Random Musings of a Curious Mind

It’s midnight on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and the apple-cheeked guitarist in the baggy tank top doesn’t know what’s coming. “Yeah, we’ve got another show in Brooklyn in a couple days,” brags Apple Cheeks to Dominic, a skinny blond Englishman in a black leather jacket. It’s early summer and the two are standing outside the front door of a small club/bakery called Cake Shop. The musician’s band finished playing a few minutes ago, and he’s still feeling flush. The sidewalk is lousy with well-appointed degenerates who look as though they’ve also got another show in Brooklyn in a couple days.

“We’re playing a place called Bruar Falls,” he says, arching his eyebrows above his thick glasses. “I’m pretty sure we’re headlining.” Bruar Falls is the size of a rich man’s bathroom.

Dominic looks up from his iPhone. “My band’s playing New York. Not till September, though.”

Apple Cheeks isn’t impressed. “Oh really?” he asks. “Where?”

A goofy grin spreads across Dominic’s face. “Giants Stadium.”

Apple Cheeks’ jaw goes slack. “Wh — what band are you in?”

If all goes according to plan, Yankee obliviousness toward Muse is about to change. In their native England, drummer Dominic Howard, 31, guitarist-singer Matt Bellamy, 31, and bassist Chris Wolstenholme, 30, have assumed the role of geeked-out rock Übermenschen. Proggier than Queen and heavier than Radiohead (a frequent, if irksome, comparison) and with a vocalist who graduated summa cum louder from the Jeff Buckley school of keening angels, the trio has a gift for dour prophecy and bombast (both on record and onstage) that has made them one of the U.K.’s most popular bands. In 2007, 140,000 punters crammed into two sold-out gigs at London’s Wembley Stadium. Equally immodest crowds witnessed headlining sets at the Glastonbury, Leeds, and Reading festivals. Eighty-five thousand tickets for a November tour of the U.K. disappeared in less than 30 minutes. Their last two studio efforts, 2003’s ‘Absolution’ and 2006’s ‘Black Holes & Revelations’, have sold five million copies worldwide. And barring an act of God or Michael Jackson dying again, ‘The Resistance’, the band’s fifth album, will easily top the U.K. chart upon its release this month. (Critical adoration, however, typically pales comparatively.)

 

In America, though, largely due to an early transatlantic stumble, Muse are still catching up. Here, ‘Absolution’ and ‘Black Holes’ were certified gold, selling a combined 1.3 million copies, with the latter reaching No. 9 on the Billboard albums chart. In 2007, the band filled arenas on both coasts, selling out the Forum in L.A. and Madison Square Garden in New York City. The leap to American enormodomes continues September 24, when Muse open the first of nine dates on U2’s current tour, which, as Apple Cheeks now knows, includes Giants Stadium. (Or, as Howard innocently referred to it, “The place where the Yankees play.” )

 

The band from tiny Teignmouth in southwest England is threatening to break in America in a way that no British band has done since Coldplay. This is not an accident.

 

“I expect Muse to be a long-running arena act,” says Tom Whalley, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., the band’s U.S. label. “I understand that it’s hard for a young act to do that nowadays, but they’ve already shown they have the potential, both in terms of album sales and concert success. So we’re going to do all we can to keep growing their career. We believe that this band can be as big as it wants to be.”

 

Which, explains Bellamy, is really, really big: “We’d like to be remembered amongst the best bands in the history of rock. It’s necessary to have sustained success in this country for that to happen. But we’ve got a lot of work to do. We’re perceived differently here.”

 

Or, as Howard puts it, “We’re the biggest band America doesn’t know anything about.”

 

A black town car is ferrying Matt Bellamy to a rendezvous with the dead. Introductions will not be necessary.

 

“When I was younger, my mother communicated with ghosts,” says Bellamy as the limo snakes its way to Manhattan’s South Street Seaport and the posed and dissected cadavers that constitute the “Bodies” exhibit. “She and my dad would invite friends over to use a Ouija board and talk with spirits. I was allowed to watch. I imagine my interest in the unknown started then.”

