real struggle.
One year later and we've got precisely nothing finished.
What a fucking cunt. Bollocks!
And you don't film any of the arguments.
There was a lot of questioning,
like, "Should we do this, should we do that?"
So, it's shite.
We have to start all of it again.
We've lost the plot!
I was so worried about what everyone else thought.
We just totally spun out, you know.
So, what do you want me to do, then?
In general, the bigger you get as a band,
all the kind of machinery around you gets bigger and bigger
and there's more things to get in the way
of just four people playing music together.
No, no, no.
You've gotta do that... thing for that verse.
That was the first time we'd been in that situation
and didn't know how to deal with all of that stuff.
If Phil had been around, it might have been different.
That's just normal, is it?
You don't let me sing any nouns or things.
Like anything that's a thing is immediately banned.
And freedom. You hate riffs, freedom and nouns.
I think the process was probably the least enjoyable of all our records, definitely.
We were going through some weird shit that time.
But Dave was amazing,
and luckily we had the song "Fix You"
to get us through that period.
What's that you sing at the end? What are the lyrics?
Tears stream down your face
when you lose something you can't replace.
Tears stream down your face and I, I, I, I, I...
Right.
- Yeah. - Is that shit?
No, it sounds good.
I just was wondering if it could be sort of
made into something which makes a bit more sense.
Can you take a tiny bit of reverb off?
That's cool, thanks.
That's the most self-conscious I've ever been
about people not liking what we were doing
because I wasn't really sure if I liked it.
It was a strange period of time.
When you read something that is critical,
you always give it much more weight
than anything you read that's kind.
And they can write a whole article that's nice
and just have one line that's a bit shitty,
and that's the only line you'll remember.
Alan McGee of Creation Records
has come out and said that your music was bed wetters' music.
How did you feel about that? What was your response?
We wet our beds.
You can't please everybody, right?
If that's what you're chasing you're just gonna fail,
because it's just not possible.
Shucks.
It's okay. I get it.
I think it's important to have figures of ridicule.
I don't mind being one of them.
The only time it's awkward is if you bump into someone
who's made a joke about you.
In the old days, I used to get really angry.
But I changed my whole philosophy.
The only thing I complain about in our job is that
if you're the sort of person who worries,
you have so much time to sit and worry
that you just worry and worry and worry.
I spent quite a lot of years being anxious
about the people that didn't like us
without focusing enough on the people that do.
It's hard to explain.
I'm not.
You are. Apart from...
No, I know, Guy.
But if I wasn't a perfectionist, we'd still be playing the Falcon.
So? But you'd be doing it very well.
I think everything we've done is shit.
That's why I keep trying to do new stuff.
That's my gut feeling. That's what fires you up to do the next thing.
In the early days, I think there used to be a lot more arguments,
particularly between Chris and myself.
I was probably much more opinionated back then,
which I think was probably a huge pain in the ass
for everyone.
I don't know if I was trying to get away from
myself or if I wasn't comfortable with myself,
but I definitely had a drinking problem.
It doesn't make for the happiest of times.
Chris definitely wears his heart on his sleeve.
Will, Jonny, and myself are much more guarded emotionally,
and that's probably why so many bands have split up,
because they haven't learned how to accept each other's differences.
There was a time where I was like, "Everyone needs to just follow my feelings."
At a certain point I was like, "If this carries on like this",
then one of them's gonna leave."
It might be like, "We don't wanna deal with this temperamental idiot all day."
♪ What a cunt ♪
Only 32 concerts to go before the end of Coldplay.
They've got their own feelings and their own lives.
Even though they are much harder to read,
but they still have highs and lows.
Fucking mic stand keeps hitting me in the face.
It's like singing into Naseem Hamed.
I'm learning how to deal with the peaks and the troughs a bit better.
Please sort it out.Understood.
Every cliché that there is, we've been through it.
We just never felt like it was important to talk about.
Any group of five men who have got to their late 30s
probably gonna have been through depression, addiction,
divorce, everything,
even if it was five accountants.
We've been through so much together.
But what's incredible to me is that we've stuck together as a pack.
