Guitarists From England

"Elton John: He is the kindest and most gracious friend, along with being a fantastic musical force of nature. source"

"It’s no accident that so many fabled rock ensembles have had two contrasting leaders (Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Plant and Page, Bono and The Edge) to play off each other and cross-pollinate and, at times, butt heads. But Chris Martin completely dominates Coldplay; there’s no yin to his smiley enraptured yang. He’s the rock-king superstar the other band members all worship, humbly, as the genius who made their fates possible, and almost every moment of the band’s creative energy is organized around what Chris is going to do next: the piano chords he’s playing around with, the lyrics he’s writing, his endless studio perfectionism. source"

"Jay Z: We are good friends, but what I got to say has nothing to do with our friendship. I have been in the industry long enough to know when I’m in the presence of a genius… and Chris Martin is just that. In years to come, Britain will look back at him as a modern day Shakespeare, he is an incredible recording artist, an incredible songwriter, but where he really comes alive is performing live. If you get the chance to see Coldplay live, do it, you ain’t gonna regret it. source"

"Lily Allen: I’m not super-close to Chris Martin, but I’ll always be grateful that what he did was say to me, “No Lily, I don’t see you like that. I don’t want to f*ck you. I care about you. I want to be friends with you. I want to help you.” He and Gwyneth had just broken up, but they were together in LA doing their conscious uncoupling thing. They asked me over for Sunday lunch. I wasn’t very chatty with Chris, but he and Gwyneth did put me in touch with their marriage counsellor. I didn’t go, but it was the wake-up call I needed. I realised I was ill. source source"

"Liam Gallagher: I didn’t hang around the get my back patted, we were out of there. It was like, look, it was good to do. And Chris? I went, ‘listen, I'm sorry about all that shit, that I keep fucking slagging you off. You know I don’t fucking mean it’. He’s going 'nah, nah, no worries, we love it mate, carry on!' He was cool. But I’ve not heard fucking back from him since. He’s fucked me right off now. source"

"Guy Berryman: Chris is always working, I think he is the biggest workaholic that I know. His capacity for making music and writing songs is boundless, almost. source"

"Britain thought he could now go back to being just some English bloke and eating chips. It turns out this notion is utterly wrong, because when Martin walks into a room, I am rather startled to find that a stellar quality enters with him. His energy hits you from across the room: the intense stare, the piercing blue eyes, the feet that are usually barefoot nowadays."

"In the British vacuum of passive-aggressive public transport and mumbled apologies, Chris Martin’s stomach-ribbing charisma on stage can be as nauseating as doing star jumps right after lunch, and it’s not hard to see how the everlasting hate for Coldplay was born. But when we hate on them, are we just acknowledging that we want to experience more from life? Or are we negating the fact we feel these everyday – average, yet no less meaningful – emotions deep down, too? I think it’s a bit of both."

"Queen Latifah: So we start trying to get the room to bid on this thing. And we get it up to like €133,960.27 ($150,000) for this piano. So we pay this, and then I find out that the guy who I'm bidding with was Chris Martin from Coldplay. (...) He pays €89245.89 ($100,000) on the piano, I pay €44,653.42 ($50). He gives me the piano. He is the salt of the earth as far I'm concerned. source"

"Chris Martin of Coldplay was spot-on when he burst on to Graham Norton’s set and described the karmic moment represented by Donald Trump’s success in being elected President of the United States. Mr. Martin said, in terms, that Trump expressed the feelings of millions of people, and that doing so is a refreshing and crucial part of democracy. source"

"Dua Lipa: It was surreal to sit at the piano with him. He's so distinctive in the way he works - the second he sits down and is playing piano, you're like, 'S***, that's Coldplay!'. ... It was so surreal, Chris Martin dancing to my music, I remember saying to him, 'You've written one of my favorite songs ever, the Nelly Furtado song 'All Good Things (Must Come To An End),' and he was like, 'God, I forgot I wrote that.' source source"

"Harry Styles: He's the nicest guy. And he doesn't make me feel nervous, but when you have so much respect for someone... it's difficult not to. source"

"A great songwriter."

"Bono: We were playing with (Every Breaking Wave) for the last album and Chris talked us out of it. He said, ‘That one deserves to be finished.’ The half-baked version would have denied us this, so we owe him for that… He's a genius and a very self-effacing guy. He's one of our bodyguards. source"

"Taylor Swift: I've been a huge fan of Chris Martin forever; it'd be awesome to work with him. He's really kind, and he's been really encouraging when we've met."

