Coldplay Sued by Former Manager of 22 Years Over Contractual Dispute

Coldplay is being sued by former manager Dave Holmes over an undisclosed contractual dispute. After more than two decades managing Coldplay, Holmes eventually parted ways with the band, according to a report, a year ago.

The lawsuit against Coldplay by Holmes is over a contract dispute, although the legal documents and more information about the case have not been made public. The band is now being managed by Arlene Moon, Mandi Frost, and Phil Harvey, who worked with Holmes and Coldplay for many years.

Holmes first met the four members of Coldplay—singer Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion—before their 2000 debut Parachutes and became their manager shortly afterward.

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In 2021, Coldplay, which has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide and won seven Grammy Awards since the release of Parachutes, renewed its contract with Atlantic Records in the U.S., Parlophone in the U.K. and the Wasserman Agency around the release of their ninth album, Music of the Spheres.

The band was originally signed to Parlophone in 1999 when the label was under EMI. In 2012, Universal Music Group acquired EMI before Warner Music Group purchased the label in 2013, prior to the release of Coldplay’s sixth album, Ghost Stories.

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Coldplay is currently wrapping up the North American dates of their Music of the Spheres world tour, which will end on October 1 at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles. The tour will pick up again with a number of dates in Asia, beginning Nov. 6 in Tokyo, Japan, and running through February of 2024. The band will then break for several months before embarking on a sold-out European leg of their tour starting June 2024.

While the band was recently playing a show in Gothenburg, Sweden, they shared a heartfelt video message for Elton John during the last show of his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour at the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm, Sweden on Saturday (July 8). A day later, the band also treated their Swedish fans to a surprise cover of the Backstreet Boys 1997 hit “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” during their second show in Gothenburg.

Photo by James Marcus Haney / Atlantic Records