Beats 1 Radio 2022-03-17 - Zane Lowe
An interview with Matt Bellamy after the release of Compliance and the announcement of Will of the People
Zane Lowe: I mean it's just the sound, it's the sound that is like part of my DNA now, man! Like this band, like I feel like I've known you for more than 20 years.
Matt: Didn't we start at the same time pretty much?
Zane: Pretty much the same time.
Matt: Same age...
Zane: Same age.
Matt: Yeah, whole thing, yeah.
Zane: It's totally true, I feel like...
Matt: We both come from Sheep countries.
Zane: We both understand farming. And uh, it's true man, I think back to when I was trying to find my feet and figure out what I had to say, you were 100% with your friends, developing Muse's voice, and I needed Muse, like I...
Matt: Look, look, we needed you a lot more, trust me.
Zane: No it was very mutual. I needed you because I needed to find bands and artists that hopefully I could grow with, and that's what's happened man and so...
Matt: Ah, that's amazing.
Zane: ...when I hear a new Muse song it hits different for me, it hits somewhere very deep inside where I'm like, drawn to all those experiences, and reminded how noone can do it, like you can do it, so it's good to see you bro!
Matt: Good man, thanks for having us back, it's been too long!
Zane: It's been too long, and I mean, are you having a few moments right now, where it still seems a little bit surreal, given that for the last couple of years - And we don't wanna get too locked into pandemic talk , cause we're desperate to move on - But just that reflection of like, you know, "what was that life I used to live"? And now you get to get back into it a little bit more...
Matt: Yeah, I've literally forgotten how to play a show, it's like, apparently I'm a rockstar, okay, right, so...That's what people tell me, I've seen videos...
Zane: I was gonna say, you're watching your own live videos like "Wow I got some moves!".
Matt: My son is showing me videos being like "Is that you?", and I'm like "Yeah I think so, I don't know", it's like, I can't remember how to do it, so I'm literally getting back in the gym now, like...
Zane: Well that just speaks to the conspiracy theorists amongst the Muse fanbase that you've been holograming it for the last 15 years anyway.
Matt: Exactly, it might be true, cause I kind of remember doing that stuff, so that's how far away it seems to me, so.
Zane: You know this guy's a real-life Magneto, right, like, he literally...We're talking to an actually X Man right now. I mean I'm serious.
Matt: Ah I wouldn't go that far, come on, come on, give me a break. Maybe, maybe.
Zane: I mean, you're a futurist and a very talented musician, you've always put the two things together, and you've never rested on, what I would say is, society's expectations. You're willing to push society's ideas of what is acceptable or not, and Compliance is another example of that.
Matt: Is it acceptable though, that's the question?
Zane: What, Compliance, or Defiance, or Self-reliance?
Matt: Or Self-reliance yeah, well, this last thing's gonna be very needed in the future, but I'd say, yeah, you're right. We've always tried to think outside the box, we've never really been one particular genre, we've tried so much different stuff. This album...You haven't heard the whole album yet, but it goes from like, metal, all the way to like, pop, to, I don't know, like, my first version of like Adele song, kind of like, on the piano, like, break my heart. And then like, lots of electronica. So it's like a full...
Zane: Woah, woah, woah. Did you just, like slip that in at the bottom of the bell? This guy is in congress trying to get something passed and he's like "By the way I just, uh, I've done a song, just with me and the piano, and it's, uh, my version of Adele.". It's gonna be fucking crazy!
Matt: You hit the bomb at the right moment. Am I allowed to swear on this show, or not? You're not allowed, are you? Can we say the F- word?
Zane: You're absolutely not allowed to swear, absolutely not.
Matt: Okay, the last song on the album is called "We Are Fucking Fucked".
Zane: Fantastic! Fantastic!
Matt: So I mean, that's gotta be the best finale to any album right there. It's like the weirdest, darkest, like, lost B-side of Muse's life. It's at the end of the album yeah.
Zane: But this is the image, I think, that we all have in our head, is that amongst all the seriousness and all the doom and if you can see the photo that's on the screen behind you...
Matt: Looking cheery!
Zane: ...you look like Magneto! But there is a lot of humor in what you guys do in that when you come up with a title like "We Are Fu-", you know, you're gonna literally...
