London Olympic Stadium 2012 (gig)

Closing ceremony poster

Up in Flames

Stage Set Up

Muse show
Venue	Olympic Stadium^[1] (Olympic Games closing ceremony^[2])
Date	12th August 2012^[2]
Location	London^[3]
Country	United Kingdom
Songs	1^[4]
Support	None (preceded and followed by various acts)
Start (GMT)	21:00^[5]
Capacity	80,000^[6]
Price (GBP)	655–1500^[7]
Sold out?	Yes (ceremony)

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First (albeit half-mimed) performance of The 2nd Law era.

Information

The performance was confirmed on August 8th, 2012 after some rumors that Muse will perform at the closing ceremony.

Additionally, allthough Morgan did not perform with Muse, he did perform with The Who.

Chris few days later talked about the performance. "I remember the day of the closing ceremony being pretty chaotic. There was supposed to be a dress rehearsal but that never happened. We went into the stadium for a quick run-through and there were thousands of people running in different directions it just looked like total chaos. They were bizarre, especially the location. We spent 12 hours sitting in the green room but the line-up was so varied I don’t think you’ll ever get The Who, Queen, The Spice Girls, Jessie J and Muse in the same place again! But the whole ceremony ran seamlessly so I was totally blown away by it and for nothing to go wrong was pretty amazing." ^[8]

The Show

Survival, the official song of the 2012 Olympics, was played the first time.

Like all the other performers in the event, their instruments were mimed and only the vocals were live. Survival was played on it's shortened version. It was the only time it was performed in this version, which was recorded especially for the performance during rehearsals.

This performance saw the debut of the Manson Carbon guitar, giving it a nickname Olympic Manson, and the first production Status CW Signature bass. The performance was also the only time Chris used coulour-coted DR strings, using British flag colours.

Several choir members were located behind the trio for show while the LED screen and the LED panels fitted on stadium seats displayed visuals. Pyro, including flamethrowers and some fireworks at the end was also present.

Controversy

During the NBC coverage of the Closing Ceremony in the US, Muse's performance was entirely cut out due to an extended commercial break and airing of a new comedy "Animal Practice". This also meant they cut performances by Ray Davies, Kate Bush, and The Who. Many outraged fans berated NBC's coverage of the Olympics on social media websites including Twitter and Facebook, Tweeting '#NBCfail' in light of the spotty coverage. Toward the end of the following day, August 13th, NBC had begun deleting these posts on their sites.

Media

The performance (along with the opening, the games itself, and the closing ceremony) was broadcasted by several international TV channels. Later the Olympics official YouTube channel posted it, you can watch the song below.

The song was also used for a posterior compilation album published by Warner, known as A Symphony Of British Music: Closing Ceremony Of The 2012 Olympics.