Channel V (march 2000)

On March 10th we caught up with Muse, an eclectic UK band who won last year's Brat awards - England's music version of the Peoples Choice (or gulp... The Logies). Riding on the wave of this success, the lads decided to visit the world's largest island and chat about why their band is called Muse, why they'd never cover Oasis and why pretzels are the perfect substitute for a liver cleansing diet. Okay so maybe they don't talk about pretzels - but I'm sure it makes them thirsty!! Read on to find out Well here we are on the rooftop of the Hotel New Hampshire in Sydney as the beautiful city spreads behind us. We're here with the band Muse - which is very good. First time in the country - probably first time around the world - Matthew, Dominic and Chris: guitar and vocals, drums and bass. Muse how are you? Welcome. Muse: Yeah not too bad. Matthew: How are you? Not too bad. Did you ever think you'd make it to Australia? Matt: No It's a good sign I think. Cause Australia's a good place and I've got family here in Sydney so to be here is quite strange. Especially 'cause the bands that brought us here are going to travel a lot, so yeah it's pretty. What kind of route has brought you here? Where have you been but apart from outside your home town? Dominic: Everywhere. Yeah a lot. We've been uh concentrating around Europe, been to the States a few times and we were just out in Japan before we came here - it's been a nice little round trip. Is that where you scored the watch? Chris: Yeah the record company bought us all watches Wicked. Better than going to China and getting a Mao watch! So I wonder how you settled on the name after you had 'Gothic Plague' and then 'Rock Baby Dolls' and then 'Fixed Penalties'? Is that a soccer term? M: No it's a thing you get in England when you park illegally. They stick a thing on your car that says 'fixed penalties' - like a clamp. Yeah but anyway Muse Why'd we call the band Muse? D: Because um what we do... we're like... those art lessons with some teacher who was talking about muses - the muse. To be inspired... It's all about Greek mythology and stuff like that. M: There was this time when I was hanging out with these three girls who were like pretty hot. And they were like um... They'd sing really weird music and I'd do the guitar, you know a couple of favourites, not very well cause I was pretty wrecked. And they used to like hanging around and they used to call themselves 'Muses' you know? M: And I used to like play all the time, they used to sing their stuff and it used to be a really weird experience I had with them. I can't believe we had that, sort of. And um, so I think that's why we called the band 'Muse'. I like the word. It's a short name, I love short names. And the album 'Showbiz' is about to be released here in Australia - it's been released elsewhere - it's coming out here at the end of the month, the 26th of March. Showbiz - is that kind of saying that making music or being in band is more now than just making music? M: The reason we called the album 'Showbiz' - there's a lot of reasons really. I think the first most basic reason is that there's a song on the album called 'Showbiz' which was our favourite song at the time. It's like a live performancy sort of... It really represents what we are live - cause a lot of the other songs sound like a five piece or six piece cause we put a lot of overdubs on. But we wanted to sound like raw, so our first album, we called it 'Showbiz' cause we wanted people to focus on that song. The other reason though is that some influences we have are like quite showy - that's Tom Waits, the way he puts on a show and stuff. There's quite a bit of Broadway in what we do. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's interesting you say there's a lot of overdubs in some of the songs because you have a huge sound for just three. Like have you snuck extra people in somewhere? You're obviously doing extra stuff on some tracks 'Uno' and 'Muscle Musem' there's keyboards and.. M: Actually 'Uno' it's just raw isn't it? D: Yeah it is pretty raw. It's different, there's quite a few tracks on the album where we experimented with sounds, keyboards n things... Replaced lines with different instruments. But the album's like half the picture - when you see us live you get the whole thing. Live is a lot rawer, it's just the three of us and everyone's exposed, so you've sort of got to work a lot harder to get that sort of sound. Right. I can't wait to hear the album just going on those two singles - they're awesome! You don't seem to have that much of a profile in Australia, is that kind of different back home? M: We're sort of doing well now in England and most of Europe. Well I dunno, depends on who you ask... Ask the bloke who set us up - he's set up one, two thousand ... two thousand in the clubs. So that's really good cause playing live is really important. It's my favourite thing. So it's nice to get to play to large audiences - I wouldn't like to play really big gigs you know, but I think like round the thousand mark that's like a perfect type sort of size. Cosy. Did you have anything to do with the Brit awards? Did you watch them or go along? M: Not the Brit awards no. There is a thing called the 'Brat Awards'. Uh huh. Did you go to that? Yeah we won. We won an award for best new band. Do you know 'The Brats' do you?? I've heard of them yeah. M: Yeah it's the one where it's voted for by the public. Like the Brits is the industry one and the Brats is the public votes one. It means more. M: Yeah - I'd rather win that one than the Brit one. So what was that for? M: Best New Artist. We beat Eminem - would you believe it? And Macy Gray and all these strange pop acts! Isn't that weird - cause you've