It’s easy to think that being in a wheelchair means the end of activities that involve intense physical movements—like big wave surfing or, in Rob O’Byrne’s case, crowdsurfing.
Rob is not someone who thinks this, however, and even though he lost all control of his body from his chest down, he still loves going to gigs, a favorite occasion from before his accident.
Rob has not let his disability impact his attendance at gigs. Being that he can sing but can only move one arm, he has taken up karaoke with a particular like of emulating the voice of Coldplay’s Chris Martin.
One of his favorite bands, they were in Dublin recently for a tour. Rob just had to be there. At a certain point, he told the Guardian, they released these big bouncy balls into the crowd. Concertgoers were having a riot playing keepie-uppie, and in the pursuit of this frivolity, two very large men fell over Rob trying to reach one.
The men were very apologetic, and decided to lift Rob, wheelchair and all, into the air to see better. A smaller stage sat just in front of the main stage connected by a causeway, and soon the two men began to carry Rob closer to the small stage, with the crowd either parting or pitching in to carry him.
“I raised my arm in the air,” Rob remembers. “Eighteen months earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to do that—I’d had a tendon transfer, which helped me get back some muscle that I lost in my arm. I was the first person in Ireland to have that operation.”
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Even though the security guards were screaming to put him down, Chris Martin helped pull Rob up onto the stage—in front of 80,000 people. Martin apparently asked him a few questions about his age and profession, then asked Rob to join with him in a simple song.
“He handed me a harmonica. I don’t play, but he said he’d look down when he wanted me to blow on it. He made up a song on the spot: ‘We’re in Dublin with Rob, he’s a PT,’ stuff like that,” says O’Byrne, who is a personal fitness trainer for people with similar injuries. “It was short but sweet.”
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After the show, he and his friends were elated going up Dublin’s O’Connell Street, Rob playing the harmonica—in which Martin had stuffed 50 euro—the whole way.
The news went viral and global, with a musician friends as far away as New Zealand calling to express their jealousy that their wheelchair-bound friend had played music with Coldplay in front of more fans than they had cumulatively played for across their whole careers.
WATCH the video below, courtesy of Coldplay and the BBC…
SHARE This Wheelchair User Who Wouldn’t Quit Going to Gigs With Your Friends…
