Q&A Muse (200806 Q feature)

Q&A MUSE
If it’s symphonic pieces and robotics you’re looking for this summer, Matt Bellamy will be your man.

Presumably muse were offered slots at various UK festival. Why pick V?
We’ve been a bit cursed when it comes to the V Festival. The last time we did it [in 2004] Chris [Wolstenholme, bassist] wasn’t playing as he’d broken his wrist, and there have been other little things that have gone funny for us. So we don’t feel we’ve quite nailed it yet. V is a nice festival, the whole vibe there is quite family orientated, and it’s more of a summer’s day out than the muddy, lairy backstage you find at Reading or Glastonbury.

You lost your virginity at the Reading Festival, didn’t you?
Er, yeah. My memories of festivals as a teenager all blur into one. There was a lot of alcohol and a lot of… loose experimentation in tents. When you’ve got a tent at a festival it can be the first time you feel like you’ve got your own place, and I’ve a lot of memories of weird things going on. Everyone’s away from home for the first time and it feels like you can make up your own laws.

A bit like Lord Of The Flies?
Yeah, it really is, but in a good way. Ideally, people don’t turn into savages and start killing one another; they take a bunch of magic mushrooms and have a good time.

Do you miss that kind of freedom now that you’re in a band?
Well, being in a band allows you to have a certain amount of arrested development, so some of that fun is still there. Even old tigers like The Rolling Stones would probably say there’s a part of them that still feels 15 or 16. That’s when you’re the most naïve, most optimistic and most creative, so it’s good to hang onto that.

What was the last really daft thing you did?
We hired a bouncy castle in Las Vegas for a party and decided to dress up as aliens. Peoople definitely lost it there. That was the last time I did mushrooms, actually. Dom [Howard, drummer] had a dog mask on and he ran off into the desert, and I ran after him, and for a minute I was actually in a Salvador Dalí painting: if you look at his painting The Elephants I was the little person at the bottom of those elephant’s legs. I’m not really in favour of drugs, but setting aside one day a year for hallucinogenics definitely opens up new doorways.

Will you be bringing the alien costumes to the V Festival?
Probably not. But we’ve got a few things lying around from the Wembley Stadium shows that we might dust down. And we’re got new ideas to do with robotics, but we’ll probably save those for the future. We’ll do at least one spectacular thing—maybe something that goes over the crowd. But then we always say these things and Health and Safety always shoot them down. Hopefully we’ll play a couple of new songs, too…

…and five minutes later they’ll be online to download.
Yeah, spread right across the net for people to judge. I’m not too bothered about that. The songs will likely change radically when we record them.

How are the new Muse songs shaping up, then?
We’re currently working on a 10-minute symphonic piece, and I’m really into Timbaland’s production at the moment, so we’ll find something more beats-based, too—not necessarily like Supermassive Black Hole, but another surprising genre-shift song.

Any simple songs?
Yes, it won’t all be so far out. We always just forget to talk about the straighter songs, like Starlight. There’s always going to be songs that are just good songs.

Do all those Best Live Band awards that Muse keep winning put pressure on you to make the live show even bigger?
Well, apart from Wembley, the gigs that stood out for us last year was one we played in Christchurch, New Zealand, and one in Belgrade, because we didn’t have production for either. WE were surprised how intense it was, with the audience really watching us rather than “the show”. So in the future we’ll try to vary things, mixing up stripped-down shows in smaller venues with the monster gigs.

You live on the shores of Lake Como in Italy. Over there are you “Matt from Muse” or “that English guy who can’t speak Italian very well”?
Ha ha. The second one. My Italian is alright, I can hold myself together around the town now. But no one knows who Muse are. Nic [Cester, frontman] from Jet is out there too and I hang around with him, but we’re both pretty anonymous.

Will you be hosting any parties on your yacht for the local glitterati?
No, the glitterati of Como are on a completely different level to me. I’m a pauper out there. It puts me in my place. I’d get doges set on me if I tried to go to those parties. [Fellow Lake Como resident] George Clooney takes care of all of that.

Have you set yourself any personal goals for the coming summer?
I’d love to win a ranking poker tournament. I’ve been playing poker for years and I really enjoy it. It’s like a really strong mind game. I can hold my own against the pros now. But the Las Vegas tournaments are oversubscribed. Apparently, the entry fee is like $20 000, and the winner takes most of it. But it’s not about the money for me, so maybe I’ll win in Lithuania.

--Paul Brannigan

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