been in bands together for almost 10 years I suppose? M: Yeah, it was a weird day, wasn't it? D: It was a strange day but ah yeah, I don't think sort of... No one really knew who we were. There were people like from the industry and all sorts of bands and it's like "MUSE!" and they're like "Yeah! Who's Muse?" But it was voted by the readers so, they know who we are. Have you suffered any slammings yet? Cause the English press seems to be very harsh - very up and down. M: We had a little slam it was very... When we first started... About a year and a half ago when we first released our record we were under own record label. They got, you know... slated by the press - by the English press - but now they all kiss our arse and it's like weird you know. They just go through stages of liking bands, not liking bands. Right now it's a good time for us and they're really behind us - they're putting us on the front covers n stuff. But we'll see, that'll probably change again in a few months. That must be really daunting because in Australia most of the media and the press seems to be pretty much behind us - you know, Australian artists. If it's Australian, it's good. Whereas in England it's so... M: I don't know I think in England they get behind bands who are strictly aiming at an English audience. You know like the whole brit pop thing. Their whole thing was to be cool in London, or cool in Camden . Whenever there's a band that looks like they're looking to go elsewhere... some English people have a problem with that. We call that the 'Tall Poppy' syndrome in Australia, where everyone starts going "ah they're mongrels, they suck!" As in silverchair - you name it. Um... So how important are clothes to making good rock music?! Is fashion important to Muse?!! M: [Laughs] Um... no not really I would say I don't think it has anything to do with making music. No I think it's just to do with you know, keeping clean on tour! Fair enough. What song would you have covered the most? Is there one song? M: We do... We do one cover song right now, we haven't played it here in Australia, but there's a song we play live in England a lot. D: Nina Simone, 'Feeling Good'. M: It's like an old bluesy type, quite showy type track. I play like keyboard on it - Piano - instead of guitar. So really bluesy you know? Wow! I wanna see you now, as well as hear the album. What song would you never cover? M: Never? Cor' blimey. Anything by Oasis!! Yeah?! Did you see Robbie Williams come out of the Brit awards and challange Liam to a fight for a hundred thousand pounds? M: Yeah I heard a rumor about that happening - is it true? Yeah. M: And did it happen? I don't think Liam's responded yet. Is there anyone that you'd like to fight? M: No not really. D: No. M: Don't know. I don't think much can be achieved by that. I'd probably do it as a press exercise maybe... The song 'Uno' which we mentioned before, that's one of two singles that we've seen in Australia - is that about being chased by record companies? Because you guys managed to have four record deals signed in a couple of months. M: Ahh don't know... That song's a bit about breaking out. It's a song sort of to ourselves really about wanting to... keep up the vibe - not give in to the pressure to just go to university and get a job. It's like a kick up the arse to carry on with what we're doing. You could be number one. M: Err... I'm not referring to the charts in that. I'm sort of referring to... Actually, no that songs about... That's about an ex-girlfriend really... [pause] I dunno - it's about a lot of things. A lot of the songs you can look at from different angles... It just depends. What about 'Muscle Museum' - which I think we should have a look at now - but what is this amazing clip with all the crying? And the title of the song with all the Ms and Us and Ss and Es - 'Muse' pops up a lot in 'Muscle Museum' - what's the story behind this? M: The song... I wrote the song... I couldn't decide if I wanted to like, do music or go to university or something. So I sort of left the band for about four months when I was about 18 and went and learned loads of Spanish guitar and Greek guitar. I spent a long time travelling round Europe and you know... I learnt stuff and I wrote that song in Greece. It's about... I was reading a book at the time about like cyber-culture you know? This was around the time when cyber-culture was looking like a really big thing and the future - about how we're going to leave the body behind and the ideals of the mind, and like how it's replacing religion and all this you know? And how we're trying to connect each other through the Internet and stuff, and try and make our own heaven because, you know, religion didn't really bring it to us - it's sort of about that. And the songs about how people don't really face up to their inner emotions a lot of the time and they just get on with their mundane life. And the clip - the crying, was that your idea? M: We came up with the idea with this American guy. The video didn't come out as good as we'd like it to, to be honest, but um... yeah, it's all right. It's very abstract. It's great! I kinda find it funny. M: Well that's the idea - you find yourself laughing at these people crying and it's quite weird. Well lets take a look at it now, Muse and 'Muscle Museum'. Their album 'Showbiz' should be out at the end of March. Are you gonna come out to Australia and play again soon? M: There's talk of October I think? Do the Livid Festival M: Yeah Yeah - there's definitely talk of doing some festivals around the new year time as well. Excellent! Very nice to meet you. Matthew, Dominic and Chris - the band Muse. See them when you can Good Luck! Channel V

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