Matt: We are F-in F-ed...
Zane: ...yeah, you're looking at each other like, "yeah, this is funny"?
Matt: No, of course yeah, I mean look, we're always dealing with kind of like, paranoia and anti-authoritarian stuff, you know, and in the middle of all that you have to laugh yourself out and that sort of...Knights of Cydonia was when that started you know. You can't take yourself deadly seriously all the time, so yeah, there's a lot of humor in our stuff, you know. There's a fair bit of like, 70s prog rock mixed with god knows what.
Zane: You know the moment that they became, the, quote on quote "comedy version" of themselves is when they started playing sold out stadiums. That's the thing, it's like, "We just made Knights of Cydonia, no one's gonna take this one seriously"...80.000 people for two nights at Wembley Stadium.
Matt: Yeah, that was a thing. That was quite a thing. You were there? You DJ-ed, didn't you?
Zane: I did, you were kind enough to invite me to come and DJ. It's a good room.
Matt: Yeah, good acoustics yeah.
Zane: A good room. No, it amazes, getting to the idea of what Muse represents in terms of success, that the weirder you go, to some degree, the more people want.
Matt: That is true actually yeah, I've noticed that. I've noticed that sometimes our weirdest stuff to this day is like, the fans love it, you know what I mean, tracks that are like 8 minutes long and that got bizarre Rachmaninoff piano, it's like, to this day they're still holding onto that stuff. And we tried to move on and explore lots of different genres, but there's definitely a sect of our fanbase that wants us just to stay in 8 minute prog nightmares, but I think there's a deep, deep prog album threatening to come out one day, which I think maybe could be in the future, so we'll see.
Zane: I can't wait, but nothing too proggy on this record, it sounds like you're kinda focusing on your craft in a different way...
Matt: Yeah I mean, it's weird, we got to that point where, like, the label's talking about doing things like a greatest hits, sort of like a "best of" type album...
Zane: What do you think about that?
Matt: Well, we've always been against it, we never wanted to do that, but I kind of feel like we approached like saying, let's just make one, do you know what I mean? So you know, every song on this album is kind of like the best of something to do with Muse, like, I think Compliance is our best kind of pop track we've ever done.
Zane: It's your best ever moment. And you got a couple.
Matt: Yeah yeah, and we've got a track like Kill or Be Killed, which is like the best kind of metal prog number we've ever done. It's like the best track that could've been on Drones. Yeah so it's like that, I'd say it's like the best of everything we've ever done, we just made it our best of, rather than actually doing a compilation.
Zane: That's crazy though, because that requires you to take a step back from who you are instinctively and actually put a little bit of self-awareness and analysis into what you know you're good at.
Matt: That what was weird about it yeah, 'cause we produced it ourselves, we haven't done that for the last two albums, so this time, we were kind of really analyzing everything about what we've done to-date, and really gone over what we think is the best of what we are to make this record, and it was pretty rough, it was pretty hard going, like, looking at your own bum the whole time.
Zane: Yeah, and also...Looking up each other's bum aswel, you started it! When you have to be in a room with your friends you've known your whole, kind of, young and adult life, and then you're sitting there going, you know, like, "Chris, we're trying to make the ultimate metal Muse here.", you know what that takes. And being in a situation where you don't have that tie-breaker, you don't have somebody who's in the room, who can go, "Come on Chris, you can make it a lot more rock than that!", like, how was the communication process during this, did age benefit that or was it still tough at times?
Matt: I sort of let Dom take lead a little bit...
Zane: Why would you do that, why would you do that...
Matt: I know what you mean yeah. Listen, that's why this album's taken two years okay. It's like, every decision takes like a week for him to come back to us. But normally, I just rush everything, I'm like, get it done, boom, boom, boom, with him, it's like, really slow, takes his time with every decision. And so, I allowed him to kind of like make a lot of decisions about what was good and what wasn't on this album.
Zane: What prompted that decision?
Matt: I think it was him thinking, that I probably run with it too much on previous albums, and I've sort of like, taken us into weird places, and he's sort of like, "let's just bring it back" or like, you know, "I play the drums, by the way, okay?", you know, I think it was like, making a record where all three of us on every song feel like we're really doing something, you know.
