Chris Martin kisses tarmac before boarding plane in Sydney

nme.com:

Coldplay’s Chris Martin surprised onlookers yesterday (November 11) by kissing the tarmac at Sydney Airport before boarding a plane heading to Auckland, New Zealand – you can view footage below.He has been seen doing a similar ritual before when he landed in Malaysia last year ahead of the band’s show there and in Indonesia on their previous tour.Martin has never said why he kisses the tarmac on airport runways, similar to what the Pope often does, but it has been suggested that it may stem from a near-death experience he suffered on a plane in 2005.He previously revealed that he almost died when his plane hit a dust storm flying over West Africa not long before it was supposed to touch down in Ghana.“It was so terrifying, the plane was all over the place,” Martin told The Sun at the time. “Once a year, for a week, all this dust blows over from the Sahara Desert.

You could not see a thing. I couldn’t see the ground and, as it turns out, nor could the pilot.“I thought, ‘My daughter will have to get a stepdad.'”Elsewhere, Martin spoke to NME recently in an exclusive interview about the band’s current place in the world.

He said: “Right now, and since about 2008, if something lands in me as a song or as a good idea and it feels authentic, we’ll do it.

It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. It’s very liberating, and it was probably started by Brian Eno’s philosophy when he came in to rebuild us.