Rock Legends, broadcast tomorrow at 12.30pm on Rai 5, tells the irresistible rise of Chris Martin & C, retracing the history of Coldplay from their beginnings to their international successes.
The “Rock Legends” series celebrates rock and pop milestones in an “extended play” version: through interviews, music, anecdotes and video clips, each episode retraces in almost an hour the life and careers of icons who have left an indelible mark and who continue to inspire generations.
The story of Coldplay is one of the simplest, the quintessence of the band that made it from nothing: in 1996 during the freshers' party at University College London, the then seventeen-year-old Chris Martin, born in London but raised in Mold (North Wales), met the shy Jon Buckland. Between one joke and another, the common passion emerges: they both began to love music from an early age: Chris Martin formed his first group at just eleven years old, when at the time he was already listening to big-name authors such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Tom Waits, Flaming Lips. They begin to fantasize about a possible band to form, which after Guy Berryman's entry into the group actually begins to take shape. The sources of inspiration are well known: the Beatles and Radiohead above all (Martin declared several times that listening to “The Bends” by Radiohead had a significant influence on his way of understanding music, as well as the main idea of the art he would soon want to create).
The soundalthough still to be shaped, veers towards that melodic intimacy that will characterize Coldplay's first album. The project is there ready and done, but one significant detail is missing: a drummer. The young multi-instrumentalist Will Champion immediately immerses himself in the sounds that await him, taking more or less three months to establish himself as the band's permanent drummer. It seems that the name Coldplay was “stolen” by a mutual friend, before the latter could use it for the group he was starting. Chris Martin and his associates had played under the name of Pectoralz and that of Starfish, also holding concerts, the most important of which at the Laurel Tree in Camden, a London neighborhood known for the concentration of the first steps of young talented British musicians. Thus Coldplay was born.
Chris, the singer, occasionally takes care of the piano, Jon on bass, Guy on guitar, Will on drums. Four young boys, each born in a different English city, each enrolled in a different course of study. It is the London College that acts as the initiatory epicenter of a story destined to give them fame and glory.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
