Coldplay’s Chris Martin thanked his Indian audience on Saturday for “forgiving” the British, as the band’s tour kicked off in Mumbai.
The band, in India for the Asia leg of their highly anticipated Music of Spheres world tour, performed at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium, attended by around 75,000 people. This was Coldplay’s first performance in India after the 2016 show at the Global Citizen Festival in Mumbai.
Band frontman Martin, 47, expressed his gratitude for the warm welcome of fans, despite the British colonial rule in India in the past.
“This is our fourth visit to India, and the second time to play. First time we played a long show and we could not have asked for a better audience. Thank you for coming today everybody!” he said.
“Thank you for welcoming us even though we are from Great Britain,” he said. “Thanks for forgiving us for everything Great Britain did.”
Fans responded with both gratitude and a series of jokes, with one responding on an Instagram video of Martin’s speech, writing: “Pls free concert next time as reparations.”
A few other fans saw the perfect opportunity to ask for the return of the Kohinoor diamond, now part of the British Crown Jewels.
“CEO of fixing what he didn’t break”, a fan wrote, while another said: “Chris healing intergenerational trauma with a mic, stage and some tunes.”
Coldplay will perform in Mumbai on 21 and 22 January and head to Ahmedabad for concerts scheduled for 25 and 26 January, which are also going to be streamed live on Disney+ Hotstar.
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The band was originally set to perform two shows in Mumbai but added another after the enormous demand.
The tour has been controversial in India, as fans had to grapple with a massive demand for tickets, issues with the ticketing site, as well as severe price gouging.
The ticketing website BookMyShow crashed seconds before the sale was set to go live in September, unable to handle the traffic from over 700,000 users. Fans complained about having to wait in long digital queues, which reportedly went up to 11 million.
Shortly after the sale ended, tickets went live on other websites at several times the price. Scammers too sprung up all over social media, offering tickets as part of a lucky draw for people who would share their post.
Coldplay will also be performing in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Seoul, in addition to their India shows. They will be returning to Hong Kong for the first time since 2009 and last performed in Abu Dhabi in 2016 and Seoul in 2017.
Last year, Martin revealed that Coldplay would retire after they reached a certain milestone.
“We are only going to do 12 proper albums and that’s real,” the frontman told Zane Lowe in an Apple Music interview.
Martin said having this limit would ensure the same quality control as Coldplay’s previous albums, which include 2000’s Parachutes, 2008’s Viva la Vida, or Death and All His Friends, 2015’s A Head Full of Dreams, and 2021’s Music of the Spheres.
“Where we could be kind of coasting, we’re trying to improve,” he explained.
