Peter Kelly was front row in Dublin to witness Coldplay thrill Irish crowds
With four Croke Park nights at full capacity under their belts, Coldplay left Irish fans as they found them: euphoric.
It was a blend of athletic energy on stage with pyrotechnics and blasts of mass confetti around it. The shows met the year-long hype which saw 320,000 Irish tickets scooped up within minutes. Lead singer Chris Martin’s presence on stage was typically commanding. Sprints across the stage, an outstretched physique reaching for the rafters in the Hogan Stand. On a chilly September evening, the warm up act warned, “it’s a cold day for a Coldplay.” Not so, once the hits kept coming. Each churned out to drive the 80,000 capacity crowd wild. They sang back with ferocious gusto, making familiar hits like ‘Higher Power’, ‘Yellow’, ‘The Scientist’, and ‘Clocks’, resonate throughout the capital’s north inner city. ‘Viva La Vida’, ‘Paradise’ and ‘Fix You’ were joyous add-ons.
The band’s lead singer, famously formally married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow for a decade – gave the Coldplay treatment to Christy Moore’s ‘Ride On’. The Kildare balladeer had joined the band at the Oxygen festival in 2011. Their tribute to him remains, and helps charm a nation. But optimum charm is reserved on this tour for another Christy – Dignam, the late lead singer of veteran Dublin band, Aslan. They were brought out on stage to perform their seminal hit ‘Crazy World’ with the main act. Aslan legend Billy McGuinness admitted “the whole week has been such a whirlwind. We were performing in Australia last week and then back to sing with Coldplay.”
Chris Martin managed some convincing ‘cupla focal’ to the adoring stadium. He singled out from the crowd a trademark redhead Irish colleen, all of 14 years, to sing with him on stage accompanied by her tricolor. Fans remarked on Martin’s trademark sincerity and compassion to make the band’s music an influence on social and environmental good. Cue messages of social conscience, love, solidarity and inclusion beamed onto the stage as backdrop.
Savor the quartet’s emphasis on global peace -with encouragement to support those traumatized in Ukraine, Gaza, and both Russia and Israel. With pyrotechnics a plenty, large and frequent explosions and fireworks accompanied the power hits. Chris Martin frequently referred to the band’s Irish odyssey, which saw them play an impromptu set in Dublin’s Grafton Street, as countless thousands missed out on highly coveted tickets which went on sale 14 months ago and were sold out in minutes. They ranged from €120 to €180, with ‘meet and greet the band’ packages reportedly starting at €1,000.