 

That curiosity about what lies beyond has never gone away, and it has taken a particularly sinister turn. “I’ve always been quite interested in conspiracy theory, and I still am,” says the slight Bellamy, dressed for the macabre occasion in a light-blue striped button-down shirt, black slacks, and black loafers, his brown hair styled in the irregular thatch favored by Brit rockers since 1965. “But I’ve learned to be careful in talking about this stuff. People take my curiosity as evidence of belief. I think as I get older, I’ll become more and more interested in pursuing verifiable lines of thinking rather than blurting out my opinions.”

 

Until then:

 

On 9/11: “There is evidence that suggests the powers that be knew of the attacks beforehand and let them happen. There’s a video on YouTube called Loose Change that explains it.”

 

On the media: “Why do we see gruesome images of violence coming from Iran but not Iraq? Because certain people with power have a vested interest in regulating our access to information.”

 

On the creation of human life: “It’s plausible that the building blocks of life — RNA and DNA — arrived on Earth as debris from exploded planets. If we understand alien life to include things like cells and amoebas, then it’s fair to say that humans harbor both Earthly and alien origins.”

 

On his British rock contemporaries: “There’s a fetishization of the past. Rock is too young to say the Beatles or the Rolling Stones can’t be bettered. Purely in sonic terms, they absolutely can be. If the Beatles were around today, they’d be doing what we’re doing and working at the cutting edge of technology.”

 

He’s not done. “I’m not going to name names, but I look around and see a lot of hobbyists. We’ll go into the studio for months and tour for years. People are not living for it like we are. It’s not life and death for them.”

 

Urgency has never been an issue for Bellamy. Growing up in Teignmouth (population 15,000), playing in a band seemed the only possibility for a life that offered greater thrills than eating the magic mushrooms that grew in the moors surrounding the town.

 

“There’s not that much constructive to do there,” says the singer, whose plumber father George played guitar on the first song by a British band to reach No. 1 in the U.S. (“Telstar,” by the Tornados, in 1962). “I met Chris and Dom in school, and they felt the same way. When we were about 13, I wormed my way into Dom’s band. We got Chris to switch from drums to bass. Straightaway, we all had this belief in what we were doing.”

 

A steady series of gigs in friends’ basements, during which they mixed originals in with Sonic Youth and Primus covers, gave them the courage to enter a local battle of the bands. They called themselves Rocket Baby Dolls, teased their hair, slapped white pancake makeup on their faces, smashed their instruments, and won.

 

“We beat some serious musicians,” recalls Bellamy over the din of late-afternoon traffic. “People who played Pink Floyd covers and things like that. We thought we were going there to take the piss out of the competition. To end up winning made us think that we had something to offer as a band.”

 

Soon, they drew the attention of Dennis Smith, who ran Sawmills, a nearby studio where Oasis cut Definitely Maybe, and who would record the band’s debut EP in 1998.

 

“Even when they were kids, there was a focus to what they were doing that all great bands have,” says Smith, who also served as their first manager. “They were so single-minded, there was no Plan B. They didn’t go to college. The only thing they needed was time to develop.”

 

They would get it. But not by choice.

 

Like many an opportunistic investor, Dominic Howard is thinking about snagging some Manhattan real estate. He has his preferences, though. “I’d like to buy an apartment quite high up,” he says, sitting with a member of his management team and a Warner Bros. publicist in the lobby of the plush downtown hotel. “Something with a good view of the Empire State Building. Seems a bit pointless without that, doesn’t it?”

If any member of the band is equipped to determine what matters, it’s Howard. His father died of a heart attack an hour after watching his son play Glastonbury in 2004. “When a tragedy like that occurs, in a way it compels you to go harder. You realize how lucky you are,” he says, having ditched his handlers for a B Bar, a casual bistro near the hotel.

“In a way,” he continues, “you have to treat being in Muse as a separate thing from your personal life. The trick is to not compromise either of them. Success in one does not guarantee success in the other – quite the opposite sometimes.”

Does the same thinking apply to the band’s career? “We believe we’ll headline Giants Stadium.” says Howard. “But if it doesn’t happen, there are plenty of other stadiums around the world. We’re going to play to the people who want to hear us. Wherever they may be. But seeing a backstage pass for an arena after you’ve played a few stadiums, it renders it a bit weak, doesn’t it?”

