Blur's Alex James 'Turned Down Coldplay' For His Record Label

There are dozens of ex-music bosses around the country drowning their sorrows in the boozer over how they “almost” signed a huge band. Pop history is littered with examples - The Beatles were initially ignored, David Bowie struggled for years to get a deal and Simon Cowell even turned down Take That. Now Alex James from Blur has revealed he is in the bungling music bigwig’s club for failing to sign Coldplay when he had a record label for a short time in the late Nineties.

“I went to see Coldplay with Damien Hurts and Joe Strummer — my fellow record company executives — and we all thought they were ordinary and passed on them. I think everyone did, except Parlophone, just like happened with The Beatles — and Blur. Then again, I still think Coldplay are a fairly ordinary band, although the singer is good. It’s quite hard to make a succinct three-and-a-half-minute pop song. The trick, almost no one in town can do, is to write really good words to simple melodies.”

Read the full story and discussion at the Coldplay forum here