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Muse se Destapa en una entrevista dada a Q:

Matt Bellamy, líder de Muse. Quiere tocar en el espacio...

¿Cuándo perdió la virginidad Matt Bellamy, líder de Muse? ¿Cómo se lleva el cantante con su futura suegra, la actriz Goldie Hawn? ¿Cuál de ellos perdió el control con el alcohol? Y sobre todo, ¿qué es eso de que quieren viajar al espacio? Así responden a todo esto Muse en la revista inglesa Q.

- El despertar sexual de Muse en el festival de Reading (Inglaterra)
“Aquí fue donde viví mis primeras experiencias sexuales”, explica Matt Bellamy, líder de Muse, sobre su primera visita al festival de Reading, en 1993, cuando tenía 15 años (Bellamy cuenta ahora 33). “La virginidad no la perdí aquí, fue poco antes, pero definitivamente fue en este festival donde aprendí un poco más sobre cómo hacerlo bien. También tengo otros recuerdos bastante desagradables, pero no estoy seguro de querer compartirlos...”, revela el cantante del grupo inglés.

- Momentos escatológicos del cantante
“Seguramente a mis compañeros no les gustará que cuente esto, pero recuerdo que en una ocasión los baños del festival de Reading no funcionaban por culpa de la lluvia y no sabía dónde hacer mis necesidades. Al final encontré una solución: cagué al lado de las vallas”, confiesa, muy sincero, Bellamy

- Sobre los problemas de Matt Bellamy para hablar en público
“Definitivamente, no se me da bien dar discursos en las entregas de premios”, confiesa el cantante de Muse. “También soy terrible en los conciertos. Necesito ir a algún tipo de terapia, o algo así. Lo único que soy capaz de decir es: muchas gracias, qué sorpresa… Y ese tipo de frases obvias. Además, recuerdo que en una entrega de los MTV, Barry Manilow [engolado y veterano cantante neoyorquino] estaba justo enfrente de mí y me distrajo”, reconoce el músico inglés.

- Sobre cómo se conocieron el líder de Muse y su novia (y madre de su primer hijo), la actriz Kate Hudson
“Fue en el festival de Coachella, en 2010. Ella había perdido a sus amigos y yo me ofrecí a ayudarla para buscarlos. Los encontramos y no sé, hicimos buenas migas”, sonríe Matt Bellamy. “Fue un momento muy bonito”, afirma el músico. Y reconoce que se lleva fenomenal con su futura familia política: “Goldie [Hawn, veterana actriz y madre de Kate Hudson] es una mujer increíble. Tiene los pies en la tierra y para ella la familia es lo primero”, asegura Matt.

- Problemas serios con el alcohol
“Siempre fui muy bebedor, y más cuando tenía 16 o 17 años”, reconoce el bajista de Muse, Chris Wolstenholme (32 años). “Pero creo que el hecho de estar en una banda, yendo de aquí para allá todo el tiempo, y el estrés que sientes al tratar de conciliar la vida del grupo y la familiar, fue lo que hizo que perdiera el control con el alcohol. Cuando sacamos el disco The resistance, en 2009, todo comenzó a ir mal”, afirma el músico. Wolstenholme sentía que estaba siguiendo el mismo camino que su padre, que murió de alcoholismo a los 40 años. Comenzaba el día con una pinta de cerveza, llegaba a la tarde con bastantes cervezas en el cuerpo, se bebía dos botellas de vino por la noche y otra cerveza antes de irse a la cama. “Estaba perdiendo la cabeza”, relata el bajista. “Tenía que beber para poder levantarme de la cama. El momento álgido de mi enfermedad fue una mañana de Navidad, que me desperté vomitando sangre". Y continúa: "El día que cumplí 30 años me di cuenta de lo perjudicado que estaba. Ese día, literalmente, sufrí un colapso total. Comprendí que el alcohol me estaba matando y tenía que parar. Al final lo conseguí, y dejé completamente y para siempre la bebida”, narra el músico.

