Happy Birthday Will Champion

29 today. Celebrate here

[Thanks WCfan]

Some Will trivia:

Will Champion (born William Champion, 31 July 1978)

Will was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England where his father, Timothy Champion, is professor of archaeology at the University of Southampton. Having two teacher parents led him to be musically inclined. As a youth, his musical influences included Tom Waits and traditional Irish folk music. He grew up playing guitar, but also had experience on the piano, bass, and tin whistle. Before joining Coldplay, he performed in a band called Fat Hamster.

He attended the Cantell secondary school in Basset Southampton before studying anthropology at University College London, where he met his future bandmates and formed Coldplay, despite having no experience on the drums. The multi-instrumentalist picked up the drums quickly and earned fulltime duties on the band. According to lead singer Chris Martin, “Will is like a human jukebox, he’s more a guitarist than a drummer. Me and Will used to sit on the stairs at our halls of residence and he’d know more songs than anyone. You name it, he’d play it.”

In Autumn 2004, Will and Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman guested on a-ha keyboardist Magne Furuholmen’s first solo album, Past Perfect Future Tense.

Will was the first Coldplay member to marry: He married Marianne Dark, a teacher, in 2003. Their first child, a girl called Ava, was born on April 14th, 2006.

Will is a fan of Southampton F.C. and he is a season ticket holder at the South Coast team.

20 Will Champion Quotes

A lot of the time there is a lot of melancholy in the lyrics.

Will Champion

A lot of times when we play in countries where English isn’t the first language we get accused of being melancholy and miserable.

Will Champion

As soon as we played together, it was much better than anything else we’d ever heard.

Will Champion

At the end of the day, we’re just trying to prevent each other from going mad.

Will Champion

Coldplay are just four friends trying to make great music.

Will Champion

I can’t do all that riddly diddly stuff. I’m not good enough. It’s all about not playing.

Will Champion

I don’t think it’s changed a great deal.

Will Champion

I think hopefully we’ve got enough brain cells left to decide if our music is really worth something.

Will Champion

I think I’m the best non-playing drummer in the world. No one not-plays like me.

Will Champion

I think people have difficulty judging and being self-critical and being honest about how good they think their music is.

Will Champion

It is worrying, but we feel as though our first album is a representation of our musical career of the first years up to this point.

Will Champion

Optimism is the key.

Will Champion

So, if we’re happy playing the songs we have written, for as long as we can, then that is sort of the proof that they’re good songs as well.

Will Champion

Some of the really early songs we don’t enjoy playing anymore because they haven’t stood the test of time to us.

Will Champion

The first time we all played as a band, I think it was in January 1998, in Jonny’s bedroom.

Will Champion

Two weeks later, we played our first concert and had 100 people there. It was pretty cool.

Will Champion

We started with 20 songs, enough for two albums basically, but we knew that there were no second chances-you don’t get a second chance to do a debut album-so it was a very specific selection process.

Will Champion

We’re also passionate about music and very critical about the music that we listen to.

Will Champion

We’re very thankful for what we’ve got, so God forbid we start taking it for granted.

Will Champion

Well, the stuff on the album we are a hundred per cent sure that we’ll never get sick of because that was a very careful selection process.

Will Champion

When you write something it has to hit the level that you accept as being good.

Will Champion