AFTER three years, one celebrity marriage and a two-letter album title that ended up costing £320 million, Britain’s most successful rock band in decades revealed its long-awaited new material at a one-off gig at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles at the weekend.

Anticipation has been growing about Coldplay’s new album, X&Y, since the group decided to scrap many of its new songs last summer and go back to the studio. The delay caused more than a quarter of a billion pounds to be wiped off the market value of Coldplay’s record company, EMI Group.

EMI’s shares fell 16 per cent after it issued a profit warning last month, admitting that full-year sales would fall by up to 9 per cent, largely due to the absence of the Coldplay album. Profits forecasts, meanwhile, were cut by about £22 million to £138 million. EMI made a £178 million profit last year after selling some 260 million albums.

Coldplay’s last record, A Rush Of Blood To The Head, is thought to have generated more than £100 million for the London-based record company. The success of the Coldplay’s new album is therefore crucial to EMI’s fortunes.

Slow business over Christmas, when EMI relied heavily on “greatest hits” compilations, underlined how much the company relies on star acts such as Coldplay and Gorillaz to keep its recorded music division buoyant.

The new album from Gorillaz, the group featuring former Blur singer Damon Albarn, was originally due in time for the Christmas market. The release then slipped to March and, unfortunately for its accountants, EMI says that record as well as Coldplay’s will now arrive later this year, well after the financial year ends.

X&Y will go on sale on June 6, with the first single, Speed of Sound, set for release at the end of May. Chris Martin, the lead singer, described making the band’s third album as “one of the most difficult experiences of my life”. During the time it took to record X&Y, several similar British bands, including Keane and Athlete, have threatened to hijack Coldplay’s listeners.

However, Coldplay remain one of the few British rock bands to enjoy mainstream success in America, selling ten million copies of A Rush of Blood and winning two Grammys. This was in spite of Martin’s vocal opposition to the Iraq War and his support of the presidential candidate John Kerry.

US interest in Coldplay has been heightened by the 2003 marriage of Martin to the actress, Gwyneth Paltrow. Their daughter, Apple Blythe Alison Martin, was born last May.

“When you’re playing new songs, you tread a fine line between arrogance and, well, fear. “It’s a line we tread quite badly,” a nervous Martin, 28, explained after walking on stage in front of 6,000 cheering fans for a benefit concert in aid of a publicly funded radio station. Coldplay immediately got the audience to its feet, however, with a rendition of Square One, one of the dark, throbbing anthems from X&Y. Martin wore a black, pyjama-like outfit and red electricians’ tape around his fingers. On one hand he had drawn an “equals” sign, possibly a reference to his favourite charity, Make Trade Fair.

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