- Camerinos destrozados y cuentas que pagar
Fue en un concierto para la MTV Alemania, y ellos actuaban como teloneros del grupo de Gwen Stefani, No Doubt. “Acabamos destrozando todo lo que había en el camerino. Incluso construimos una especie de pirámide con las neveras, las mesas, las sillas y toda la basura que encontramos por allí. A los dos o tres días nos llego una bonita factura por los destrozos”, recuerda Matt Bellamy. Y sigue: “En otra ocasión me cabreé mucho durante un concierto y acabé estampando mi guitarra contra la mesa de mezclas del escenario. Literal. Después tuve que pagar 15.000 libras (unos 17.000 euros) por la tontería”, admite el cantante de Muse.

- Pelas que acaban con sillas volando
Sólo en un par de ocasiones las peleas entre los miembros del grupo han acabado en puñetazos. Hubo una, en 1998, especialmente ruidosa. Mientras Muse grababan Muscle museum, el cantante y el bajista comenzaron una fuerte discusión que acabó cuando este último le lanzó una silla a la cabeza a Bellamy. “Yo pensé: 'Dios mío, me mata”, ríe el cantante de Muse. “Aprendí qué límite no podía sobrepasar con él. […] Soy bastante bueno con las peleas dialécticas pero, después, si gano varias veces, corro el riesgo de acabar con la cabeza contra el suelo”, argumenta el músico.

- Cómo será el nuevo álbum de Muse
“Queremos grabar un disco más íntimo, más Pink Floyd. Y actuar por todo el mundo en una gran gira de estadios”, explica la banda inglesa.

- Su próximo objetivo: viajar al espacio
“También queremos reservar un billete de ida y vuelta en el transbordador espacial de la compañía Virgin Galactic, de Richard Branson”, afirman Muse.

Por su puesto no podia faltar Muse en este Top en donde puedes acomodar los lugares de las revistas desde la que tu consideras la mejor(primer puesto) hasta la ultima,que no puede faltar obviamente(puesto 25).

En la lista se encuentran las portadas de U2-Eminem-The Strokes-Green Day-Arcade Fire-Madonna entre muchos de los artistas talentosos que existen, asi que , animate y sube tu Top25...

Click En El LOGO:

La nueva edicion de la revist Q trae consigo una execelente entrevista a MUSE :

(Click en las fotos para tamaño real)

Enjoy :)

Imagenes de la revista Guitar de este año en donde se muestra todas las guitarras de Matt con Hugh Manson:

Click para Ampliar

Nueva edicion digital en la cual tenemos un extenso e interesante articulo de muse, en el cual podemos saber sobre todos aquellos tecnicos que acompañan a la banda y realizan esos maravillosos escenarios....

Imagenes de alta calidad (solo dale clic en la imagen para ampliarla :) )

PD: oreden de las paginas de abajo hacia arriba espero y les guste y si alguien es experto en ingles nos ayude a traducir XDXD

Matt Bellamy en le revista ''Australian Guitar'' 2010 .
Aqui las fotos y extractos de la entrevista

:) Enjoy....

Englishman Matt Bellamy (born 9 June, 1978) is a guitar innovator, not only for his playing with alternative trio Muse but for the crazy guitar designs he has helped pioneer in collaboration with legendary UK guitar builder Hugh Manson Australian Guitar catches the Muse main man as he and band mates Chris Wolstenholme (bass/vocals) and Dominic Howard (drums) prepare to head back to Australia again this November. Their first headlining visit in support of their fifth album, 2009s The Resistance, Muse are bringing every light, laser beam and video screen of their elaborate stage show for the first time ever. And Bellamy will be packing a full arsenal of mind-blowing Manson creations.

Is Hugh Manson a significant secret to your success?

MB: I'm certainly very lucky in that we came from a fairly remote part of England. Devon - which is in the southwest - is like a rural place by the sea; there are not really any major cities nearby. So to have been brought up in the place where Hugh Manson was based was a stroke of luck. He was always known as having the best guitar shop in the area. I think he used to be Led Zeppelin's guitar tech in the '70s and when he retired from touring he retired to that part of Devon.

When I was growing up I couldn't afford any of his guitars. It wasn't till I was around 20 or 21, when Muse started touring on our first album ['99s Showbiz], I thought, well I've got a bit of money now, for the first time I can go and buy one his guitars. The first one I bought was a seven-string that I used on 'Citizen Erased' on our second album [2001s Origin of Svmmetrv] but when I met him he explained to me that he could make any guitar that I wanted, any shape or any design. So I went away from that and I thought, well if I'm going to spend a couple of thousand quid on a custom-made guitar then I might as well make something unique.

