Chris Martin kisses tarmac before boarding plane in Sydney

Coldplay’s Chris Martin surprised onlookers yesterday (November 11) by kissing the tarmac at Sydney Airport before boarding a plane heading to Auckland, New Zealand – you can view footage below.

He has been seen doing a similar ritual before when he landed in Malaysia last year ahead of the band’s show there and in Indonesia on their previous tour.

Martin has never said why he kisses the tarmac on airport runways, similar to what the Pope often does, but it has been suggested that it may stem from a near-death experience he suffered on a plane in 2005.

He previously revealed that he almost died when his plane hit a dust storm flying over West Africa not long before it was supposed to touch down in Ghana.

“It was so terrifying, the plane was all over the place,” Martin told The Sun at the time. “Once a year, for a week, all this dust blows over from the Sahara Desert. You could not see a thing. I couldn’t see the ground and, as it turns out, nor could the pilot.

“I thought, ‘My daughter will have to get a stepdad.'”

Elsewhere, Martin spoke to NME recently in an exclusive interview about the band’s current place in the world. He said: “Right now, and since about 2008, if something lands in me as a song or as a good idea and it feels authentic, we’ll do it. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. It’s very liberating, and it was probably started by Brian Eno’s philosophy when he came in to rebuild us. Since then, if I find something true and exciting, then we’ll go for it. It has led us to some really weird and amazing places.”

Coldplay also recently announced that their upcoming UK stadium shows – including a record-breaking 10-night run at Wembley – will see 10 per cent of the band’s profits going to the Music Venue Trust.

While speaking to NME, Martin shared that he put his plan into action when he became aware of the current situation with grassroots venues struggling to stay open at the tail-end of last year. “I’d just assumed The Leicester Charlotte would be fine,” he told us. “I didn’t think there was an issue because I didn’t think about it. It was around COVID that you started to hear about this or that venue having to close. I thought, ‘Oh, we played all those venues, Oasis played all those venues – these are important’.”

When asked if it bothered him if venues continue to disappear, the world may never see another Coldplay, Martin said: “I think a lot of people would be happy about that! The truth is that playing live is an important connection. It doesn’t bother me that there might not be another Coldplay, but it does bother me that there might not be acts that are free to start on the bottom rung and work all the way up – so that by the time they get to stadiums, they are really good.

“You can’t just jump into that. With all of the artists that are playing stadiums next year, it’s no coincidence that all of them started in a van, driving around and playing pubs: Oasis, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, the truth is all there. Taylor Swift has probably played more than anyone in tiny Nashville venues and county fairs.”

In other news, The Snuts‘ Jack Cochrane recently hit out at people who dislike Coldplay on the basis that they “pretend they’re too cool” to enjoy the band.

“I think people who don’t like Coldplay are uncool. They’re one of those bands that everybody pretends they’re too cool to properly love, but the performance, the production and atmosphere, with everybody blasting their songs, was unforgettable,” he told The Times.

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