Zane: Yeah, you know, did you ever think when you started this band back in the day - this is a stock question, but I'm fascinated to know your answer - did you ever think that we'll be here, decades later, having a conversation and you'd still be making your best work? Did you ever imagine it, was that the goal?
Matt: No, I mean, I was hoping that'd be the case, but I didn't expect us to be making what I genuinely believe is our best album. And I probably say that every time, but I really do think that, so I'm pretty surprised about that, and very happy and proud of it yeah.
Zane: How important was taking some time to do that, because, there was a flurry of activity for a long period of time, and then I feel like you went into the era of "know", where you're able to say "eeh, we don't have to say yes to everything, we don't have to do every tour, we don't have to go out and take every opportunity, we can actually build lives for ourselves; very important, we have girlfriends, wives, families, whatever it takes to get some roots to the ground." How important was that, do you think, to the survival of the band?
Matt: I think it was really important to go back to self-producing again, we haven't done that since The 2nd Law. We self-produced Resistance, and then 2nd Law was the one where we kind of lost the plot and just sort of went all over the place, you know. I love it actually by the way, that album, it is pretty mental. And so we worked with Mutt Lange, and then we did our last album, we produced it with a whole bunch of different producers, and so I think it was really important to take a lengthy period of time where we could build the studio again and start from scratch.
Zane: And this is your ninth studio you guys have built?
Matt: No, it's only second one that's been ours. And it's been right here in L.A. in downtown Santa Monica.
Zane: Do you still have Como?
Matt: No, got rid of that a while ago.
Zane: Jesus, that bunker dude...I went to that place once, man, and I got to hang out with them in Como and it was like, you're on the banks of this ridiculous lake, which is one of the most picturess placaes on Earth.
Matt: ...and then there's a massive bunker underneath...
Zane: Yeah, and then you sort of open the door on your walk 500 metres into the mountain.
Matt: I basically built the survivalist bunker like 10 years ahead of time, you know what I mean, I was like too ahead of my time at that point, it's like, I need it now.
Zane: I just remember going into Chris's bass room, and him closing the door and me thinking "this is not a good idea". And then he just fires up his nine bass amps and then just hits one note and I looked down and I was like six inches off the ground, just vibrating.
Matt: That's just...Yeah, I mean, Chris has that effect on everyone, that's it.
Zane: So you got your studio in downtown L.A. and, you know, taking your time to do that, being available for family, being available for studio, this is the life, right? This is the life you probably hoped Muse would be able to fit into?
Matt: Yeah, I mean, honestly the whole time we were making this record - such a relaxed pace. We went to Abbey Road in London a lot aswell during the summer last year. Honestly, there was moments where we were saying "we love this so much, let's just become The Beatles in 1968" or whenever it was, "and just make albums", and just stay in the studio and never tour again.
Zane: Really? You had that conversation?
Matt: Okay, maybe not never, but we had the conversation of like just making lots of albums. +Cause once you get the juices flowing, it's hard to, like, then, down the tools in the studio and get totally geared up with getting all your crew back, all the gear...
Zane: Well also, this is the first era, Matt, where you can actually do what The Beatles used to do, because there were less checks on balances when The Beatles were making records, it was like, "we've made two albums, can we just put them out", and Brian Epstein's like "yeah, let's put them out", right, or Cosby, Stills & Nash were like, "we wanna put Ohio out instead of the single we have, just do it" and then everybody gets into this rhytm of like "no you got your position number 64 out of 1000 albums coming out this year, here's your date, stick to it", and now I feel like - and this really speaks to what you're saying - you're in the distribution area, you have some control over that. Yes, you're still partner with business. Surely you must be thinking, "how can we subvert"?
Matt: Yeah, we've always looked with massive admiration to people like Prince, Queen, The Beatles, who just made such a large amount of material in a compressed period of time, and obviously, they weren't touring necessarily the way that bands or artists do nowadays, so, we had that conversation a lot, it's like, "how about we just don't tour and make three albums and then hit the road", and we're still debating that at the moment to be honest.
Zane: How many albums have you released now, I've lost count?
Matt: How many we've done? I think this is our ninth one that's coming out yeah.