Let me guess, The Delorean?

MB: Yes. I think because it was the first expensive thing that I'd ever bought in my life, I put a lot of effort into making sure it was something unique and interesting. I went back to the drawing board and started going through various guitars that I'd played and I always liked the body shape of the SG but also the Telecaster.

And I prefer the sound of P-90 Gibson guitars. So I was kind of looking for something that looked like a Telecaster but sounded a bit more like a Gibson. So I sketched out a guitar shape, which is basically similar to a Telecaster but it has a little hook on it, a bit like an SG. Then I thought to myself, instead of getting a standard wooden guitar I might as well get something unusual. I was a big fan of Back To The Future and I loved the car, the Delorean. I found out it was made of aluminium or steel or something so I thought it might be cool to get a guitar that had a rough metal finish, not a shiny metal finish. As I was putting more thought into it, I decided to get some effects put in there as well. Because I'm a singer I can always move away from the pedal board and still do some special effects on the guitar. That's the reason I put effects in there.

Was the in-built effects addition something that Hugh was already doing or was that your idea?

MB: I don't think he'd ever done anything like that before. He had done certain unusual things but nothing to do with putting electronics on guitars, or at least not the amount of electronics that I wanted. So he had to get assistance from someone else to help him with some of those bits. Especially when I started getting involved in [Korg] Kaoss Pads and ribbon controllers and proximity sensors and all these kinds of effects. Some of them were quite difficult to get mounted into the guitar. That was definitely new for him.

The designs become more hi-tech after The Delorean, right?

MB: Yeah, the Delorean was pretty straightforward. It had a [MXR Phase 90] phaser in it and [Z.Vex] Fuzz Factory in it, which is like an extreme distortion pedal. Then the one I did after that had a proximity wire and it also had a ribbon controller which was taken from a synthesizer so I could get Theremin -type sounds. Since then I've done various other things. The most common one has a Kaoss Pad inside, because it's so versatile, you can connect it to any MIDI device. Obviously you can connect it to a MIDI Kaoss Pad but you can also connect it to any MIDI synth and you've got X and Y controllers, so you can do effects or samples or anything.

One of your latest inventions is the "Keytarcaster", a guitar with strings but no pickups and a two-octave keyboard built into the body, tell us about that?

MB: It's not even technically a guitar. It's a piano keyboard on one side and stringed contact MIDI controller. So it looks like a guitar but it's actually a keyboard. We had a song on the new album [2009s The Resistance] called 'Undisclosed Desires' and the recording has actually got no guitar or piano on it but it's got a lot of keyboard parts. It's got deep bass-synth parts and also some high-synth parts and I wanted to be able to play those things live without Sitting down or without being stuck behind a keyboard. So I came up with the idea of keeping my guitar shape but where the right hand would be I've put a two-octave keyboard with full size keys, then on the fretboard where my left hand would be I've got a stringed contact controller. It's stringed exactly like a guitar only when the string makes contact with the fret it sends out a MIDI signal. So technically I've got two separate keyboards, one for the left hand, one for the right hand. The left hand plays deep bass-synth sustaining notes while the right hand does the high-pitched, sort of rhythmic stuff.

Also, the most recent one I had made was for a song called 'The Resistance', which starts off with lots of guitars doing harmonies together and also some synthesizers all mixed together creating a sort of choir of Theremins. That was something I couldn't really do properly live so I decided to get my first double-neck made. The top neck is a standard six-string guitar but the bottom neck is a fretless six-string with an EBow built in. So when you touch it, it sounds very similar to a Theremin. Because there are no frets you can just slide your fingers around and get any tone you want, quarter tones or micro tones and you can do that whilst holding down chords or sustaining notes [on the other neck] at the same time.

How do you keep up with all the latest gear?

MB: I think it all depends on what you like to listen to. If you listen to contemporary R&B music, dance music, electronic music, the stuff they're doing is way ahead in terms of being in touch with technology. If you're inspired by that music, as a rock band I think you find yourself doing things musically which can't be achieved easily with the standard guitar, bass and drums. For that reason you automatically lean towards trying out new effects pedals or incorporating synthesizers or even doing away with the guitar entirely and trying different instruments.