"They balance each other out. Chris and I are like Jay and Beyonce; two paranoid ironists and two calm grounded people. source"

"A wonderful Zimbabwean connection at Paralympic closing ceremony - Coldplay's Chris Martin's mum and gran are from Harare - plenty of Zim cousins!! source"

"Chris Martin can still seem embarrassed by his status as one of the planet's most recognizable rock stars. His band's music is completely and utterly grand in ambition and sentiment yet, offstage, Martin is mostly immune to the groan-worthy platitudes and shameless chest-puffing typical of his stadium-filling brethren."

"Natalie Imbruglia: If Chris Martin calls with two songs, you don’t think, you say, ‘Yes’. He’s a great songwriter. ... I feel very lucky to have it (the song called 'Fun'). When I went into the studio and he said: 'I've finished the song', and he sang it to me, I nearly did one of those ugly cries because it's so beautiful. ... It's one thing to be a fan of a band’s music but it’s another thing to have them call up and say they wanna songwrite! source source source"

"Chris Martin might be a famous non-drinker, but he’s not opposed to getting out of his mind. Signing on Roxy Music star and general musical oddball Brian Eno as producer for the Viva la Vida and Mylo Xyloto albums, Martin and the band consented to being hypnotised to write the records. “Brian knew a hypnotist and we thought it might get some interesting results,” guitarist Jonny Buckland told Entertainment Weekly. “We all went upstairs, sat down, and he walked around us. He got us into some strange kind of trance, and we came down and played some more.” “It did work, actually,” Martin confirms in the same interview. “We came up with a lot of interesting noises, which we used.” source"

"Wayne Coyne: Well, I really think that there’s an authenticity and a truth in Chris in the way that he sings to the audience. And even though you’d have to think there has to be some difference between playing to a couple of hundred people when they started and playing to literally tens of thousands of people now, I still see that in him. That’s why I like them so much, because he is the real deal. He’s not faking it when he gets up there and that enthusiasm still effects him. So in that way, I think they’re virtually unchanged. They haven’t become these unapproachable mega rock stars. source"

"Coldplay's Chris Martin once revealed to RollingStone that his mother comes from Zimbabwe and that he spent a lot of time here. He also claimed that (the song) “Strawberry Swing” was inspired by his experience on Zimbabwe. source"

"Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has found his niche in making the sound of solitude a triumphant experience, like Good Will Hunting: The Musical."

"He is a sensitive soul."

"Kylie Minogue: Chris just turns me to jelly. He's a really sexy singer. source"

"People often think that fires only happen to vulnerable people but young professionals have a quarter of all house fires in London. Chris will know that fires can develop almost at the Speed of Sound so it's important that when they're cooking, people don't have A Rush of Blood to the Head and leave their cooking unattended causing a lot of Trouble. source"

"Undeniably handsome, Martin has a floppy, slightly fey quality that leaves women feeling divided between mauling and mothering him. source"

"Madonna: Yeah he's great! I think he's incredibly talented. source"

"My mom was always interested in [social and environmental justice movements]. Life on this planet becomes more joyful when you become less afraid of people who look or speak different than you."

"In contrast to the soothing, warm-blanket vibe of Coldplay's music, Martin is almost unnervingly intense: He has an endearing, Hugh Grant-like stammer, but when he feels strongly about what he's saying, which is often, his eyes give off little sparks, like he's a mad scientist detailing plans for world domination."

"I think a band by its very nature is only as good as the chemistry between the players. None of us in rock bands, or whatever kind of bands we’re in, are virtuosos, otherwise we’d be concert pianists. So the only thing you have in your favor as a band is your unique chemistry. source"

"Without the support of our fans, Coldplay would be nowhere and we wouldn't be able to produce our art, I'm not saying that I don't appreciate the awards and all the glamour that come with being a touring band but seriously without the fans, we would be nothing."

"How it did - in terms of commercial performance, is not how it feels to us. At the time it felt like this is not quite finished and not quite right. source"

"Every phrase can be a good lyric if it has the good rhythm."

