The show must go on and on

From the shadow of the Darkness come Muse. Paul Connolly meets an operatic band who believe in doing things in a big way

Many bands have stumbled on their quest to conquer America, but none more dramatically than Matt Bellamy, the lead singer of Muse. During the first date of their American tour in Atlanta, while executing one of his dramatic stage moves, Bellamy slashed his face open with the neck of his guitar. Blood poured from his mouth and he was rushed to hospital for stitches. “We stopped the show, then had to wait five hours at the hospital to get him fixed up. But he’s all right now,” said the band’s drummer Dominic Howard later. “It’s one of the dangers of being an exuberant frontman.”

Too true. Having spent time with the band at the Brits and at a small one-off show in Dublin, I can testify that they are an astonishing live experience, and an outside bet to become the next arena band of the ilk of U2 and Radiohead.

Chris Wolstenholme, Rotherham United fan and married father of three children, chunters away on bass; Howard, all 5ft 4in (1.63m) of him, bashes the drums with zealous fervour; while Bellamy goes the whole nine yards, sliding across the stage on his knees, guitar in hand, like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, before springing up to give the piano a good seeing-to. Even at the Brits, where Muse had to follow extravagant acts such as Beyoncé and 50 Cent, they proved to be a standout. Nominated for Best Rock Act, they went back to basics: three men, dressed in black, singing and playing guitars and drums. The sound of their hit single, Hysteria, was huge, the performance compelling. Given the television-orientated excesses of the Brits it was almost anarchic.

What’s more, according to their enthusiastic co-manager, Anthony Addis, it was cheap. He laughed when I told him how impressed I was by the spartan but brilliant performance: “It’s just that we didn’t want to spend too much!” “Fantastic!” laughs Bellamy when I tell him this after the show in Dublin. “Tight so-and-so! It did make sense, though. Everybody spent shedloads and we spent f*** all and we still got great TV coverage. Anyway, our record company (East West) spent all their money on the Darkness’s huge production.”

Ah yes, the Darkness. I ask Bellamy what he thinks of his labelmates. I suggest that they’re the anti-Muse, in that whereas Muse tackle huge, universal themes such as mortality and existence, the Darkness are just a laugh.

Bellamy chooses his words carefully: “I think that they take what they do really seriously. Justin Hawkins (the Darkness’s lead singer) took me to one side at a festival in Australia a couple of months ago. He was all friendly at first but then became very earnest and said: ‘Do you think that we’re a joke band? I’ve heard that during a local radio interview in Spain you said that we ’re a joke band.’

“I was a bit taken aback by his grave demeanour and the fact that he’s picked up on a regional Spanish radio interview, for heaven’s sake, and I just kind of stuttered and said: ‘Well, aren’t you a joke band?’ You could see by the look in his eye — he’s serious about his music.”

Muse, too, are in deadly earnest though, like the Darkness, they have not always been taken seriously. They celebrated their tenth birthday in January, a decade during which they have rarely been regarded as fashionable or trendy. They’ve lived through Britpop, nu-metal, garage rock and any number of musical fads, making their own, wildly ambitious brand of operatic guitar-pop that incorporates elements of rock, jazz and classical music. Often in the same song. That this doesn’t sound like a school orchestra tumbling down a flight of stairs is remarkable, yet still people either love them or loathe them. It’s impossible to listen to Bellamy’s melodramatic vocals swooping over the music’s complex, baroque constructs without laughing at Muse’s preposterous ambition or being enthralled by their daring.

Until their majestic third album, Absolution, I was in the former camp. Their first two, Showbiz (199 and Origin of Symmetry (2001), had epic ambitions, but seemed to think that tunes were for oiks. Absolution confirms them as a band with potential for greatness, marrying the operatic splendour of Queen with the savagery and melodic suss of Nirvana.

“I’ve always loved Queen,” says Bellamy. “The things we have in common with Queen are the things of which I’m really proud. We have a big sound, and we’re not afraid to put on a big show. Recently, the most famous English bands have seemed unnaturally self-conscious on stage. Their performances have been focused on breaking the barriers of rock stardom. It seems like they’re saying: ‘We are just normal people. ’ They strip away their individuality, and individuality is what makes for a great performance — the audience gets to see something that they don’t see in everyday life.”

Off-stage, Bellamy has often been characterised as a difficult, sci-fi obsessed techno-geek. True, the video to their new single, Sing for Absolution, involves them hurtling through space back to Earth, only to find it ruined. And true, the first time I met the band, during an MTV Muse day in Milan last autumn, Bellamy cooed over my new phone and offered me his three-month-old personal digital assistant because he’d just bought the latest model. But difficult? Not a bit.

Having formed in Teignmouth, Devon, in 1994, Muse got a break after a chance meeting with a local studio owner, Dennis Smith, and recorded an EP, Muscle Museum. “He gave us free time in his studio,” Wolstenholme recalls, “paid for the EP and told us to pay him back if we were signed.”

The EP, released at the start of 1999, became a word-of-mouth phenomenon and was picked up by Radio 1. Four years on, they find themselves at the top of their game: with five million album sales to their name; big in the UK and even more popular on the Continent, as evidenced by 20,000 capacity shows; and, mostly, well-received in the US.

“We’re really looking forward to playing these shows,” said Bellamy, just before they left. “It’s almost like starting again, and it feels like less pressure playing to fewer people. When you have to produce the goods for 20,000 people then the nerves really kick in.”

Where will they find the time to write the next record?

“We’ll manage it,” smiles Bellamy.“We’re hard workers. I think I’d like for us to just hire a place in London and record the next album by ourselves; just disappear up our own arses and see what happens.”

Howard laughs self-deprecatingly. “Although some people might argue that’s where we’ve been all along.”

Either there, or the local Accident and Emergency.

Muse’s latest single, Sing for Absolution, is out now