Who is Coldplay

His band Coldplay has sold 17 million albums, he's married to one of Hollywood's hottest stars and he hangs out with the musicians he hailed as heroes when he was a kid. So how did singer Chris Martin, an insecure, self-confessed nerd, hit the bigtime? Craig McLean joins the band on the road to find out.

Chris Martin is sitting in a Las Vegas hotel, thinking about the power of songs. Specifically, he is thinking about something Bono once said about Coldplay - that they have "a sense that the world's hardest of hearts can be thawed by a great melody". Martin disagrees. "I think there are some hearts that are fucked," he says.

Then, as he often does, he changes his mind. "Actually, to be fair, I was wondering whether certain people's policies would change if they heard certain songs," he says, in his slightly sinusy, barely West Country-accented voice. "Would it really be possible to start Nazi Germany if you'd just been listening to Bob Marley's Exodus back-to-back for the past three weeks and getting stoned? Would the idea of the Holocaust seem so appealing? I know this sounds really trite, but I mean it seriously, because music is something that every human responds to. There's a reason why people who've had bad relationships with their parents listen to angry stuff."

(Article continues)