Coldplay rocker Chris Martin has spoken out about the group's plagiarism lawsuit, insisting: "I don't steal people's music."
The British band was dragged into a legal battle in 2008 after guitar great Joe Satriani filed suit accusing them of stealing "substantial" segments of his song If I Could Fly for their hit track Viva La Vida.
The two parties agreed an out-of-court settlement in 2009, but Martin is still upset about the allegations of plagiarism, which were also levelled at the band by several other musicians, including veteran singer Yusuf Islam.
Martin tells Mojo magazine, "That situation was really... not very nice for us. Four or five different people said that we'd stolen the same two bars. Everyone who knows us knows that we don't work like that. What was particularly upsetting about that was the level of vitriol...
"I find this topic hard to navigate because it makes me so emotional. All I will say in closing this is that I don't steal people's music, and I never will."