Coldplay at Wembley

Coldplay are currently on a world tour, and they played several shows in London at Wembley Stadium. I went to the gig on 20 August – which was brilliant – and in this post, I will tell you all about it.

I couldn’t get tickets for an accessible space when I tried to book them because, unsurprisingly, no one answered the “accessible” phoneline. So rather than miss out. I bought some standing tickets instead. At least it would get me inside the stadium, and I could work something out there.

Everything turned out all right in the end, though. We got into the stadium, but the stewards told us that to get to the pitch, you had to go down some stairs. So obviously, that was off-limits to me.

We then went to the information desk to see if they could move us, and luckily they did. They gave us tickets for an accessible space that was opposite the stage. So it was a pretty good view. If I was down on the pitch, people would have been standing in front of me. So the view was much better than it would have been.

But the frustrating thing was that we had phoned Wembley up sometime before the concert to ask if any accessible spaces were available. They said no. Then when we turned up at the show, we found that there actually was a space available. So that could have been sorted earlier on. But hey ho, everything worked out in the end.

The show itself was fantastic, as expected. It’s the 3^rd time I have seen Coldplay, and I loved it everytime.

Fireworks were launching from the top of the stadium and the back of the stage. Everybody had a wristband that lit up in different colours. So when everybody in the stadium had their wristbands lit up, it looked beautiful. And they could be coordinated too, which was impressive. For example, there were waves of colour; at one point, the lights made some big heart shapes.

It’s a great way to involve the crowd in the show, which is one of the things I love about Coldplay. Another thing was that they tried to make the whole tour as sustainable as possible, which I think is excellent.

They had kinetic floors, which generated power from people jumping up and down on them. Also, there were pedal bikes which also generated electricity to help power the stage.

All the wristbands were made from sustainable materials and were re-collected afterwards so they could be reused.

There are many other ways they are trying to be sustainable, which I think is something the whole music industry should follow. Concerts are big and power hungry, so decreasing their impact on the environment as much as possible is a worthy thing to do.

There was a bit of a strange moment, though. Near the concert’s end, they brought on Steve Coogan, who sang “running up that Hill” by Kate Bush. Quite random. I thought it was Rob Brydon at the time because his beard made it difficult to recognise him.

They had puppets on stage as well who were meant to be an alien band called “The Weirdos you are”, and one of them “sang” a couple of the songs

Overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I look forward to their next tour.