 |
Ludwig van Beethoven, Neil Young and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys: three illustrious names who struggled to hear their own music. Young is a famous sufferer of tinnitus, the same ailment which eventually caused Beethoven to go completely deaf, while Wilson has had little hearing in one ear from an early age.
Chris Martin and Plan B can now be added to this unfortunate list. The Coldplay singer has revealed that he too has suffered from tinnitus for about a decade after being exposed to too much loud music in his youth, and subsequent years of sell-out stadium tours.
Now, along with the singer Plan B, Martin is fronting a campaign to convince young people not to make the same mistake. “I wish I’d thought about it earlier. Now we always use moulded filter plugs, or in-ear monitors, to try and protect our ears. You can use industrial headphones, but that looks strange at a party,” said Martin, whose young daughter Apple wore ear protectors at the Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park in 2005.
The frontman lent his backing to a campaign by Action On Hearing Loss about the potential danger of listening to loud music. Singer Plan B is also involved and said his tinnitus was so bad he was forced to sleep with earplugs. He said: “There’s no doubt it has been caused by years of being on stage and subjected to very loud decibels of music.
“If you’re listening to music a lot, producing music or performing live, then always wear earplugs. You’re not Superman. When I first developed it, I thought it was trains rushing by my house as I live near a railway line - it was really loud and an extremely high-pitched ringing in my ears.”
The condition leaves people with a buzzing or ringing in their ears and can be extremely painful. It most commonly affects older people and those who are exposed to loud music. About half a million people have tinnitus serious enough to affect their quality of life. In extreme cases, it can cause deafness but it is treatable.- The Independent