I think Muse has always been more interested in the future of music rather than the history of music. That's one of things that's most unusual about us. Most rock bands are very knowledgeable and are very interested in the history of rock, the '60s and the '70s and all that kind of stuff, whereas we are not. We are more interested in contemporary music and finding ways to use what's going on right now in our band, which is basically a traditional rock set-up with guitar, bass and drums. So I think we take more from contemporary music than the history of music.

Manson Guitars now do a line of Matt Bellamy signature guitars based on the Seattle, Glitterati and Delorean models. Are these the real deal?

MB: They are identical to what I play. They are based on the original designs and they are all handmade by Hugh and his assistant. Apart from the fact that there are different electronic options people can choose, if they want to have a MIDI Kaoss Pad or not. But the fundamental body shape, the pickups and the sustainers and all that kind of stuff are exactly the same as what I use. Originally I wanted to keep them all completely unique for me, and I did for a while, but Hugh was getting so many calls and emails from people trying to get them made that it just became rather awkward really. In the end I cracked and said, "Why not, we might as well do it." I think by now the guitar is very much associated with me so I feel quite comfortable that my identity is not going to be taken away by doing a signature model.

People might think that such fidgety gear wouldn't be sturdy and hardwearing on the road - is that a misconception?

MB: Absolutely. There's the guitar that I call "Santa", which Hugh calls The Glitterati - it's the red glittery one with the Kaoss Pad in, which I use on really heavy tracks like 'Stockholm Syndrome' and stuff. The last few months I've been throwing that guitar in the air, not necessarily trying to smash it, but I've certainly thrown it round. I've thrown it against the amp. I've thrown it into Dom [Howard]'s drumkit. It's landed on its neck, on it's side, it's gone all over the place and the Kaoss Pad has not been affected at all. It's got a couple of chips on the woodwork, but generally I think they're pretty strong.

Any ideas for what you want to have built next?

MB: I'm into the idea of automated arpeggiated pitch-shifting. So in other words where you playa chord and it will arpeggiate that chord in a rhythm. I want to invent one that will stay in the same key for the whole song. No matter what chord you're playing it will stay in the same key. A rhythmic arpeggiator I think it would be called.

I know John Paul Jones takes Hugh Manson on the road as his tech - have you got someone equally as savvy?

MB: Yeah, my guitar tech, Jason Baskin, he's the best. He's been doing it for a long time. He did Guns N' Roses, Smashing Pumpkins, he's probably one of the most technical people I know. He's an absolute expert both with guitar bodywork and internal electronics of the guitar; setting up the entire rig.

What is the biggest problem you have with sound on tour?

MB: For guitar the biggest issue has always been microphone placement and microphone choice and microphone pre-amp. Those are some of the things people think about the least but which actually have the biggest impact on sound quality. I'm pretty happy with the way my amps sound but sometimes you'll get to a gig and they'll use the wrong microphone a bad pre-amp and the whole thing just sounds shit and you think to yourself, I can't understand why sounds so shit coming out of the PA compared to it sounds when I'm stood in front of the speaker.

I spent a lot of time doing research into that and found this thing, I can't even remember the name of it, but it's basically a sound shield. It's shaped like a half-tube, kind of like a skate half-pipe, and it's about a 30cms wide and it's metal on the outside with foam and on the inside it's got foam spikes. So when I put the microphone on the speaker I put that around it and it basically stops all reflections coming back into the mic which causes phasing problems. So I found that's been the biggest help with my guitar sound live.

I know you favoured a Dickinson amp on The Resistance. Do you use that live?

MB: I do use that live at the moment, but only as my monitor speaker. I have my main amps am speakers mic'd up offstage and then I run the signal into the Dickinson which is onstage directly just behind me.

What is the hardest guitar part you have to pull off live?

MB: Our guitar parts are pretty simple really but the tapping solo in 'Invincible' often went wrong. I’m the sort of guitarist that doesn't care too much about making mistakes. My technique has never been that precise. I've always been very interested in people like Hendrix and Kurt Cobain who used their mistakes and their nuances to add to the character. For that reason I don't really have that many technical parts.

Muse played Glastonbury in June and The Edge got up to play with you after U2 pulled out. How did you get him to do that?

