Anti War Activists

"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"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"I guess it's maybe because the industry has been struggling and you don't sell 50 million in your first production, all the numbers are different from when we all started. I see that there's quite good camaraderie (between musicians). Obviously, there are those who want to stay out of it. I don't know about music, but in backstage or at airports, everyone seems to get along very well. source"

"No human being is only positive or negative. White or black, we all have both sides, the bright and the dark. There are no angels, it's a myth, nobody is a single thing, it's easy to fall into cynicism because wherever you look there are aggressions, war, destruction. I get it, ok? And it's true that for some Imagine [song by John Lennon] will tell you absolutely nothing. And if you have lost your cousin in an attack you would not want to hear it, you would be furious."

"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."

"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"

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

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

"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'.”"

"Ever since our band came out, we have been a very polarising group because we do a certain thing very well."

"What changed for me was – I don’t want to go through life being scared of it, being scared of love, being scared of rejection, being scared of failure."

"Not cool. Ever. I’ve never been cool and I don’t really care about being cool. It’s just an awful lot of time and hair gel wasted. At school I was a medium-clever geek. If you’re at public school (Sherbourne) and you’re not that good at rugby, you spend quite a few important years of your life feeling like a real loser. We’ve never been about cool. What’s happened to us is more about showing that the geeks at school can get there in the end. And you have to stay true to who you are, the root of all this is to do with our friendship. source"

"The word 'campaigning' makes me uncomfortable. At the time I was writing things on my hand, we were definitely campaigning (Make Trade Fair). Now we do it more subtly. You can see who we support at a concert or on our website, but we don't like to shove it down people's throats. I want to scale it back. I'd rather it's like, if you want to know what we think, then you can find it, rather than, 'Here's what I think!'. source"

"Some people misconstrue our band just to be just a commercial venture, they question the soulfulness of Coldplay because we’ve done okay. Maybe it’s because I’m English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it. I always feel like the big bad outside world just fucking hates us."

"Music comes from a place we don't know, it sort of comes through the fingers and toes."

"He (David Bowie) said, 'I'm really sorry, but it's not your best (song).' He was very kind about it. I was like, 'You know what? You're probably right'. It might have been written by sleeping pills so I wasn't too personally offended. source"

"I’m never going to be as adept lyrically as Jay Z or Morrissey."

"She can turn anything into gold with that voice, here's the thing: if you speak to a good singing teacher about great opera singers, they will talk about consistency of tone. Or there's a book by Alfred Tomatis about why some people like certain people's voices and other people hate them, like Bob Dylan or me or whoever, some people say, 'Oh, I hate that voice', so there's a thing about people's frequency responses, what they are pleased by. Rihanna has this thick tone, so it's very hard to annoy anybody."

"There’s an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where they get the text of an obituary wrong, and instead of saying “beloved aunt,” it says “beloved cunt.” And I always think that would kind of sum up the two sides of my life, the two sides of the coin. I’d like that."

"A band's only unique thing is its chemistry, especially if none of you are prodigious players or particularly handsome, the one thing you have is your uniqueness, so we hold on to that. source"

"I love him, I really do. How much? Well, you know Leningrad in Russia. They should name it Lennongrad in honour of him."

"Going through something difficult in your life, music for me is always a friend and something that helps you to figure things out. source"

"I do an hour's yoga and go running every day. Then I see a picture of myself and I still look like a skinny, potbellied idiot - and I thought I had turned into this superhunk! source"

"I've never hit anyone. I've tripped someone up, I got in trouble about that. He was chasing after somebody and I didn't like it, so we were running along together and he fell over. I wasn't put in a police cell, but I got fingerprinted. Police stations are terrifying. I'm petrified about losing any of the things I care about: family, band, hair, freedom. All I'll say is that they're fucking bastards - not the police, the paparazzi. source"

"The reason why I wouldn’t commit suicide… well, the main reason now is ’cos I have a baby and I would never commit suicide because of her. But to me, committing suicide from a nihilistic point of view is pointless, because we’re all gonna die anyway, so why not just hang around and see what happens? D’you know what I mean? If something is inevitable, why board the plane early? source"

"Men should always change diapers, it’s a very rewarding experience. It’s mentally cleansing. It’s like washing dishes, but imagine if the dishes were your kids, so you really love the dishes. source"

"The thing I really believe deep down is that everybody has a gift for something. Our job as adults is to make sure all children have the opportunity to find their gift."

"It’s more egalitarian on the Internet, anyone can put anything up. But in terms of the money it takes to allow a band to get good, there’s less of it to invest. Music is split up now into little pockets. source"

"Even though some of the things I do can come across nerdy or unprofessional, it's at least true to me. Now more than ever, pretending not to be myself would end even worse. source"

"Q: Do you think that the key in the new rock is going back to the electronic sound?"

"Q: Hey, isn't that how McCartney describes the Beatles?"

"Life is beautiful in all its colors, even the darker ones, they’re here for a reason."

"We are very much a band and we always have been, and we are more than ever. In our personal lives and our professional lives, there’s this thing that links us where we would do anything for the others and its a very powerful feeling, to go have gone through everything we’ve been through with the same group of people. We knew each other when we had nothing. source"

"He (Jonny) just has a way of writing melodies that is perfect… I just love his playing so much. And in that song, we are always saying go and do a solo one day and he’s like, "I don’t do solo’s" and we sort of got him to do… And that’s his standing-on-a-mountain moment. That’s why being in a band is the best job in the world because your best friends bring in bits of music that you wouldn’t thought of and you piece it all together and you get Optimus Prime! source"

"One day in Haiti I was talking to a farmer. I said, 'I don't have any solution to these problems.' He said, 'Of course you don't! You're a singer.' He was right. Music is what I live for - and as Coldplay, our main job is to make the best music we can. But I hope that in our small way we can do something to raise awareness."

"There's too much information (on social media). Everything you do is available all the time, so the only thing you can rely on is not being false. source"

"‘Well, okey, something got broken but hey, what you're gonna do? You're not gonna give up, you're never gonna give up.’ That’s the best thing my dad ever taught me. source"

"I’m not a big fan of people putting birds in cages because to me, that thing can fly, how can you do that? It's crazy. source"

"Say what you like about him [Jonny Buckland], he does incredible guitar animal impressions (Side note – Cow like noise during A rush of blood to the head). source"

"Whether you're 15 or you are 55 or 80, it’s like, well I'm whole, I don’t have a missing piece, you’ve just got to find that wholeness within. Does that make any sense? source"

"I think as people listen to the album more it'll become its own thing more, but it'll also become apparent how much we've plagiarised. To me, really, at the end of our album we should've had a bibliography."

"Q: Do you think of your band as a gang or a family?"

"To be a frontman you have to be half very driven and half a total knob. I like to think I'm both."

"Coldplay is for people with great taste, intelligence, incredible good lookingness, talent, ability, success, grabbing of life. Coldplay's for people who know what life's about. They're always entertaining. Delightful to talk to. Sweet, charming, incredibly good in bed. Virile. They have incredible success with girls, or boys, or both. They're generally just the world's best citizens. Maybe I'm biased, but I'm definitely right."