Everywhere we go, whatever we're going through,
we can close the door and sit down as a group
and either laugh about it or commiserate or celebrate.
I could sit with Jon, Will and Guy and Phil
just for hours right now
and just talk about anything.
I think that X&Y had been a bit of a slog for all of us,
whereas getting back in the studio
and doing Viva became exciting again.
We definitely missed Phil and we realized how much we missed him
when he came back into the fold.
Yeah, Phil came back in in glorious technicolor again,
and that's when we bought our own little place
and really tried to reconnect as friends.
When I came back, I was not coming back as a manager.
Dave Holmes was doing that much better than I ever could.
I was coming back as a bandmate,
just doing all the fun stuff.
We finally got our band home.
That really brought everything back into focus.
You know, it was our own studio, our own HQ.
It was new territory for us. We didn't really know how to behave.
I think we wanted a producer to give us some ideas about
how we can present the next phase of our band.
We wanted to find someone who had the same effect on us
as Brian Eno did on U2 and David Bowie and Talking Heads,
all these incredible bands that we love.
And so we asked Brian, "Do you know anyone?"
And he said, "Well, I wouldn't mind having a go."
So, we were looking for the new Brian Eno
and we found the old Brian Eno.
I think he only becomes interested in a band
when they get massive and terrible at the same time,
because he sees an opportunity to keep you massive, but make you good.
It's very much like a having a lovely, cuddly headmaster
quietly directing proceedings without ever raising his voice.
He's like a sort of wizard-type figure,
like a Gandalf or a Dumbledore
who comes in and sprinkles magic all over the place
and then disappears for a bit,
or says, "I really like that song,
but have you thought about playing it backwards and in French?"
He's a relentless experimenter.
He's not afraid for it to sound silly. He's not afraid to fail.
It can be sublimely ridiculous, some of the stuff that we're doing.
He kicked me out of the band for a few weeks.
At that time, I could be quite strong-minded
in terms of it has to sound like this.
So, he taught us to let everyone get to the end of their idea
before any judgment is passed.
We went to Barcelona and we did a sort of singing trip with him,
which is one of the key elements on that record,
the sound of lots of voices together.
The thing that sparked Viva La Vida was the big sing-along chants.
The most purely joyous bit for me is that communal thing.
What's the next one? Oh, "Viva La Vida"?
Nothing can beat a chant live.
I love sing-alongs more than anything.
Through the course of the next album, Mylo Xyloto,
it was pretty clear that I was doing well in some parts of my life
and really not well in others.
When we're on tour, it's such a little bubble
that you become institutionalized,
and this is why a lot of front men
have problems in their personal life.
Towards the end of the Mylotour,
it was a very difficult period for about a year or so
of feeling completely worthless and nothing to anybody.
I was just like, I'm a mess, really,
because I can't enjoy the great things around me.
Then, of course, I went through a breakup with Gwyneth.
Listen, man, I'm never gonna moan.
I'm grateful for everything.
But it was pretty touch and go.
It was evident that things were very difficult for Chris
and that he was unhappy.
We sort of felt helpless in a way, you know,
naturally it's distressing when your friend is going through something so traumatic.
He was in a lot of pain.
Your mind can go to the worst-case scenario.
I was worried about him to the extent that
I was just really glad to get a text in the morning
just to know he was okay.
And almost when he was at his absolute lowest,
that was when we started making Ghost Stories.
What we decided to do on Ghost Stories
was to really be honest about it.
I don't wanna bullshit,
because I need to sing it to get through the day.
We all set up a studio in Guy's house.
I think that was all that Chris was capable of.
I remember it as being a healing time for him.
I think he started to smile a bit more around then.
He was having a really hard time.
Yeah, we definitely felt very protective towards him.
Chris's life is different from mine.
He has very much a public life.
People know what's going on, or like to think they know.
So we were worried about him letting people in too far,
but this was what he wanted to do.
I think Chris needed to get it out of his system
and he needed to express those things in those songs.
Of course, it was a very personal album, and I like it for that reason.
I like it for its bravery and its honesty.