MB: When we found out U2 pulled out we decided maybe we should do a cover song as a tribute. BL then when I went to work out the guitar part for 'Where The Streets Have No Name', I realised that I wouldn't be able to sing it and play it at the san time. So I contacted The Edge, I sent him an email and he said, "Yes". He's a legend and the way he plays is amazing - such a unique style. He was very innovative in the way he used guitar effects pedals and things. So we rehearsed it a couple of times day before and then he turned up and we started playing the intro and as soon as he started that guitar part we all just looked at each other, like and went, we can't believe this is happening. Then to top it all off he got right into it and just before the vocals started he came right over to me and he was stood one foot away from my face and really looking at as if to say, "Come on, give it your best." I thought to myself, shit, he's probably heard Bono do this every night for the past 30 years. It was quite daunting Onstage when we did it at Glastonbury I think the crowd really appreciated it because they didn't get see U2 the night before.

Muse are bringing the full-scale stage production to Australia in November. What did this entail?

MB: It's the biggest production we've ever brought to Australia by a long way. It's an arena show, which means you can customise the venues and the stage to how you want it. I'm hoping we get to play son places where we the audience goes 360 degrees and we play in the middle. I'm not sure yet because some of the venues are quite different. But yeah, moving platforms and the video screens all over place, it'll be cool.

SMASH IT UP

In the Guinness Book of World Records 2010, Bellamy is credited as holding the world record for most guitars smashed on a tour.

"No.1, I don't know how I got in there, and No.2, I don't know if it's true or not," says Matt modestly. "Someone must have been counting other than me." His record of 140 guitars was apparently set on the Absolution tour, although he claims he never set out to break any record. "Sometimes I didn't even break them," he says. "I'd chuck them into the crowd and someone would keep them." The only guitars Bellamy loves playing are his own Hugh Manson creations. "On the first album tour I only had the one original Manson guitar and I was still using lots of other guitars," he says. "But I was always having problems, I didn't like the way they sounded or I didn't like the way they felt. So as I'd buy new Manson's, I was discarding the guitars I'd had.

Now I don't have anything else but Manson's, I've probably got about 8 or 9 now, I've trashed all the others." Out of all the guitars Bellamy has sent to six-string heaven, there is one that stands out as his greatest regret.

"A lovely sunburst Gibson double-cutaway," he recalls. "I didn't mean to smash it, I was pushing it into the amp and suddenly the headstock gave way. It snapped and I was completely surprised by it. I tried to glue it back on but it never worked the same again, so that was a shame."

Muse estará en la portada de la mas reciente revista de Kerrang! la cual saldrá mañana Miercoles, y tan sólo la pondran comprar las personas que vivan en Europa, al menos que haya alguien que la pueda conseguir fuera de Europa.

Esto es lo que viene referente a nuestra banda MUSE:

"Muse - The highs and lows of their biggest year ever!

From topping the album charts in 19 countries to headlining stadiums and arenas around the globe, the last year has been Muse's most successful yet. But, as the Teignmouth trio exclusively reveal in this week's Kerrang! cover feature, their continued world domination has not come without its price..."


ENLACE CON LA INFORMACIÓN COMPLETA

Muse go galactic
Britain’s biggest band just keeps getting bigger. Ahead of Muse’s shows at Wembley Stadium this week, frontman Matt Bellamy talks to Sharon O’Connell about success, maximalising and the truth about extraterrestrial life

Pompous. Overblown. Bombastic. Pretentious. These perjoratives—and plenty more like them—seem to glom on to Muse more readily than barnacles latch on to a baleen whale. For some, the Teignmouth trio's blend of operatic alt. rock, gloomily epic synth pop and baroque metal is so ridiculously OTT it makes Queen sound like timid minimalists. Factor in frontman Matt Bellamy's well-known sci-fantasy fixation (Muse's songs have titles like 'Supermassive Black Hole' and 'Knights of Cydonia'), his New World Order conspiracy interests and the giant satellite dishes, barrage balloons and revolving laser-imaged cages that have featured in their live shows, and you have… well, what exactly do you have?

