ninemsn 2007-02 – Interview
A video interview by ninemsn. This transcription is not accurate.
Bellamy: My name's Matt.
Howard: And my name's Dominic.
B: And we're from the UK, playing in band called Muse.
Q: Why the name Muse?
H: We had some terrible names before that.
B: Yeah, Rocket Baby Dolls, Carnage Mayhem
B: Gothic Plague. That was a good one. [...] I think we chose this name because we, urm, the town we came from - there was nothing much going on in there, and it was like er, a bunch of like, people just started getting into bands and [...] someone said they thought like there might be a Muse hanging around our town, which kind of inspired me to want to make music you know, so that's where we heard the word first, then we thought well, why not then.
Q: Do you have any pre-show rituals?
H: We always get nervous before we go on stage. I think, most bands do. It's nice because, as soon as you get into the first song, all that nervous energy turns into physical energy.
B: A foot massage really helps, I've got like this electric machine that you put your feet in, and it massages your feet, and it really helps with jet lag as well.
Q: What's with the conspiracy theory obsession?
B: Urm, there's some serious elements, but I think it's er, conspiracy is like a slippery slope you know, and once you start getting into that realm, before you know it you er, you start believing all sorts of stuff that is on the fringe of reality. [...] There's quite a lot of stuff that we take as fact from the news, which is actually quite massaged and manipulated to kind of serve an agenda [...] The less serious side is where you start getting into the realms of aliens and that kind of stuff you know. And the queen being a lizard. I like that one.
Q: Do you know about "Pornogenic" Matt, Dom and Chris?
H: I think it, original it started, it was meant to be pictures of us playing on stage pulling, you know, weird faces you do when you're playing rock music, that kind of suggests you look like you're having sex. That's where it started, and it's just turned into [?]
Q: What is your favourite album to shag to?
H: Are these fan questions?
B: It's tough. It depends on the woman, depends on the location, depends on, urm, the vibe. You know, it depends on the role play, it depends on the costumes involved you know, all those kind of things. You know, in some situations slip might not be suitable.
H: Yeah right.
B: In some situations maybe a little bit of, you know Bing Crosby sings White Christmas, you know, you know what I mean.
Q: Who in the band is the biggest mess on tour?
B: I think urm, messiness on tour, I think we all have our turns. I started off this tour quite messy but, I think I'm cleaning it up quite a bit now. [...]
H: This tour I was very messy. The Big Day Out tour. [...]
B: I think we have a fair share.
Q: What theme will you develop for your next album?
B: We haven't made any definite plans for the album yet, because at the moment we're still touring, we're kind of in the middle of an overall tour that's been going on since June last year, and we'll been touring all of this year. [...] I know one thing, we might produce it ourselves, or try to produce bits of it ourselves, and probably record quite a bit of it at home, build up [?]. That'll be the first time we've done that, so that'll be a definite change.
Q: Favourite Big Day Out band this year?
B: It's had quite a few good bands this year, The Killers were pretty good. My favourite would be, ur, I don't know, I mean, Jet, Killers.
H: Killers were good, I saw them the other day.
B: Hot Chip?
H: Hot Chip are a good one. I haven't seen them play on this tour, but they're great live.
B: Urm, it's difficult to tell.
H: The Streets were great.
B: The Streets. A bid between Jet and The Killers maybe.
H: Yeah, I saw The Killers the other day and they were brilliant.