Zane: Ninth album...That's crazy.
Matt: But didn't Beatles do like, nine in like a year or something?
Zane: Yeah in like three years. Did you watch Get Back?
Matt: Oh, it blew me away that thing. I mean, honestly, that's what made me think this way. I was watching that going like "look, they're just making music non-stop".
Zane: And, if it doesn't make you, like, start a band, or be in a band, or re-ignite your band, or change something about your band, then what are we doing.
Matt: I know, and it's just like...Paul...Paul...Oh my god, like...
Zane: I mean, that moment when he's writing Let It Be...
Matt: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure, every band that's tried to make a record, there's so much you can relate to in that whole thing.
Zane: Just watching all the Beatles, who are, in their own right, through their own identity, just the most legendary, creatives, walking into the room, the other three looking at Paul. And John's just like "I don't know what you want me to bring here, look what you're writing"
Matt: Exactly. But also, his desire to keep the band together, that's what was interesting to me, and that would break my heart, you know what I mean, 'cause it's like, "Oh my god", like...So I'm sure back in the day the perception of him, was it, but like, you can see it now that he was like "boys, come on, let's just make another record".
Zane: Have you ever had a moment where someone in a band, one of you, had to strike an emotional intervention and say "guys, come on"? Has it ever got to a point, where...
Matt: Yeah, me and Dom have had a punch-up on a jet, I mean. But, uh...Chris though, Chris though is just....
Zane: No, no, no, we're not getting to Chris yet. You had a punch-up on a jet?
Matt: It was like one of those play fights that turned into a real fight and he just...
Zane: On a jet?
Matt: Yeah, and he just like, pinned me down and had my face on the ground at one point. And he's very good at controlling my weird outbursts, and he just pushes me down in some judo move and just holds me on the ground. The great thing about Chris is, Chris is just so big no one even dares...
Zane: Yeah, no one's going...No...
Matt: Yeah so, basically, whatever he says goes, you know what I mean. So he says like, "oh, I don't fancy that tour next year", "okay sure." or like, "I'm not sure if I wanna work in this studio" it's like "yeah, okay." Yeah, he's not a guy you wanna argue with, trust me, yeah.
Zane: You know, I just wanna get back to the jet part of it, so, the thing about fighting...
Matt: ...which was really bad by the way, I'm trying to cut on that, that was back in the mid-2000s I think, yeah...
Zane: ...yeah don't do that. If you've ever been on a private jet, which is one of life's great, kind of, treats, if you ever get a chance, and you feel comfortable doing it, you should, I say that because, you know, there are mis-shoots with jets, they're small, there's not a huge amount between you and the ground, and turbulence is multiplied by 10. Literally, like, if somebody farts in that thing you're bouncing around in it.
Matt: Especially if Chris does...
Zane: ...that's a whole another conversation. But I've been in that bunker and with the door closed and concrete, it's a whole another thing. But, fucking fighting in a jet bro, like, imagine if it had gone really serious, you could've really, like, that's bad.
Matt: I could've rocked that, I could've rocked the jet. But yeah, no, we've had fallouts as everyone does, you know what I mean, but we've always got through them, we're like brothers, like brothers from another mother, that's it.
Zane: I love it. Man, you know we got limited time on this one, which is why I've already booked you for a longer conversation later.
Matt: Yeah I didn't realise we were doing that, I thought we were doing that today, so we'll come back, and we're gonna send you the new album...
Zane: I was told you had 20 minutes, and so I was like...
Matt: Yeah I'm going...I got something, but anyway
Zane: Yeah, so he's gonna bounce out, 'cause he has, quote on quote "something", but that's okay, 'cause I've already locked in time...
Matt: No but, you gotta listen to the whole album, and then we'll do a chat about all the tracks.
Zane: Exactly...I'm not gonna listen to the whole album until you give me a whole hour. It's a trade.
Matt: I think you will enjoy it, I think you're gonna like it.
Zane: I can't fucking wait. And it's great to see you man. And we're gonna play Compliance again. And, dude, so good to see you, thanks for rolling in and saying hi, enjoy whatever you're gonna do the rest of your day!
Matt: Cheers!
Zane: Well man, we live in the same city, see you soon!