Bellamy has arrived at “Bodies” and is holding a desiccated brain in his hands. His face goes gray. He sets down the brain and wanders over to a display case containing preserved fetuses. “Well,” he murmurs, examining the fist-size hunks of flesh, “I’m glad to say I can check this off my list of things to see.”

As the blood slowly returns to his face, Bellamy recounts the band’s maiden voyage to the U.S. – and the subsequent exile. “We were ecstatic,” he says, talking about playing the 1998 label showcases in Los Angeles and at the CMJ conference in New York, which led to a two-album deal with Madonna’s Maverick label. “We’d go out to L.A. and have lavish dinners and ride limousines and then fly back home to our day jobs in England. The opportunities here seemed so much bigger than back home.”

They were not. ‘Showbiz’, the band’s glammy, piano-heavy 1999 debut, tanked. For 2001’s ‘Origin Of Symmetry’, the more aggressive and guitar-centric follow-up, the label demanded Bellamy ease off the falsetto, even going so far as to ask Muse to rerecord a single ‘Plug In Baby’, in a different vocal register. The band balked, and both sides said, “It’s not us, it’s you.” The album didn’t see a domestic release until 2005.

While this country closed, the rest of the world opened up. “[Leaving Maverick] was a blessing in disguise,” explains Dennis Smith. “They signed with different labels in different countries, which meant the problems didn’t spread.” ‘Showbiz’ and ‘Symmetry’ sold strongly in the UK and France. (Warner Bros. signed the band to a U.S. deal in 2003. “I can’t take credit for discovering them,” says Perry Watts-Russell, the A&R man responsible. “I can only take credit for hearing what the rest of the world heard.”)

“If we weren’t successful everywhere else, the problems in America might have been demoralizing,” says Bellamy, flanked by corpses that appear to have been run through a giant egg-slicer. “The only detriment has been the loss of time. ‘The Resistance’ is really our third album here. If you’d told me years ago that we’d be playing arenas by our third album, I would have been happy with that.”

But the time lag means some irritations have lingered. “We still get asked about sounding like Radiohead,” sighs Bellamy, whose voice, whether he likes it or not, often slips into high, mournful tones similar to Thom Yorke’s. “We’re past that in most places. I don’t really hear it.”

Neither does John Leckie, who produced Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ and coproduced Muse’s first two albums. “In the late 90’s, any British band that sang passionately and played guitar was going to get compared to Radiohead,” says Leckie, who’s also helmed records for the Stone Roses, New Order, and My Morning Jacket. “After I produced ‘The Bends’ I was offered so many Radiohead copycats that I intentionally looked for something different. I found that in Muse. The comparisons are silly.”

‘The Resistance’, produced by the band and recorded at an underground studio near Bellamy’s home in Lake Como, Italy (just down the way from George Clooney’s), is a further evidence of Muse’s idiosyncrasy. Among other quaint monuments to the power of high fidelity and overdubbing, the album includes ‘Exogenesis’, a 12-minute symphonic fantasia about the dawn of man; ‘I Belong To You (+ Mon Coeur S’Oevre A Ta Voix),” wherein Bellamy croons en francais over louche Riviera funk; and ‘United States Of Eurasia (+ Collateral Damage),” a sweeping string-laden mind-movie. ‘The Bends’ it is not.

“We’ve reached the point where Muse is singular,” says Bellamy, the band’s main songwriter and a featured character in ‘Guitar Hero 5’

But it’s hard to sell if the band’s New and Old World career paths can be truly parallel. “The American audience is so unpredictable,” says Kirk Hammett of Metallica, who share management with Muse. “Metallica is a metal band, and that’s that. We are easy to understand. Muse is tougher to pin down. They do pop, metal, symphonic stuff. It’s a bit of a tougher sell.”

At this very moment, viewing a collection of cancerous genitalia that resembles rancid sashimi, Bellamy has more pressing concerns. “Perhaps,” he says, thinking glumly about his dinner reservation, “Japanese was a bad choice.”

