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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
As Coldplay's Chris Martin cozies up to Tony Blair, a nation's once proud pop music becomes the sound of its bland, middling, centrist government.
Jun 18, 2005 | Imagine if the biggest rock band in the United States was fronted by someone who looked and sounded just like George W. Bush. Worse, by someone who was from the same social caste as Bush and who thought that everything Bush does is "BRILLIANT." So BRILLIANT, in fact, that said rock star offered Bush his cell number with an invitation for him to call if he ever felt like chatting about world poverty, or world peace, or fancied being taught how to play a mean F-chord on guitar. You would think that was weird, right? Especially if you associate rock with rebellion -- with the guitar-smashing antics of the Who or the anarchic shenanigans of the Sex Pistols -- and not with schoolgirlish sucking up to the biggest Boss Man of all.
Well, now you know how music fans in Britain must feel: Our biggest stadium-filling rock star is becoming indistinguishable from our Dear Leader. Chris Martin of Coldplay is morphing into Tony Blair of 10 Downing Street. And the rock-politics love-fest imagined above is a reality over here. Martin really did send a hand-written note to Blair, via a journalist, that said: "Dear Mr Blair, My name is Chris; I am the singer in a band called Coldplay ... I think all the stuff you're doing this year in terms of trying to sort the whole place out is BRILLIANT. The Make Poverty History campaign that you're behind is not just a slogan, it's a real possibility, and myself and most of my friends feel like you're one of the only politicians on the world stage who actually wants to achieve it." Martin also offered Blair guitar lessons and wrote down his cell number and, sure enough, he received a call from Blair's people a few days later. Are you barfing yet?
Martin is the rock star Blair once dreamt of becoming, and Blair is the kind of middle-aged man Martin is destined to become. They look alike: Both have thinning hair and possess overly toothy grins. They sound alike, speaking in the stuttering, self-effacing, slightly slangish tones adopted by the British upper middle classes, who are increasingly embarrassed by their wealth and privilege. (The singer Dido -- full name: Dido Florian Cloud De Bounevialle Armstrong -- does this "slumming it" accent wonderfully.) Blair and Martin had similar upbringings: Blair attended the solidly middle-class private school Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland (which costs each student a cool 20,200 pounds/$37,000 a year), and Martin went to Sherborne School in Dorset (22,785 pounds/$41,800). Both went on to Ivy League universities -- Blair to Oxford in the 1970s, and Martin to University College London in the 1990s -- where they founded bands: Blair was the lead singer of Ugly Rumors, a short-lived, maudlin, rock cover band; Martin set up a somewhat more successful group.
Both have quirky wives who have reportedly turned their stiff British husbands on to the spiritual side of life. Cherie Blair -- despite being a top barrister and also a devout Catholic -- has become infamous for her dalliances with New Age nonsense: She reportedly wears crystals to ward off the evil effects of computers and telephones, and in the summer of 2001, she and Tony took part in a sweaty, muddy Mayan rebirthing ceremony while holidaying on the Mexican Riviera. Martin's wife, the Hollywood glamourpuss Gwyneth Paltrow, has been known to indulge in alternative therapies such as cupping, a form of acupuncture that seeks to ease stress by manipulating the movement of blood, energy and fluids around the body. Both Paltrow and Martin are now celebrated vegans, and apparently held a vegan feast for their daughter Apple's first birthday.
Coldplay are to music what Blair is to politics. Blair gave us the Third Way, a new politics of compromise and caution that was neither full-on capitalism nor socialism, neither right nor left, but something in the middle. Likewise, Coldplay have given us a new kind of music that is neither rock nor experimental, but something closer to the middle of the road.
