We must have been 12 or 13. First I met Chris. You know, at school, there were a lot of bands. Nearly everybody was in a band. I was in one in which I played the piano, Chris was in another, but we often talked. As for Dom, he was in the "cool" band, the one in which everyone wanted to play (smile). It's a bit how I began to play the guitar, thinking to myself I needed to progress to get into a good band (laughs). Because the one I was in was really crap. A little later, I became friends with Dom, and when a guitarist position was available in his band, I jumped on the opportunity. I spare you the following events, in which for two years the members of the band came and left and came back until Dom and I ended up just the two of us. The others may have left because of me by the way (laughs) ! Anyway, that's when I began composing seriously. But we needed a bass player. I knew Chris as I told you earlier but at that time, he played drums. I knew he was scrupulous and serious. So we asked him if he was willing to play the bass. He was. That' it.
(Rock Sound, January 2001)
Brother
You know, we have recently been exposed to the media; beside that, the band has been existing for 7 years now and we are childhood friends, the relations between us won't change overnight in that context! What has always kept us united and still does today is much stronger than friendship, it's brotherhood. Dom and Chris are my brothers and together we have had the best times of our livesNone of us want to spoil that..
(Rock Sound, March 2001)
Concert
We must have made two or three curtaincalls altogetherever since we started playing. I want to concentrate all my energy on a compact, coherent set, with strong beats and voluntary replapses. I give a lot of importance to a very squer setlist. If you have a couple of curtain calls in mind, you do't give everything, you feel you have to save a little energy for those extra which I personally find incongruous and likely to break the rhythm and the cohesion of the set. Sometimes, however, it's very hard to stick to it.A fortnight ago in Holland, the fans screamed for forty-five minutes after the concert. We didn't come back, but the pressure was enormous!
(Compact, July 2001)
Death
Look at Nirvana or Jeff Buckley. They came out of the crowd and had success because they knew how to express they deep, intimate emotions better than anyone else. All their music was actually built on that, and that's probably partly what took them away. You cannot deal with that sort of thing forever, you're playing with fire. Because 'dying young" in these conditions becomes the only possible way out to that sort of deep self-introspection, it becomes the obvious answer to what you're looking for. Anyway, I'm convinced of this axiom : If you get success when you're young by bringing out everything in you, it will kill you.
(Rock Sound, January 2000)
Destruction
It's the end of Showbiz, a song which has a funny effect on me, and which makes me feel like expressing something physically, beyond music... And sometimes, when we play at festivals and the material isn't too great, or there are technical problems, or when we aren't satisfied with our performance, it's a way of unwinding, we get alittle crazy, But in fact, it harly ever happens now... Yes, it happened a few weeks ago, in Nottingham We exaggerated Anyway, I don't do it on purpose, I don't plan it But it doesn't hapen too often now...
(Printemps de Bourges, 18/04/01)
Emotion
I remember, the first real concert we gave, it was for a band competition. We were the only real rock band, all the others were pop or funk-pop, Jamiroquai-style if you know what I mean. We knew we didn't have a chance to win - we were not the best musicians - because of the dicrepancy. So, we staked our all and we played especially on the emotions we felt from being 'apart'. We arrived covered in make-up, super agressive,we played very violently and then we destroyed everything on stage. All this to say that intention, attitude mattered a lot to us. As a result, we won. And I beleive that, psychologically, it changed a lot of things in our heads. Because we had come to lose, we expected to lose. And in a way it revolted us.And there we had just found out that intention could replace many things. We found out that emotion, vibrations you created were as important as you technical knowledge. We had made a disovery : music was all about emotion.
(Rock Sound, Janvier 2000)
Food
Food ! The lack of eating habits. The food you find in petrol stations is terrible ! But you cannot eat anything else when you're on the road, you stop at this kind of stations, adn the food is really revolting, wherever you are, in France or anywhere else Always exactly the same sandwiches, the same drinks, the same candy bars very bad ! I like eating,but it's really hard to find good food on tour.
(Printemps de Bourges, 18/04/01)
Human kind
We are not there to make money, become famous or offer an all-purpose guitar sound, but no doubt to say something. If there were at least one person whom our music could reach deeply, that would be fine. I believe in the chaos theory and in the influence we can have on the course of things. We all have the same power of influence on the chaotic evolution of mankind. Each one of us holds withim themselves the potential to be able to change the course of things. Everything we takes part in it, our conversation, for example, and we must be aware of it. In a band like us, we see, we are aware of the tracks we leave behind us, no doubt more than the average person, through articles or through what some declare publicly, mais but it doesn't means that we have more influence than the one who hasn't got the time or the opportunity to think about it. Everything I say, do or write comes from the others. It's this permanent interaction that is the key.
(Compact, July 2001)
Icons
I told you, I don't like icons too much, and I'm not sure we need them. Personally, I quite well control my lif, my desires, my pulsions, I don't need an emblem, a role model through which I feel the need to cast myself.
