That Time David Bowie Refused to Work With Coldplay

Will Champion and Jonny Buckland from Coldplay – you know, that band we’re all embarrassed about liking back in junior high – sat down for an interview with NME, and they took a moment to look back on the passing of David Bowie and the fond memories they had of him.

Like that time they reached out to him for a music collaboration and he pretty bluntly said no. Ouch.

“We’ve all loved his music for as long as we’ve known about music,” Buckland said, and Champion agreed: “He’s one of the points of reference for absolutely everything, for genres and for how to be a rock star or a pop star or whatever it was.”

But when lead singer Chris Martin sent the rock legend a letter asking if he wanted to be involved in one of their songs which had a “David Bowie-type character,” he replied with, “It’s not a very good song, is it?”

“Okay, I’ll take that as a no,” Champion laughed. “He was very discerning, he wouldn’t just put his name to anything. I’ll give him credit for that.”

You can’t really mock Coldplay too hard, though. How many people in the world got the opportunity to be personally schooled by David Bowie?