It was a blast from the past as “Back to the Future” star Michael J. Fox joined Coldplay onstage for a surprise performance at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England.
The retired actor, 63, has been a devoted Parkinson’s disease activist since he was diagnosed with the long-term neurodegenerative disease at age 29. Fox, who now uses a wheelchair, played a guitar in his lap during “Humankind” and “Fix You.”
Fox had previously performed “Johnny B. Goode” with Coldplay after the band brought him out for another surprise appearance in New York in 2016.
The first act to headline the Glastonbury music festival for a fifth time, Coldplay revealed to the audience Saturday that Fox had inspired the British rock band’s formation in the first place with his performance as teenager Marty McFly in the iconic 1985 film.
“The main reason that we’re in a band is cause of watching ‘Back to the Future,’” frontman Chris Martin said during the show. “So thank you to our hero forever, and one of the most amazing people on Earth, Mr. Michael J. Fox.”
Martin led the crowd as they sang along to the band’s 2005 hit “Fix You,” during which he snuck in a reference to the movie.
“Go, Johnny, go, go, go,” he sang during the interlude, a callback to Fox’s McFly performing Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” at his parents’ high school dance.
When introducing him to the audience Saturday, Martin described Fox in a singsong voice as “one who just totally rocks, with his Chuck Berry riff and the way he punched Biff,” the trilogy’s main antagonist.
Before retiring from acting in 2020, Fox’s decadeslong career earned him five Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Grammy Award.
He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 with the aim of finding treatments and an eventual cure for Parkinson’s disease.