On the receipt of NME’s Godlike Genius Award 2016, Coldplay discussed the recent death of one of music’s legends, David Bowie. “I felt incredibly sad when I heard David Bowie had died,” said guitarist Jonny Buckland. “We’ve all loved his music for as long as we’ve known about music.”

Drummer Will Champion continued, “When you have any involvement in music he was one of the points of reference for absolutely everything, for genres and for how to be a rockstar or a popstar or whatever it was. Completely defining that. So for musicians it’s quite disorienting.”

In the below video, though, Champion reveals their past dealings with the man himself. The Coldplay lads once tried contacting Bowie to see if he would consider collaborating with them on one of their songs in which they had a “David Bowie-type character”.


Singer Chris Martin sent him a letter asking him to be involved and, according to a smiling Will Champion, Bowie replied, “It’s not a very good song, is it?” Coldplay’s reaction was to not be overly phased – Champion notes, “He was very discerning – he wouldn’t just put his name to anything. I’ll give him credit for that!”