What began as a one-night Los Angeles prank became a 40-year argument between funk, punk, melody and nerve. The surprise is not that the Chili Peppers survived the friction - it is that the friction became their sound.

A six-day solo recording became a 30-year rock institution. The useful secret was never reinvention for its own sake, but the stubborn decision to begin again - loudly, together and in public.
Four students found one another in London, survived their own earnestness and turned private yearning into a public utility. Nearly three decades later, Coldplay's brightest trick is still collective: make the enormous feel oddly intimate.