Chris Martin Bond Demo, Coldplay Tapes Go to Auction
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- Chris Martin recorded a lost demo for the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough — Martin with acoustic guitar on cassette, never released, and possibly never even submitted; Garbage ultimately recorded the actual theme song for the Pierce Brosnan-starring film.
- Producer Chris Allison is auctioning his archive through Wax Poetics, including original master tapes for Coldplay's second EP The Blue Room (released October 1999 on Parlophone) described as "one of the most significant and direct surviving documents of Coldplay's formative years," with unheard alternate versions of Parachutes tracks Spies, We Never Change, and Shiver, plus Blue Room cut Bigger Stronger.
- Earlier cassettes in the archive include one marked "Coldplay Tracks" with nine songs — rehearsals of Shiver and We Never Change plus the previously unheard track "Ode to Deodorant" — alongside a "Coldplay: 5 Tracks" tape and live recordings from an early Coldplay gig in Chester.
- Coldplay themselves confirmed Bond influence in a fan Q&A on their website, saying of Parachutes track Spies that "the band very much had [Bond composer] John Barry in mind" and referencing The World Is Not Enough as "a Bond film in the pipeline."
- The Allison archive extends well beyond Coldplay to include tapes from the Beta Band (The Patty Patty Sound, Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos, their self-titled debut, and Steve Mason's King Biscuit Time solo project) and the Wedding Present (1987 debut George Best, 1988 Ukrainian John Peel Sessions EP, and 1989's Bizarro).
- Allison is donating a portion of the auction proceeds to the music education initiative Restore the Music.
Why it matters: The lot places Coldplay's origin story — the 1998-99 period when they were UCL students newly signed to Parlophone — directly into the collector market, and the unsubmitted Bond tape carries extra weight because the band themselves have publicly credited composer John Barry with shaping their debut-era sound.