What we wanted to do was to provide the comfort that music has always given him.
That's the only way that we could really help him was to be musical friends.
When some of us have been going through harder times,
it's the band that really picks each other up.
That really is an amazing thing to have in your life.
Whenever anyone needs anything, really, everybody's there.
It has evolved into much more than just friendship.
We are more like a family now.
It was a challenging period.
It was a sort of journey from ultimate loneliness to ultimate togetherness.
Come on, come on, come on. Come on.
Bring it. Bring it in.
Phil, you wanna lead? Come on in.
It's been a long journey up to this point.
The period that we've been a band has been such a shifting time in music.
It's just not a time where you can take something for granted.
I think we were very lucky to have each other
and lucky in many other ways as well.
I feel like I've been running for years.
It's the first time since I've joined the band
I've actually stopped and looked back.
It really does feel like a lifetime ago that we started.
Hello.
What's still the same is our passion to make music together.
I wouldn't wanna do what I do if I wasn't with my friends.
I think the gang mentality is still definitely there,
but it's just the gang's got a bit bigger.
That initial dream, at the time we had it, that seemed like the final point,
and what I've realized is, actually that's just the beginning.
I don't feel like we've got to a final destination.
I don't want to stop playing.
I don't wanna stop this.
Don't want to stop this.
Let's turn it up. Let's turn it up.
I really don't look back. You know?
I just feel weird about it.
Like Phil said the other day, because I was about to turn 40,
you should write a letter to your 17-year-old self and tell him what you're up to,
'cause his head would just explode.
The first few years, you try to make yourself feel different to everybody else.
But in the last few years, I feel like the journey's just been to remind me and us
that we're all in the same tribe on the same little planet in space,
and more than ever, it feels like that's what we're part of:
One big band.
So, what next? I don't know what's next.
We've been trying to get to this place for a long time.
I'd be very surprised if there was another conventional Coldplay album.
It feels like the finale of the story,
or the end of a movie.
It doesn't surprise me that he's saying now is
the end of an era, it's the end of something,
'cause it really is in his mind.
But I hope it's not really the end of things.
Literally happens every album.
"This might be our last one." And it hasn't been yet.
I'm just looking forward to what happens next.
We've been together for 20 years
and achieved so many things that we wanted to achieve.
I mean, it has just been the most amazing ride so far.
I'm grateful for the whole journey.
I have faith in the future.
I trust life.
First of all, thank you all so much for being here.
You're all actually a part of the band. Isn't that crazy?
Even though some of you might be ashamed to say it, you're all members of Coldplay.
We got one more song if you wanna do it.
Yay!
Thank you for that lovely response.
You get top marks from me.
One, two, three and...
My friends...
This is the end of A Head Full of Dreamstour.
Back where it all began.
Thank you, everybody all around the world,
at home and abroad,
for being the best part of our show
and for keeping your and our heads full of dreams.
We're in this together.
We're one big band.
Everything is possible if you never give up
and if you believe in love.
If you're watching this, it means we haven't flopped.
So, thanks a lot for not making us flop.
If you're not watching this, we have flopped,
so I can say what the fuck I want.
Come on. We'll get past it.
If you're watching this... Obviously, they're watching this.
It should be "You're watching this." Not if.
Let's go.
Let's go and sell some fucking records.
It's time to go home. Tell them we formed at college.
I don't care. I don't like Alan McGee.
Can you sing that note again, please? Yeah.
I think this song is brilliant. I think it's good too.
What do you think, Will?
I think the second half is great.
We are probably the only band in England
where at least two of the members have got webbed feet.
- Who's got webbed feet? - We're all bluffing now, aren't we?
The reason I knew, we were on tour. We had a shower.
And every morning, there'd be two sets of normal footprints and two flippers.
Two flippers?
I can fucking see you laughing!
A lot of people think...
we're not rock and roll.
But I ask you, is having pastries before eight o'clock not rock and roll?
In what fucking universe?
Ladies and gentlemen, you may remember a year ago this band was formed...
Fucking pathetic!
I'm gonna be sick.
Ripped and synced by gabbyu @ Subscene