One of the crew on Coldplay’s long-running Viva La Vida tour keeps a running blog and has proved — over the space of 13 months and 90 posts — to be a pretty reliable reporter of life behind the stage and inside the tour bus.

So we take at face value Roadie #42’s account of what was for him the highlight of the band’s performance at Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheatre Monday night:

“I’ll be honest with you folks, the only thing that mattered to me tonight was the presence of one Steve Jobs. I’m a confirmed Apple devotee and I really cannot imagine doing the job I do now (or even having got into this line of work) without my Macbook Pro (and all the Powerbooks that went before it). Creating these tools and putting them into the hands of folks like me was the vision of this man…

“I spot Steve chatting with Dave Holmes outside the dressing room and suddenly feel like a star-struck teenager. In order to get the gall up to speak to the guy, I down a double espresso. The mixture of caffeine buzz and feeling like a cheesy little fanboy means that all I can manage to say to him is “Thank you so much”. I realise that I’m quite simply making a tit of myself and so excuse myself as fast as I appeared.

“With that, I suddenly have sympathy for every nervous and excitable kid that shakes hands with the band at a meet and greet. Time to hit send and fold up the laptop.”

Roadie #42’s encounter is the first reported public sighting of Jobs outside the Cupertino campus since his return from medical leave last month.

Photo courtesy of Daigo Oliva. Thanks to MacRumors for the tip.