Dressed in white jeans a baby blue tee that pulls tightly across his barrel chest, a gold chain dangling from his neck, Chris Wolstenholme takes a seat by the window of his hotel room. A small bottle of Diet Coke, an asthma inhaler, and a pack of Marlboro Lights rest on the circular table in front of him. Earlier, Zach Braff was pecking at his laptop in the lobby. Later, Cameron Diaz will sashay out the front door on her way to a premiere.

Wolstenholme would rather be at home with his wife and four kids. As the only husband and father in the band, as well as the only one of the three to have never lived outside of Teignmouth, the tall, stout, broad-faced bassist is something of an outlier in Muse. (Howard is single and splits his time between London and Paris; Bellamy has a girlfriend and splits his time between London and Lake Como.)

“English music went up its own arse in the 90’s,” he says, lighting the first of many cigarettes. “All these bands singing about going down to the pub and smoking a fag – no wonder no one else cared. Muse is easy to understand. That’s why we are at a place where we can succeed in America or Russia or Chile.”

Like any good salesmen, Muse understand the value of their face time. They’ve played 140 concerts in the United States since the release of ‘Absolution’, their first widely available American album release, in 2003.

According to influential BBC DJ and early Muse champion Steve Lamacq, the band’s commitment to the road is rare. “Brits can be naïve,” he says. “Kaiser Chiefs will go over for a month and think that their work is done. You have to swallow some pride and play places that are smaller than you are used to and do it for six months. Of course,” he adds, “it helps to have a live show like Muse.”

Photosensitive epileptics be warned: a Muse concert is an onslaught of strobes, lasers, smoke, and dizzying video projections. Howard’s glittering drum raiser looks permanently ready for launch. Bellamy’s piano glows. (When Howard claims, “We don’t really get high that much anymore,” it sounds like he’s blowing smoke.)

“Since we were kids”, says Wolstenholme, “we always put our money back into the stage show. I hate it when you see bands wearing flashy clothes but have nothing to look at. We want to give a show you’ll have to tell your friends about.”

The music is appropriately epic. ‘Revelations’ “Knights Of Cydonia” and “MK Ultra” from ‘The Resistance’, explode with an imposing multi-tracked grandiosity, that makes Zeppelin seem homespun. And when the band dials back the power chords and galloping rhythms in favor of gleaming synths and a cook backbeat, as on “Plug In Baby” “Supermassive Black Hole” and the new “Uprising” and “Undisclosed Desires,” the effect is a coolly posthuman efficiency. (Expect plenty of “Resistance. Is. Futile.” punnery in the press.) If Bellamy didn’t sing with an almost vulgar level of emotional intensity, you might reasonably wonder if this music was made by mortal men.

But, as Wolstenholme explains, his band is not built for intimacy. “We tend to get better when we get bigger,” he says, flicking his cigarette ash out the open window and into the rain. “It’s always been about bigger sounds. Bigger gigs. It does something to us. We’re like anyone, — bigger is better.”

Bellamy, Howard and a man who looks very much like a wizard are listening to “United States Of Eurasia.” It’s three months before ‘The Resistance’s’ release and the band is finishing mastering at Sterling Sound studio on Manhattan’s west side. “It’s always good when he enjoys it,” says Bellamy, nodding toward Cliff Burnstein, comanager of both Muse and Metallica, whose long gray beard is paddling the air in time with the music.

Booming from the studio’s six surround sound speakers, “Eurasia” sounds massive, undeniable, Olympian. The peak comes after a stately guitar solo, when a phalanx of overdubbed Bellamys declares, “There can be only one!”

The song fades out to the sound of radio static intermingled with the yelps of children at play. Then comes the ballistic whine of a jet – or a missile. Then, nothing.

Burnstein smiles. From on high, Freddie Mercury raises his jeweled scepter in approval.

Bellamy and Howard burst into laughter.

“A nice subtle number,” says Howard.

“It’s taken ten years,” says Bellamy, “but I think we’ve learned how to be us. It’s more of an innate guiding principle. I can’t quite articulate it.”

He doesn’t have to. The meaning is made clear in every operatic wail, megaton guitar salvo, kick-drum blast, and bass explosion. It’s conveyed in every coruscating wave of stage lights at each sold-out concert. The unspoken sentiment driving the three Englishmen of Muse is one with which most Americans are familiar.

It’s actually quite simple.

Go big or go home.