Guy Berryman

Guy Rupert Berryman (born 12 April 1978) is a Scottish musician, songwriter and designer, best known as the bassist of the rock band Coldplay and electronic supergroup Apparatjik.

Raised in Kirkcaldy, he started to play bass at an early age, drawing influence from the likes of James Brown, the Funk Brothers and Kool & the Gang.

Beyond music, he is the founder of The Road Rat magazine and fashion brand Applied Art Forms, which take cues from utilitarian and military clothing.

Berryman joined Coldplay with Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland and Will Champion at University College London, where he enrolled in a mechanical engineering degree but later dropped out.

Guy Rupert Berryman was born on 12 April 1978 in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland.

He is the youngest son of engineer Rupert Berryman and his wife Elizabeth, whose family were merchants and factory owners in the region.

Raised close to the Beveridge Park area, he said his childhood was one with "a huge sense of freedom", as he went out with friends and "just did whatever we wanted from a very young age", which included exploring the Raith Estate and the woods near it.

Still during his childhood, he developed a passion for watches as well, exploring the ones his father had even though "the drawers were meant to be off-limits".

Moreover, Berryman has said that listening to Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour" was a pivotal moment in his life: "I can remember being maybe six years old, having this experience. I had obviously heard music in the background, in the house and stuff, but that was the first moment that I ever connected with music on a personal level and since then I've always been a huge fan of soul music and Motown, and that's what made me become a bass player.

With his father involved in building the Channel Tunnel as a project manager, Berryman's family moved to Kent when he was around 12 years old, the same period in which he began to play bass.

During his time at Edinburgh Academy, he played drums and trumpet for the school band.

The lessons made him notice he was "a leftie who plays right-handed" and the bassist later founded a group named Time Out.

His education was continued at Kent College, in Canterbury.

He then applied for mechanical engineering at University College London, where he met Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland and Will Champion, eventually forming Coldplay.

Berryman was the third member to join the band in 1997.

Their college friend Kris Foof described him as "a quiet young man who had been put in 'Paris Block', the less populated block of rooms in Ramsay Hall. The rest of the band had been placed in 'New York Block', but not Guy, he was the outsider that the insiders all knew about, namely from his stockpile of musical instruments in his room".

Martin affirmed having a wrong impression of Berryman when they first met: "He's not as scary as he looks [...] Everyone thinks he's moody, soft-spoken is better".

Along with Buckland, they recorded a number of demos without having a drummer and, by November of that year, the trio called themselves Big Fat Noises.

Champion then completed the performing line-up in 1998.

Berryman later dropped out of his original degree and enrolled in a seven-year architecture program at the Bartlett, which in turn was abandoned to focus on playing bass.

He worked as a bartender to pay rent.

The band signed with Parlophone in 1999, finding global fame after the release of Parachutes (2000) and subsequent records.

He has won seven Grammy Awards and nine Brit Awards as part of Coldplay.

Having sold over 100 million albums worldwide as of 2021, they are the most successful group of the 21st century.

Berryman formed a supergroup called Apparatjik with Magne Furuholmen (from a-ha), Jonas Bjerre (from Mew) and Martin Terefe in 2008.

Their debut single, "Ferreting", was the musical theme of BBC Two series Amazon, being included in the Songs for Survival album as well.

Proceeds were donated to Survival International.

Two years later, the band released We Are Here (2010) for digital download on their official website and performed at the CTM Festival.

In 2011, they played at the Neue Nationalgalerie, appeared at the Steirischer Herbst Festival, then launched Apparatjik World, an iPad application in which fans helped them to produce songs.

However, Berryman has not performed with the rest of the band since 2011, consequently becoming unclear whether he contributed to the track's creative process or not.

After several versions of the project, the final one was named Square Peg in a Round Hole (2012) and made available as their second studio album.

Conversely, he has been responsible for starting tracks such as "Magic" on his own, which was released as the lead single for their sixth album, Ghost Stories, in 2014.

During the Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams (2018) documentary, the bassist mentioned the marketing campaign for X&Y (2005) was a very turbulent period for the band, as they had frequent arguments, particularly between him and Martin: "I was probably much more opinionated back then, which was a huge pain in the ass for everyone, I don't know if I was trying to get away from myself or if I wasn't comfortable with myself, but I definitely had a drinking problem".

When the band were asked about their creative process in an interview for The Howard Stern Show, they claimed that while Buckland is usually more optimistic to either disapprove or give his input on Martin's initial ideas, Berryman tends to be more critical, concluding that if he does not like a certain song, "there's no point in ever playing it again".

In 2019, the bassist founded quarterly magazine The Road Rat along with two friends and car specialists.

They celebrate classic automobiles, but on-diary stories are not covered because each issue is meant to be "timeless".

He manages the project from his garage and works as its creative director.

In the following year, he launched Applied Art Forms, a fashion brand inspired by utilitarian, workwear, and military clothing.

Berryman established their headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands and is responsible for both the designs and the creative direction, though the former role is shared with Marcel Verheijen.

In 2020, the group published a song called "Julia" on their YouTube channel.