Muse's Matt Bellamy joins Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss the band’s new album ‘Will of the People’ out this Friday. He tells Apple Music about the evolution of the band, why he’s a fan of Lady Gaga, being influence by Rage Against The Machine, embracing more metal leaning sounds on the album, the longevity and brotherhood of the group, how current events shaped the sound of the record, and more.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music How His Son’s Love of Slipknot Influenced The More Metal Leaning Sounds on Muse’s New Album ‘Will of the People’...
…it also coincides with a little bit of my son, who's really gotten into Slipknot and stuff like that. And we never pretend to be able to touch those guys, but hearing that stuff blasting on the way to school most mornings, that really kind of got into the album a little bit.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About The Brotherhood and Longevity of Muse…
Friendship and brotherhood. It's like supporting each other. At different points, we've all had difficult periods where one of us is like, "You know what? I don't want to tour next year. I can't do this." You respect that. Whereas I think other bands maybe fight that and go, "You can't do this tour, blah, blah, blah. We'll get someone else in."It's like there is something that ties you together if you've been together since teenage years. It's hard to really put a finger on what that is. It might be because you've been on that journey from coming from nothing to being very successful, that they become some of the only people that you can actually really relate to, and talk about what the journey felt like, the ups and downs. All of us have been through relationship collapses together and stuff, and we talked our way through that.We're now like the longest marriage any of us have ever had. Basically, the three of us have been together longer than anyone. There's loads of other people, peripheral people, friends, ex-wives, and all this kind of stuff that I don't want to say we've left along the way, but the people that have happened along the way. But the three of us, as time goes on, they become the only people that know every single data point of your life.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About The Drums on the Album…
He [Dom] had like a different kit for everything pretty much. But I was really pushing him on the double bass drum stuff, do you know what I mean? Because he's always been a single bass drum player, so you don't get the "du-du-du-du" which is like the real metal vibe. And so we got a double bass drum pedal and I was saying, "Come on, just practice that." And like every day I'd come in and go, "Come on, go du-du-du-du, just keep it going.”…but that was what was refreshing about it. It was nice to actually find something that we weren't good at, do you know what I mean, and actually try and get really good at. Because metal, it turns out these metal players are absolute geniuses.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Divisiveness in Society and Fighting For Revolution…
I mean, our generation has seen this huge change. Obviously, it started with 2001 and just across this whole period of time, we've seen this thing going on. What is this thing? It's kind of like something's going on in the West, a kind of collapse, a kind of division has been emerging. And now we're dealing with real external threats. We just feel like we're a part of this generation where something's going to go down in a major way... Yeah, America's where it's going down, no question. The division in this country is kind of like, if that's not solved, it's a major, major issue. Major threats from outside are going to come in.And that this place could fall apart. So trying to be a part of the solution, or trying comment on it or even give people the ideas of how they could solve it, I feel like that's the way to go.
I think revolution is certainly coming. I think that's the bottom line, is whether it just falls into a kind of Civil War and chaos and some external threat, like China, Russia takes advantage of that, that's one path. The other path is there's a revolution, which, I don't like this path, but a revolution is often replaced with authoritarian regimes of one kind or another. If I had to pick one thing that I'm fighting for, it's can we create a revolution? Can we create change here, where it isn't violent and it doesn't lead to an authoritarian vision?That's the challenge. That's the path that we have to try and make happen.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Bringing Together People With Opposing Political Views at Muse Shows…
I mean, I always see it as a positive, that if there's people from both sides of the coin are coming together to listen to something or be a part of something, maybe at one of our shows. I know it's idealistic, but I mean, I always try and have some kind of hope that these two schools of thought, which are opposing against each other in the US right now. The question is, is there any common ground here that can be found to bring these people together? And I think the one thing both sides have in common, hard right, hard left, they both agree, there's a massive amount of corruption in the elites. And I feel like that is something that both sides maybe can agree on. So coming up with a new system of how to solve that I think is something that could bring both sides together.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He’s a Lady Gaga Fan…
Matt: Actually, I'm a bit of a Gaga fan. I always have been a monster. Yeah. I'm going to do that thing where I say I saw her play in front of 500 people in DC in 2007 or something. I did indeed. And always from day one, I thought she was just an absolute phenomenon. Yeah.
Zane: What do you love about Gaga?
Matt: The theatrics. Well, first of all, she's just an unbelievable talent. She's an amazing pianist, singer. She's better than me on both those things, and I just respect that. And I think she's an amazing songwriter, but then just the way she creates the visuals and the whole theater around the whole thing, I just think it's amazing.I've always wanted to delve into fictional theatrics and things like that with our show as well as the music. We talked about it earlier. Sometimes delving with dystopia, you can get more of a vibe across if you go straight fiction rather than trying to say, oh, heart on your sleeve, this is what we think politically. But yeah. She's amazing. She's been amazing at that, crossing that line between what is fantasy and what is reality. And I think that's a great place to be as an artist. Yeah, actually I met her briefly. She wouldn't remember, but I met her briefly in 2007 at that show. I think it was Washington DC or something. We were touring nearby and I said, look, we've got to go and see this show. I love this singer. She's going to be massive. And the guys went to the show, and the rest of the guys were like, what is this? They had no idea. But I was like, this is amazing. And I've never told anyone this, but I think she had two iPhones or something that were made into eyeglasses, like a video. And I totally straight up ripped that.Yeah. I was like, cut to four years later I'm wearing video glasses. That is me doing my Lady Gaga moment. But she said one thing to me that I remember was real weird wisdom that she said to me. We were just chatting briefly. And she goes, "Oh yeah, I know Muse." She goes, "Rock. That's a tough genre, man. That's going to be a tough genre." And I just thought that, what was that? Where did that come from? But it was true. Yeah. She knows. She knows.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired by Rage Against The Machine…
getting to the core kind of political belief, I'm very influenced by Rage Against the Machine. I'm a huge fan of them. And through them, I sort of learnt a lot of different perspectives. There's different ways of looking at the word freedom, basically. That's the issue, isn't it? There's freedom, raging libertarian freedom, but there's also freedom for a person to be able to own a piece of land and just look after their family, do you know what I mean? So, how do you bridge those two gaps together?They were a total anomaly… in terms of musicality, in the '90s, they really stood out. we've learned from, in my opinion, the best. So I've seen Rage Against the Machine 15 times.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired by Dystopian Art...
I think in the past, a lot of our stuff's kind of delved into fictional dystopia, like George Orwell. I mean, I'm a bit huge fan of '80s dystopian films, and then obviously you know I've written about George Orwell books and stuff like that in previous albums. I think sometimes, through fiction, you can explore things that are maybe a bit more harder to speak about on the nose.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He Loves Living in Los Angeles…
It's something about LA, something about California, you're literally on the edge of a massive tectonic plate, do you know what I mean? There's that. But it's also just full of risk-takers and just crazy people. I love it.
Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He Stopped Drinking Before Shows...
I think I stopped drinking before shows maybe late 2000s.I did other things as well. And it was like, I'd look back at my performances and go, "What the hell was that? That was terrible."You want to keep your (censored) together when you're doing that, yeah. So, yeah. I had to knock booze on the head.
