Leadership topic - Coldplay

Coldplay started in September 1996, when Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland met in their first week at University College London. Guy Berryman – a mechanical engineer and bass player 😉 joined in 1997. Will Champion joined January 1998 for their first gig as Starfish, upstairs at a pub in Camden. Yellow gave them their first UK top 5 in 2000, and Martin called Fix You “probably the most important song we’ve ever written.” …

… which Fred Knittle sang while on oxygen in the movie Young@Heart… elderly people singing modern songs. I cried through most of the movie, confirming my love of singing, and accelerated my focus on the NeuroScience of what music does with and to us.

For Mylo Xyloto, a street artist who goes by Paris painted Will’s drum kits, the pianos and the guitars in fluorescent paint, and the Live 2012 film caught it, mostly at the Stade de France outside Paris. Their Music of the Spheres tour sold 13.1 million tickets, more than any tour ever, before it paused in September 2025.

There are so many meaningful songs, we will use them to discuss Space: the room between people, the room in music, and the sky over our heads, from my years building computers for NASA, and then on Human: a chorus in its 80s, the science of a smile, a room of 150 coaches in Paris, and what music does for all of us. Come along for 14 days… and bring a little paint…