Muse pomp up the volume

By REBECCA BARRY


Pictures of naked celebrities are everywhere but you'd hardly expect to find any of Muse.

Pasty Brit trio Matthew Bellamy (vocals, guitar, piano), Chris Wolstenholme (bass) and Dominic Howard (drums) are hailed for their histrionic baroque'n'roll, not for getting their kit off.

Thing is, they're out there if you know where to look - chiefly, at Howard's house, where oil paintings of a nude Bellamy adorn the walls. The artist is a gothic Russian groupie who obviously considers the Muse frontman a muse himself. Bellamy doesn't find them quite so, er, a-muse-ing.

"She's got some fantasy that I'm this Marilyn Manson-type character and she keeps painting me looking like him and it's scary," he says. "Dom thinks it's really funny and he keeps some of them just to make me feel uncomfortable. I think it's a bit weird, a little bit over-the-top."

Coming from a man who's been hailed as rock's new king of pomp, that seems a tad hypocritical.

According to the song, The Small Print, he is "the priest god never paid". On stage he is a grandiose figure gasping in tortured falsetto about last chances, madness, the end of the world.

Depending on your state of mind, a song such as Time is Running Out will make you want to throw your arms up in ecstasy or cower in the foetal position in utter despair.

Fans at Muse concerts have been known to respond by passing out, throwing themselves off balconies and breaking legs. Whether the intensity of their music is to blame, the band have also suffered their fair share of misfortunes. At a gig this year in Atlanta, Georgia, Bellamy jumped off the stage and split his top lip open on his guitar. Shortly after playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Howard's father suffered a fatal heart attack in the crowd. It's almost disturbingly appropriate that the last words on Muse's third album cover read "at your own risk".

Today, the band have stopped off in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they're supporting goth-rock forbears The Cure on tour. Bellamy is upbeat, chatting at mind-numbing speed down the line about his own accident - "There were actually two bits that were flapping away from each other and all the blood was spitting out everywhere" - and the fanaticism their music inspires.

"There are definitely emotions in the songs that are buried deep inside ourselves and probably are buried deep inside other people as well and I think for some people, the realisation they're not alone with that makes them project their own version of reality on to what they think mine is."

He says he is a shy person whose nerves get the better of him before gigs. Even so, his plan is a bold one - he wants Muse to be known as one of the best live bands in the world. Already they are well on track, gaining countless plaudits for their performances at most of the big European music festivals. They have also released a live recording.

Bellamy's aspirations formed 10 years ago when he and childhood friends Wolstenholme and Howard were bored, long-haired teenagers living in the sleepy town of Teignmouth, Devon. Performing their first gig at the local battle of the bands after just a week together, they toyed with the names Carnage Mayhem, Gothic Plague, Fixed Penalty and Rocket Baby Dolls before settling on Muse. After releasing a couple of independent EPs and generating an industry buzz from their electric live shows, they signed a deal with Madonna's label, Maverick Records, and released their debut album Showbiz in 1999.

Two years later came The Origin of Symmetry, and though their debut was slated as Radiohead-lite, Origin introduced them as a force to be reckoned with - a maelstrom of bombastic metal guitars, insistent drums and quasi-classical piano flourishes.

Bellamy took up the piano at 11 and taught himself to play the blues, giving up three years later when he discovered the guitar. He didn't sit down at a piano again until he was 20, when he added Philip Glass-inspired keys to the song Sunburn. Later he discovered romantic piano music by Rachmaninov, Liszt and Chopin. Despite the skill needed to play with the vigour the style requires, he has only had one lesson.

"It wasn't a very good lesson. I just sat down next to someone when I was about 15 and they basically told me my technique was wrong so I didn't go back.

"The truth is, my technique is wrong. I play like a guitar player playing the piano which means I'm quite restricted and there are certain things that I just can't do. I can only really play in my own style."

Now that the other three of Muse's albums are platinum in Britain and Absolution has reached the top five in 12 countries, the time has come to tackle Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the toughest nut: America. Muse played the Big Day Out here this year and have supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters in the US.

Next month they will headline their own gigs, foregoing the 100,000-capacity festivals they are used to for crowds as small as 500.

"The contrast is nice," says Bellamy. "I feel lucky in a way. I think some bands would have difficulty with it but for us, it's an exciting feeling, that moment when you can feel people are discovering you for the first time. It reminds me of what it was like when we first toured around Europe three or four years ago. It's a really exciting time."

I mention the troubles Kiwi rock band Shihad went to when they moved to the US, forced to change their name because it sounded like jihad (holy war).

Perhaps some Americans might find some of Muse's doomsday themes too close to home? Take Apocalypse Please: "Declare this an emergency ... This is the end of the world. Proclaim eternal victory, come on and change the course of history."

"Some of those view points in the album are not necessarily suited to day-time TV," he concedes. "But I don't think that's necessarily the audience we're going for. I haven't attacked any issues blatantly, in terms of talking about people's names and locations and times. The songs are reasonably ambiguous. They sing more about the emotions behind them, feelings of wanting things to change in the world around you, as opposed to talking about the actual political events that have caused you to feel that way."

Likewise, Bellamy buries his inspirations in broader themes. You'd never guess Sing For Absolution was inspired by the break-up of his six-year relationship just by listening to it. Nor would you pick Thoughts of A Dying Atheist was written by a man who reportedly believes humans were genetically modified from apes by aliens who visited 300,000 years ago (theories proposed by Russian scholar Zechariah Sitchin).

He prefers to remain at a safe distance from his rock persona.

"A lot of American artists feel that every element of their life has to match up with the art that they're creating, where the artist feels they have to be the art themselves in the way they dress and the way they look and the way they live their life and the way they socialise and everything.

"There's a good side and a bad side to that. The good side is that you never get anybody who questions your integrity. But the bad thing is it restricts you from exploring more exotic or even more complex areas of expression. If I always had to live my life and dress to match up to the music we make, it would be uncomfortable. It would not necessarily be socially acceptable.

"My favourite artists are the people like Tom Waits who explores characters within songs as opposed to being an overall character ... He's always had his integrity questioned as to whether the emotions he's talking about are genuine experiences or not, but I believe they are. When you see Tom Waits live, one minute he's like an old guy, next minute he's some kind of weird rapper. For me, the freedom of expression when you're making music is an important thing as opposed to being perceived as a particular type of person."

Perhaps someone should tell that Russian groupie before she paints her next canvas.

WHO: Muse, the British rock trio who laugh in the face of subtlety

SOUND LIKE: An indulgent hybrid of Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and Queen

DISCOGRAPHY: Muse EP (1998), Muscle Museum EP (1999), Showbiz LP (1999), The Origin of Symmetry LP (2001), Hullabaloo CD/DVD (2002), Absolution LP (2003) ON TOUR: At the St James, Auckland on Tuesday, September 14.