"After we did the Super Bowl, we took so much s*it, and then we went on the biggest tour we’ve ever been on, it made me realize: okay some people really like what we do and some people really don’t – and we love them equally. I’m just happy and grateful to be a human, I don’t mind if you don’t love what we do but we do love what we do. source"

"We've made a choice or I've made a choice recently to really say how I feel about the world and love and togetherness, and what I think would be great, you know? And I think when you sing about a very positive thing like that it's not fashionable until you die if I can be totally honest. It's not taken seriously until you're gone, but that's okay. (...) In the moment when you're alive saying it some people would say "Oh, fuck off." source"

"There's stuff going on in the world right now, which you can't imagine why is this happening; it's crazy. I don't know what the answer is, but if you didn't have faith in the universe that somehow something great would arrive at the end, then we'd all give up, and that would be a waste of everyone's time."

"If you can give someone the pleasure of not liking you, maybe that’s as valid as the pleasure of liking you, some people want to assert themselves by showing the things they don’t like. It’s a form of positioning yourself. We all do that. I get it. But I’m more focused on the people who do like what we do, and there’s a few of them. I like hanging out with those people. If you ever liked Coldplay, then we’re going to really deliver on our promise over the next year or so. It’s not guarded music. It’s about very open things and that might not resonate with some people. But I don’t want to obscure our music behind coolness or cynicism just to avoid criticisms. Because for some people it really connects, and I need it, too."

"You get summoned to their castle, then you wait for about a week in a small room where you're just fed very minimally and if you survive that stage about fifteen another people, whoever survives that gets through the next stage where you get to play tennis with Jay and if you beat him twice you get sent through to meet the rest of Destiny's Child. They check you for lice and bugs and if they deem you cleaned up then you can meet Beyoncé behind the screen."

"I have been reading recently about synesthesia, in this case, the association of music and other sensory information with colors and I realized that I probably have a little or a lot of that current. I don't think it's unusual for songwriters. When I think of other people's songs or albums, a color comes to my mind."

"Just because a romantic relationship ends doesn't mean that the other facets of your relationship have to end... or, indeed, doesn't mean they can't get better."

"There is no music that has full meaning for everyone. It's what we have learned from the world: that no one thinks the same thing."

"As a rule, I take a piece of paper and a pencil and for 12 minutes nothing is written in your head without editing, without censorship, just to get it out of your mind. After that it gets read and the paper is destroyed immediately. It's very good to write a song with what has been left in your memory, without reading it again. It's as if you chose the best, the memory is that selective... Do you know what is also good for creativity? Write fast. Once a week, don't eat for 24 or 30 hours. Your brain becomes very lucid about ideas."

"I always felt that, as a musician, we show up for one day for a cause and we really believe in what we’re talking about, but then the next day we have our own concerns. I want to try to have a more long-term relationship between artists and people who are really trying to affect change in the world."

"If I listen to a song that I like, my first instinct is to find out who made it. "Oh, these were the Sherman brothers who wrote 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' and a lot of Disney songs." That kind of thing. There is a part of me that wants nobody to know anything about me, but it is not realistic, what is even more strange to me is some things that are said about me. Because it comes from a fake quote or rumors. But I am guilty of it. If I listen (for example) to a new Rihanna song that I like, I want to know who made it."

"It does something to your brain which is odd... you have to work really hard not to be a real d**k (in personal life). source"

"One of our big conversations that we always have in this band is, we don't see rock & roll as being about coke-taking, leather-trouser-wearing rebellion, because that to us is not rebellion anymore. The spirit of rock & roll is freedom. It's about following what you believe in and not caring what anyone else says. And if that means writing something on your hand, then you've got to write something on your hand. It doesn't matter if you don't look as cool as the Ramones - you're never going to, anyway. So I know that we'll be ridiculed for this and look stupid for that. But as long as we believe in what we're doing, we can't apologize for it."

"If you don't let love really in then you can't really give it back. source"

"I don’t think being 13 to 15 is an easy time for any boy. It’s like a big puberty race, and if you’re coming in last, it’s not such a great race to be in. I was a hyper-religious, quite naive and very judgmental kid. I was unpopular for three years, and then it all kind of switched when I was 16. But I had already been marked with the “I’m going to fucking get out of here and show you bastards what’s what” tag. So I’m very grateful for that period of challenge between 13 and 16, facing the blinkeredness of that kind of schoolboy mentality of, like, “You’re gay, you’re bad at sports, you’re this, you’re that.” Because it did make me think: “I don’t want to end up in some bank, where I’m going to have to take this kind of shit off these same people for the rest of my life. I need to get out of this fucking treadmill 'public school, into university, into a bank, into a summer house in France'.”"

"[As a teenager] I felt like there must be more to life than rugby and cheap cider on the weekends."