24 hours with Matthew Bellamy (200405 Kerrang article)

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This transcription may be inaccurate as we have not seen an original copy.

"I'm not a very good cook. I'm pretty good at making pasta, I like to make it from scratch, with flour and egg and all that kind of thing. It's my favourite food, and homemade pasta's really cheap and nice and really quick to knock up. Get some flour, it's like 100 grams of flour and one egg per person, mix it in your hands together real fast, stick it in the machine, the manual machine, wind it through, get a load of spaghetti and you're off. Bit of seafood in there, bit of tomato sauce, whatever you want. I make ravioli as well. Out of a week I probably eat pasta four nights."

"I've got a flat in London, I've had it for a long time, but I haven't actually had a chance to live in it much. Any time I've got off I spend on holidays. Well, not holidays, but my girlfriend lives in Italy and I spend time with her family and stuff. It's really only in the last few weeks that I've felt [the flat] was home. I've bought a few rugs and posters, it's got a bit more personality to it now. My days recently at home in London, I've been getting up every day and going to the IKEA store and buying loads of furniture and then coming back and building it all; and then you realize there are bits missing and go back again [laughs]."

"If you were to go into my flat you'd see well, you'd have to walk up four flights of stairs to get there, it's on the top floor of a regular house in London. I've got a room that's full of maps: a map of the world, map of Italy, map of England, map of Europe, and city maps of London, really detailed maps- I've got problems with direction [laughs]! And I like to study maps to try and get an idea of where I've been." "I've got another little room with a piano and a mixing desk. I write a lot of music at home, especially those first few days when I get back from being on tour. All the ideas that come to mind on tour, you just try to remember bits and bobs and make little demos on a cassette recorder." "Go up the spiral staircase to the bedroom, and that's kind of my girlfriend's zone, she's turned it into a bit of a female boudoir [laughs]. It's not really my kind of place. Well it is, I like sleeping there, but it's all her kind of stuff and it's full of clothes and shoes. My clothes are just strewn around the house in general really".

"I've got a load of fish, tropical fish, I like looking after them. A few of them always die when I go away on tour [laughs], you've gotta come back and clean out the dead ones! That sounds pretty rough doesn't it?! No I've got an automatic feeder so that usually works." "At night in London I'll probably go out and watch a gig. Living in London's good 'cos there's always bands playing: there's always classical music concerts, there's rock bands, there's jazz, there's always something to choose from. I only get recognized if I go to a rock concert. I get recognized quite a lot so I just wear a fake beard and a pair of fake glasses [laughs]. Have I ever really worn a disguise? Yeah once or twice, when I went to a Strokes concert at the Brixton Academy. I didn't go to the extreme of wearing a beard, but I just had a pair of fake glasses on."

"I don't think I'd move away completely from London. But the truth is I want to move to New York, maybe next year, maybe next May. I've always wanted to spend 6 months or a year living there, maybe write some songs, get inspired by the area and make the next album there. But generally, I've moved house quite a lot: from the age of 14, I was living with my mum and my nan and we used to move house every six months, so I kind of got used to moving. I kind of like change, so whenever I feel grounded I get the desire to move on quite quickly. Has this helped me cope with touring? Well, I think being on tour's not as difficult as people think it would be, because you're traveling around usually with your friends, and one of the things that makes you feel at home is your friends. You can feel at home in very faraway places, just 'cos you've got all your friends around you. I think that's quite a good thing."

See also

• Original transcription

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