(Rock Sound, January 2000)
Leader
Dom and Chris have never been attracted to the process of writing. What they bring, has always been their knwoledge of their instrument and the grace and talent they play it with. And, in my mind, ce n'est pas les rel�guer � un r�le subalterne que de dire cela. Reallly. Without what they play, sans cette sensibilit� qui n'appartient qu'� eux, Muse wouldn't exist.
(Rock Sound, March 2001)
Lyrics
The central theme is that mysterious link that unites us all together, the origin of symmetry, in my view, in front of mankind. I like to think from a global and very positive point of view . For the moment, I sing about my personal relationship with the evolution of the world. 'New Born', for example, expresses the fear of living in a world too quiet, in which everyone is connected to the same matrix, through their brain. I picture myself strolling in a totally silent street, everybody in their homes and no interaction between individuals. This text is about the deep need for contac. I fell the more you are physically disconnected, the more something else, more essential, gets broken.
(Compact, July 2001)
Playing
I improvise a lot with my voice and my guitar on old songs, because from the moment you know the structure, the basis of the song really well,, it's easy to improvise and to elaborate a little around it. Improvisation allows to keep the song fresh.
(Printemps de Bourges, 18/04/01)
Origin
I would like it to allow people to get interested in the similarities between people. That's something I'm very interested in. We have a lot of religions, of different political systems developping in various places on the planet, and I think that technology is a means to narrow those gaps between human beings, by underlying a common denominator for us all, that could help us to live better together... (he bursts out laughing)... well, something like that...
(Printemps de Bourges, 18/04/01)
Queen
My mother was a very big fan of Queen. I don't know them so well, but I know that Freddie Mercury was was very sincerely interested in opera and the clash between a more classical music and rock. I listen as much to the Deftones and Alphex Twin as to Chopin and Debussy.
(Compact, July 2001)
Rock
I think that rock est is essentially the place here we are now, That's rather how I see it.. What I mean is that I may not hang around here all my life... I think that this past year in particular gave me quite a good deal of freedom to consider music as an open and varied means of expression. I see rock more as a means than as an end... To make myself clear, I would say that I understand much better the evolution of artists such as Tom Waits or Nick Cave, who have used rock as a basis to explore a lot of other styles. By the way, not only do I understand them better, but also I envy them.
(Rock Sound, January 2000)
Showbiz
What I would like to say first is that I consider 'Showbiz' as a sort of self-expression in the first place. In any way, the record really represents what I am and where I belong as a person. Now, our challenge will perhaps be to learn to express other people's emotions. I truly think that many artists know how to express their emotions with talent, but often appear unable to express other people's ;which after a while keeps them going round in circles.And therefore they become less interesting, less essential. In fact that is what makes the difference with certain bands or artists, Queen or Tom Waits in different styles, whould could extrapolate, meet the people, in the artistic meaning of the word, and to use these meetings to express other emotions, enact other characters. I am actually conviced that as an artist, you must do this at some point, because keeping on self-analysing nothing but your own emotions, is what leads you to self-destruction.
(Rock Sound, January 2000)
Tour
Our use of drugs and women is real but under control ! At the beginning of all this, I used to wonder why I was there and what I was doing there... Now, it's much clearer for me that this music is my life. I have no permanent home. Not long ago, jI bought a flat in London, but at the best I use it like a hotel.
(Compact, July 2001)
UK
I think when it comes to emotion and lyrics one can't deny that Muse comes from the UK ; everything I write, the way I write it is influenced by what I've seen or experienced for years. On the other hand, when it comes to sound,I think that generally speaking there is less difference. Besides, I think ther are a lot of bands in Britain who sound very stereotyped; that was especially true in the 90's and I've alwasy been very careful with Muse not to fall in that direction. All the greatest British artists from Queen to David Bowie are those who knew how to add an international expression to their musical legacy and I'm very aware of this.
(Rock Sound, March 2001)
Us
The songs written on the road are really the rawest , the most cathartic ones and that's normal. On the other hand, the titles written last month are more elaborated, more poised, plus complex too. I sincerely thiink that our first record was one from a band looking for its identity ; the second one will show us more like a band settling this idendity.Because it's true that we are more aware of who we are and where we've gone to, a little more comfortable too....
(Rock Sound, March 2001)
Utopia
As I said it earlier on, Muse's beginning was really a rejection reaction of the circle we came from. Then, it changed little by little when we discovered other things if only what was going on in London for example. Then, Muse probably went into a second rejection phase. A rejection of fashions, artificial and fleeting things. Before finding out it was the same all over the globe (smile)! That it's the way mankind goes (laughs) ! Now, we knwo what it's all about.
(Rock Sound, January 2000)
Voice
An intense pleasure ! Sometimes, when you hear somebody screaming like crazy, you feel that it is a scream of extreme pain. But in fact, that's not it, it's rather a scream of extreme pleasure How can I explain this For example, when you are 6 or 7 years old, and you hear your parents making love, vyou wonder about those screams which sound like pain You don't understand what it is Then you grow up, and then you understand (laughs) As for me singing really is an inmense pleasure, even if you might think it is extreme suffering, since my face can be distorted by emotion
(Printemps de Bourges, 18/04/01)
courtesy of musemania.com
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