MCM Brussels interview (2000-01-07 pre-gig interview)

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This is a transcript of an interview conducted before the 2000-01-07 gig at the Brussels Botanique.

MCM report by Alexandria

Interviewer: Hello you, how are you doing today? Have you heard of Muse? Well, Muse is a British band that is on the up to date and probably the best new guitar band in Britain. We met the three fellows backstage to the Botanique, so check it out, this is all about Muse.

Matt: Yeah it's quite nice to get recognition because we're doing something, we put a lot of work into that, and us, we've been playing music for years and years and years, so it's nice to have some feedback. I think everything in life is like that, I think we've known from the start that if anything does happen it's gonna be temporary. It may last two years, it may last ten years, but I think either way I think that's just the way life is, you've just gotta accept life.

Dom: We just try not to get too influenced by a lot of the media as well, and hype and stuff like that, so the plan is just to do what we do, do it our way.

Interviewer: Do you meet a lot of peoples since your beginnings in music, a lot of bands, is there one you get along with?

Matt: Yeah, uh Pavement. Yeah we toured with Pavement around France and that, uh, was one of my favourite bands. It was actually their last tour before they split up so I was really pleased to do that tour. Uh, who else, Skunk Anansie? Did a tour with them, really good band.

Dom: Uh, we did some stuff with Chili Peppers in France, Germany, which is really good. And uh, Skunk Anansie around England, Feeder, stuff like that. We've been together for five years before like we got signed or anything like that, so, and that whole time it was just like a sort of glimmer of belief that it might go onto other things and just really believing in the music and believing in what we do, so I think that's it.

Matt: I think what I've learned is that this first album is purely self-expression and it's totally very personal and very much like explaining how I feel about things over the last few years. I think, um, it's important not to have to go on that way because we have a certain success with self-expression, it can be dangerous because you have to awaken even darker, deeper emotions for the next album. I think that's why a lot of artists have died young, I'd rather move into other areas and take on characters of other people and explain other people's emotions rather than just my own. I usually come up with some music and then we sort of put it together and when it all gels together, then I try and understand where that sound came from and why it is sounding that way, and I try and put that into words, as simple as possible.

Interviewer: Oh.

Matt: Um, so, yeah. I'm not really, it's more the music for me and the melody, rather than the lyrics. I think that's more important. (Cut in the interview feed), uh piano and boogie woogie, stuff like that and I used to try and work that out. And then I stopped playing piano when I was first started playing guitar. And then over the last year or so I started writing songs on the piano because I found it easier to work out chords, like some more unusual chords you can find on a piano that you can't really find easily on the guitar. Uh, so, I like it for writing songs yeah. I think it is difficult to know that you are, expressing yourself, or awakening things that are not truly yourself, they're just dark. I think it's important to keep a, a sort of grip on reality, you know. For me? It's uh, the conflict between evolution and de-evolution, and the conflict between the future and the past, and good and evil, fascism and communism, it's the difference between the two extremes. Um, that's what emotion is. The meaningful thing that's happened to me in terms of music, uh, I saw Tom Waits do a concert in New York, he changed my view of the future. He gave me hope to grow old with music.

Interviewer: Really?

Matt: Yeah.

Interviewer: Oh.

Dom: We're all into technology, I mean Matt does a lot of email stuff, he's really uh, connected in. But uh, yeah the internet's just a really good use for communication with the whole world isn't it, so.

Matt: Yeah I think it could be good, I think it's a bit slow at the moment, it's not very fast. I think the idea of it, the concept is very very good, but I think it's uh, maybe in a few years from now it will be better, a bit more accessible, a bit faster. I find it's, I mean I was into it at first, but I find it a bit slow and I'm just waiting for the technology to speed up. But whether it's a good thing or not, I don't know, it's just like TV wasn't necessarily a good thing for the whole culture, you know, so it could just make things even more... fake. We try to keep the assistance that computers can give us to a minimum, to almost nothing, so I think it's much more difficult to try and physically do something yourself, and get a computer to fix it. Because you can nowadays, nowadays you can get, you can play things on the drums, on the guitar, vocal, and get a computer to repair all the mistakes, you know, but mistakes is what makes us who we are. So um, I keep the mistakes in there.

Interviewer: And was it a dream-come-true to make a living being creative?

Matt: It's been a pleasure so far.

Dom: It has. (Laughter), I don't know, it's been good, I mean it's been a long time. Those five years and then, sort of this is, it felt like the right time to suddenly start doing it full time and start doing gigs every day, and talking to people on TV and press, and stuff like that.

Matt: My name's Matthew.

Dom: My name's Dom.

Chris: My name's Chris.

Matt: And we play in a band called Muse.

Dom: And you're watching MCM.

See also