On the 27th of June 1999, Coldplay had their first gig at the Glastonbury Festival in the New Bands Tent. They later went on to record The Blue Room which only had 5,000 copies pressed – but they still managed to sell some to the public. The recording sessions were originally meant for Parachutes (2000) but things got pretty messy because Martin had some pretty heated disagreements with Champion about his drumming – apparently he’d said some pretty nasty things about him. Anyway, Martin said “Three days later, the rest of us were feeling pretty low and we asked him to come back. They made me drink loads of vodka & cranberry juice to sort of remind me of what a bit of a… I’d been. Every now and again when I mess up, I feel compelled to have a big swig of that stuff”. After they’d sorted things out, they all decided to run things democratically and even set up some new rules – that anyone taking hard drugs was immediately fired – partly inspired by R.E.M and U2.
first appearance at Glastonbury
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