Coldplay played their first concert without bassist Guy Berryman after he was struck down with illness on Wednesday evening.
The Fix You hitmakers were forced to rope in their co-producer and engineer, Bill Rahko, at their Melbourne show after the 46-year-old musician was ‘taken ill unexpectedly’ at the ‘last minute’.
Frontman Chris Martin explained Guy was literally ‘vomiting’ and promised to do the best they could with his replacement.
He told the audience at the Marvel Stadium: ‘I have to say, thank you so much for coming to our show today. It’s a shame but we waited for the last minute to tell you that our beautiful bass player Guy is very, very sick.
‘And will not be (playing) for the first time. I’m sorry for you guys down here who are waiting to see Guy. He’s not going to be able to play today.
‘We’ll have a slightly different show and we’ll do our best to make it amazing, and I know that it will be amazing because we’re in Melbourne with all of you beautiful people.’
It was the first time ever the band had performed without him (Picture: John Nacion/FilmMagic)
Chris, 47, guitarist Jonny Buckland, 47, and drummer Will Champion, 46, had just an hour to figure out what to do and decided to have Guy’s bass track playing whilst their engineer dressed up as an alien ‘looking like he’s playing bass’.
The singer said: ‘If you notice mistakes, and some problems, it’s because we don’t have our bass player. And we only had about an hour to figure it out. And we have figured it out.
‘We have a strange, alien, weird friend character playing bass, or looking like he’s playing bass. So you’ll hear Guy, but you just won’t see him. Because he’s vomiting.’
Chris later thanked fans for ‘carrying us through it’.
Taking to Instagram after the concert, he reflected: ‘Tonight was the first time in our band’s history that we’ve played a show without all four members onstage. Guy was taken ill unexpectedly just before the show. Thank you for carrying us through it.’
This comes after Coldplay’s 10th album, Moon Music, broke records on its release earlier this month, despite its initial luke-warm reception by critics.
Billboard announced the British band’s album debuted at number one on the 200 album chart, becoming the band’s fifth US number one album.
Coldplay have achieved this feat more than any other UK solo act this century, and they also became the first band to simultaneously top the US and UK album charts since 2016.
The band – who headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury earlier this year – also became the first group ever to surpass 90 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
‘To achieve this success in the middle of a record-breaking stadium tour makes it all the more impressive,’ Coldplay’s manager Phil Harvey told Variety.
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