For a musician who's often faced almost as much critical ridicule as he's enjoyed acclaim, and who's now experiencing increased media attention due to the fact that he's dating an extremely famous Hollywood actor (more of which later), the tiny (we guess barely 5ft 6in), reed-slim Matt Bellamy seems remarkably sanguine, sane and centred. When presented with that list of less-than-favourable adjectives and asked why he reckons some people take against Muse so violently, his reaction is a warm, generous chuckle.

'I think some people think that it might not be personal enough,' he reasons. 'They don't like any element of a performance which is not "honest", or there being any element of theatrics which is not the core of what that person is. I love both sides; I love the down-to-earth performer with an acoustic, like Bob Dylan, and I love Hector Berlioz's crazy, large-scale theatrical creation, which is designed to take you outside everyday experience, outside of reality.'

How is it that no one accuses, say, Rufus Wainwright of not being '4 real', despite his mannered and theatrical image? Is the distaste for anything de trop maybe part of the British psyche?

'I've always felt that a theatrical expression is very English,' Bellamy says. Be it David Bowie, or Queen, or Led Zeppelin, even The Beatles…all these groups were experimenting and stepping away from the realm of reality, just to see what was out there. Then in the '90s, when I was a teenager, it seemed like everything got quite conservative, less experimental, less confident and bold. I felt like the international reputation of the Britpop "scene" was of something too much looking in at itself, rather than looking outward. In the early years of Muse, we were perceived negatively in our own country, but internationally we were perceived as a typically English band.'

Muse are surely maximalists to a man. Are they ever likely to scale down in the future, or is that unthinkable?

'Definitely. I'm thinking about it right now, in fact. There's a combination of things that have led to Muse being maximalists. Partly, it's the kind of venues we've been put into—forever expanding slightly ahead of what we were able to keep up with. We'd be playing a large theatre like the Astoria at around the time we were just bout comfortable playing in pubs. Then the Astoria would sell out and we'd think: Okay, we've got to up our game. The live success caused the venues to get bigger, beyond what we could keep up with, so we made the shows—and the music—more spectacular. Which meant that we had to play bigger venues. It was a bit of a Catch 22 that's ended up taking us to places like Wembley.'

Not that Muse have ever seemed remotely intimidated by the exponentially increasing size of venues. They played the brand new Wembley Stadium in 2007 (pipped at the inaugural post by George Michael—how annoying must that have been?), selling out its 75,000-capacity twice. And at this year's Glastonbury, Muse pumped out their widescreen, quasi-classical anthems in front of what looked like half the gobsmacked nation, neatly seeing off the U2-or-Muse-to-conquer-Glasto? debate by inviting The Edge on stage with them for a cover of 'Where the Streets Have No Name'. To make that kind of grand, diplomatic gesture, you have to be a very big band indeed, or risk looking like a bunch of twazzocks. Muse made it look not only effortless, but also incredibly good fun.

'Glastonbury felt amazing,' Bellamy says. 'In the last year, though, something's changed, whereby I feel like we can't go much bigger in terms of the kinds of concerts we're playing. Weirdly, that seems to have coincided with my personal life destablising about a year ago. I split from a relationship of eight years and had been living in Italy for about six. Suddenly, I was homeless and not with someone, so I was doing lots of sef-analysing and getting to know myself again. I sense that that's going to lead to a writing project that will be more personal, rather than talking about grand political concerns. That itself might lead to material that's more suitable for smaller venues. And I've always liked the idea of reinterpreting old songs to fit more intimate venues.'

So, will we ever see Matt Bellamy sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar?

'Jaded, with a glass of whisky, singing Tom Waits songs? Yes, definitely!' he laughs. 'That's very much on the horizon.'

As anyone who hasn't recently emerged from a coma will know, Bellamy is now stepping out with Kate Hudson and the pair are rumoured to have been real-estate hunting together in New York and LA. If life in a hugely successful stadium rock band involves some media scrutiny, then this has surely seen him enter a whole new, amped-up level of celebrity experience. How is he coping?

For the first time, Bellamy looks slightly uncomfortable and tugs nervously at his hair. There's a lengthy pause and it seems he might decline to comment, but no. 'Things are going well,' he smiles shyly. 'We're getting on very well. And there's nothing really, in that way…"

No phalanx of photographers waiting when you leave a café together, or trailing you on shopping trips?

'No, it's been…lovely. There's been nothing like that and I kind of thought there might be. