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Denver Post: interview with Matt

bunerz

By bunerz
in Muse In the Media

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bunerz Escapee

bunerz

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Take that, weather: Muse's Pepsi Center make-up show will be a behemoth

 

http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_16209411

 

Colorado and Muse have had a hard time hooking up recently.

 

Muse's last date with the state was unceremoniously canceled by Mother Nature. When the British rock act was driving across western Colorado on its way to a 1stBank Center date in early April, a spring blizzard pummeled the highways. Suddenly, Vail Pass was a no-go for the band's semi-trailers full of lighting, sound and production equipment.

 

"We could have made it in the car, but the gear and backline was stuck in the snow," Matt Bellamy, the group's lead singer, said last week. "In the middle of the night, we got a call saying they couldn't get through. So we routed a different way and went to an airport and got a plane to L.A. or somewhere in California — wherever the next gig was. I think it was Coachella."

 

That postponement aside — Muse headlines a makeup date at the Pepsi Center on Saturday — the band is enjoying its best year ever in the U.S. The rock group known for symphonic flourishes and grand compositions is finally playing American venues that match its epic, occasionally over-the-top production: arenas.

 

Muse has been headlining stadiums for years in Europe, but here, the band would play small theaters and auditoriums here. A few years ago, Muse played a midday set at Coachella. But when they traveled to this year's Coachella after being snowed out in Colorado, they were headlining the massive event.

 

"We played (Coachella) years ago in the middle of the day, and it was boiling hot," Bellamy said. "It was so hot that the plastic keys on my piano were sticky. They were almost melting. We played on the second stage and we were in the sun, and we enjoyed it. I remember thinking, 'We should go back and play it again — hopefully at night.' "

 

Bellamy is a perfectionist, sure, but he's so focused on his art, and the presentation of the art, that he has time for little else.

 

"Sometimes in the studio while you're making the record, you can't help but think, 'How will we play this song live?' and you're thinking about the performance style and the set design. And that's now all integrated with the whole band. When we were mixing the last album, we started meeting with set designers and our lighting guy and talking about the kind of venues we were going to play.

 

"It's like designing a house. You meet with an architect and talk about the things you want and look at budgets. It's good fun, and it's something I'd like to get into. We've had to do three different set designs for this tour. We have the arena show set-up, which is what we're doing at the moment. And we have the festival show, which is more slim-line, more videos and less special effects. And we have the stadium concert for the football stadium thing we did in Europe, which is on a much bigger scale."

 

Along the lines of a bigger scale, Muse's latest album, 2009's "The Resistance," is the band's most outrageous music to date. Bellamy and his bandmates have always favored the epic, the bombast. But "The Resistance" takes what Muse had done before and turns the dial up a notch.

 

The record has spun off singles here and abroad in "Uprising" and the title track. But some fans have complained that their favorite band took things too far. The record sounds like it was made for a stadium, and as it turns out, it was.

 

"We knew we were going to be playing the biggest gigs of our lives on this tour, so we stepped up the whole thing toward a grander scale in terms of the music," Bellamy said.

 

"I'm sure we will be saying that in the future, 'Ah, we went a little far.' But sometimes you need to go there to learn what your boundaries are."

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Melania13 Escapee

Melania13

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Apparently this was part of it as well....

 

http://blogs.denverpost.com/reverb/2010/10/01/long-and-winding-road-muse/20731/

Do you remember your first record? Your first concert? Your favorite artist from when you were that pizza-face in sixth grade? Well this isnt about that. This Long and Winding Road is about three artists/records that impacted/influenced you over the years you as a musician, Matt Bellamy, singer/guitarist/pianist with Muse. So lets talk about your road.

 

Classical music is part of what weve always done. Weve always hinted at classical stuff. But weve never tried to orchestrate it fully. Until now.

 

16 Years Old

 

When I first started getting in bands, I was not comfortable with my singing voice. At the time, everything on the radio was all Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and they were big. Everybody wanted that kind of voice. So in the town we came from, all the bands were getting together, and I wasnt fitting in until I saw Jeff Buckley. I think it was at the Reading Festival in 94. Id never even heard of him. There was nothing on the main stage at the time, and Id decided to go over to the second stage, and I heard a weird high voice coming out. It blew me away. It wasnt like any music Id heard before, and his voice was amazing. It inspired me to have more confidence to sing and be a tenor.

 

19 Years Old

 

I first heard Hector Berliozs Grande Messe des Morts, which means the grand death of our souls or something like that, when I was 19. And that was my first exposure to classical music. I guess everybody knows a little bit of it, but you dont take it seriously like you do rock music when youre a teenager. But then I heard that, and it blew me away, because it was so heavy and powerful in the way that rock is heavy and grand and extreme, and it shocked me that there was that kind of music out there.

 

33 Years Old

 

Lady Gaga. What she does as a visual performing artist - shes not just a musician, shes a genuine artist in the way shes on stage and the way she dresses and the way she sings - its intriguing. Her whole image and persona is great.

 

 

:chuckle:

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JessicaSarahS Guiding Light

JessicaSarahS

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33 Years Old

 

Lady Gaga. What she does as a visual performing artist - shes not just a musician, shes a genuine artist in the way shes on stage and the way she dresses and the way she sings - its intriguing. Her whole image and persona is great.

 

 

:chuckle:

 

:happy: I love it! And it's interesting how I've had a similar transition in my music tastes well. Lady Gaga included:LOL:(Although, I have yet to hit my thirties.).

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weird cOokie Escapee

weird cOokie

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Yes! Gaga4Muse Tour 2012!

 

:LOL: :LOL:

oh.

you weren't joking :stunned:

 

 

jeeeeesus matt, there's a shitload of female pop singers and you pick the biggest "i'm going to follow madonna's carrer step by step because my fans are too young to know i'm doing exactly what she did 20 years ago" one? lol ok.

 

/end of pointless rant

 

 

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