Martin reportedly told New York journalists, “I don’t really care about EMI. I’m not really concerned about that. I think shareholders are the greatest evil of this modern world.”

In February, EMI’s share price fell after the company issued a profit warning that said numbers would be down because of the delayed releases of new albums from Coldplay and Gorillaz.

On May 17 – only days before EMI Chairman Eric Nicoli was expected to announce 2004 year end profits have fallen about 13 percent to £141 million with sales down 10 percent to £1.9 billion – Martin insisted that he felt no pressure to hurry in order to please the company or its shareholders.

“Deadlines mean nothing to us. We’ll sink the whole company if we have to,” Martin told a VH1 audience.

Martin said X&Y, the group’s first album in three years, was put back because the group felt their first eight months of recording sessions had produced songs that lacked the sparkle of earlier hits such as “Yellow,” “Clocks” and “The Scientist.”

Papers including The Daily Telegraph and The Independent soon picked up on the story, with the latter suggesting Martin’s views will be seen by many as a logical extension of the work he’s done supporting Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign, which is aimed at helping farmers and crop growers in the Third World.

It ran a quote from a “spokesman” for Globalise Resistance, one of the leading anti-globalisation groups, saying, “His comments reflect the fact that everyone has to work for someone else; everyone is a slave to shareholders and he is being exploited just like everyone else. He will have created more money for EMI than they will ever have created for him in return.”

The spokesman was also reported as saying, “Coldplay fans should respond by downloading the band’s music for free from unauthorised file-sharing Web sites.”

Faithless guitarist Steve Randall told the paper, “While I don’t expect anyone to feel sympathy for pop stars tied to lucrative record deals, he has raised a very significant broader truth, which is that capitalism and the profit motive are not the best ways to organise the world.”

EMI issued a statement suggesting it’s fairly relaxed about Martin’s opinions: “We don’t expect or want our rock stars to be stockbrokers.”