Podcast Podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: A magical moment in Glastonbury with Coldplay's bass player, Guy Berryman

Our guest is Guy Berryman, car collector, watch enthusiast, songwriter, founder of car magazine Road Rat and bassist of British rock band Coldplay. Guy takes us back to the moment that changed the course of his career – the night Coldplay set the stage alight at the Glastonbury Festival.

Presented by your host Teo Van Den Broeke, Style Director of British GQ, you’ll hear all about how Guy and his bandmates turned a moment of anxiety into a moment of inspiration. Listen to the moment that became the turning point for one of the most popular British bands ever.

Here are a few snippets to put you on the starting line and get the adrenaline pumping. But don’t forget to subscribe to our Podcast so you can listen to the full, unfiltered episode later. The Edge is a series of conversations with extraordinary people operating at the edge of possibility. It’s about the thin line between taking part and tipping into victory; it’s about what gives us our edge and what we can do to go beyond it.

At Glastonbury, Michael [Michael Eavis, co-creator of the Glastonbury Festival] really decides who gets to headline. If he likes your band, and if he’s decided he wants to champion your band, then he will put himself on the line and do it. And it was a big risk for him to put such a young band, who’d only released one album, into the main headline slot in his festival.

I sometimes have these dreams about walking on stage, looking down at my instrument and realizing that I’ve completely forgotten how to play anything. It’s like the ultimate anxiety dream. And so before we walked on stage at Glastonbury, I remember just thinking, “Am I going to remember how to play these songs?” Of course, it’s completely irrational, but the fear kicks in and tells you that this might be a situation which could arise. You might just not be able to remember how to play any of this, and that’s a pretty awful feeling. But when the first song starts, your body just kicks into, you know, we talk a lot about muscle memory when we play live. You get to a point where you’ve played songs so many times that you don’t need to think about it anymore. Your fingers and your arms just go to the places that they’re supposed to be.

[On the lighting, staging and choreography at Glastonbury] It really set the tone for all of our shows in the future. How we wanted to use lighting and new technology in our own stadium shows. It’s something that we focus heavily on. To this day, we’re always looking at what’s available, what’s new, what hasn’t been done before.

The Glastonbury set was actually the beginning, the genesis of the way we stage our shows today. I think that Glastonbury performance was definitely a realization that we had, first of all, come quite far in a relatively short period of time. And it was an affirmation that what we were doing was being accepted by people, by listeners, by the people of Britain, by the people of Europe and so on. So I would say that was a turning point. It gave us the confidence to carry on.

It gave us the feeling that there are no limits to the trajectory of our careers as musicians. So it was definitely a huge moment in our lives. It’s a moment none of us will ever forget.

I do remember when it finished, feeling quite elated that it was over. And not only that, we’ve gotten through it without any technical problems, or anyone forgetting how to play anything. So it was a great sense of relief. And then you can enjoy the moment, look back and say, “Wow, we did that”.