How the Gods Kill (20031213 Kerrang article)
An article in the 13th December 2003 issue, #985, of Kerrang magazine. The transcription of this article is incomplete.
HOW THE GODS KILL
HYSTERIA. TEARS. PARANOIA. MADNESS. JUST ANOTHER DAY INSIDE THE BIGGEST TOUR OF 2003. WELCOME TO MUSE WORLD...
WORDS: BEN MYERS PHOTOS: PAUL HARRIES
"BUT YOU don't understand," screams the teenage girl grabbing her put-upon boyfriend's collar with one hand, using a lit cigarette as some sort of makeshift pointing stick towards the stage with the other. "That man over there is the one I want to be with, the man I love. I want to have his children."
And then as an afterthought, but still screaming like a well-liquored harpy, she adds: "Seven of them!"
MATT BELLAMY is misunderstood. Within 10 minutes after the band have just played to 15,000 people, their largest ever headline crowd in the UK - he's flicking through a 'Lonely Planet' guide to Alaska for a paragraph he absolutely has to show me, which turns out to be a warning that homo-sexual visitors to the remote and beautiful American state are not welcome and that everyone should expect to be bitten at some point by insects, regardless of what repellent they pack.
"It's not a case of if," he chuckles, passing the book, "but when." I'm considering an appropriate response but Bellamy's already off again, this time steering the introductory conversation onto the subject matter of depleting oil reserves in Alaska, a valuable resource that George Bush and his oil baron cronies are making big steps towards claiming as their own.
"Statistics show that there's about 50 years' worth of oil left, but obviously if things accelerate it could be a lot less," he continues apropos nothing. "At the moment there's still a vague notion that the war on terror is about something other than oil. So what I think we'll see over the coming decades is all-out war over oil - no pretence, just lots of fighting."
Something to look forward to, then.
"Yeah, totally!" he giggles like a madman - and everything you've read about Matt's slightly manic, utterly endearing laugh - is all-true. "There's plenty of expensive champagne in the fridge. Help yourself..."
Champagne? There's a lot of it about. Too much for a dressing room in the Manchester Evening News Arena, but wholly indicative of the life Muse are leading now, post-'Absolution'. Gone are the tequila-fuelled tour bus threesomes, 48-hour mushroom benders and flying about the sky with a jetpack and mad blue hair. In are girl-friends, tailored clothes, fine bubbly wines and world travel.
And fronting the entire operation is Matt Bellamy, misunderstood babbler of epic proportions, charm personified, but nevertheless whippet thin and in possession of elongated nostrils and the body of a pre-pubescent youth, yet still the only rock star worth