Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has revealed an unlikely start to his friendship with Shane Warne.

 

At Coldplay's first Melbourne show on Saturday, Martin dedicated 'Til Kingdom Come to the cricket star, who was in the crowd.

 

On stage Martin revealed how Warne had been his "wingman" while attempting to chat up a woman -- who didn't like Coldplay -- in an elevator when the band first became famous. However yesterday Martin claimed he'd exaggerated the incident, which happened long before his marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow.

 

"When there's 11,000 people there, the truth becomes less important than the flow of the story," Martin said.

 

"Parts of that story I was making up blatantly. I was just trying to think of a nice way of giving him props. We love Shane to bits.

 

"I just wanted to be nice about him, tell a personal story which was only really half true. But the half that was true is true."

 

The crowd at Rod Laver Arena cheered Warne as he walked backstage with St Kilda star Aaron Hamill on Saturday night. Australia is at the end of Coldplay's year-long world tour for their third album X&Y.

 

Their previous visit in 2003 was marred by Martin being involved in a fracas with a photographer in Byron Bay who had been chasing the singer and Paltrow.

 

This trip sees the singer minus his wife and children Apple and Moses.

 

"I didn't want to come back," Martin said of returning to Australia.

 

"Last time we were here sucked serious eggs. I hated it. It was horrible.

 

"I didn't want to go through another three weeks of hatred and aggression, but so far it's been the best leg of the tour."

 

Martin also spoke about the backlash surrounding X&Y.

 

"Every great band has been through it a number of times, from the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin," he said. "All of them have had people saying 'This is terrible music'. We're still quite young, we're only on our third record, I don't expect us to be faultless."

 

Martin hinted that Coldplay would explore a new sound on their next album, away from the moody piano ballads and stadium rock.

 

"We've become so good at being Coldplay that now we're going to stop making that sound. We and some other people have tried to push that sound as far as it would go, now we're free of it, we can do anything now.

 

"Whether it'll sell any records or not is another question, but we can do it."

 

Coldplay's final Melbourne show is tonight at Rod Laver Arena.

 

Source: http://heraldsun.news.com.au

I remember them being friends, there was a photo in a magazine a few months ago:

Thanks for the article and the scan! :)

 

A.

Thanks for posting. :)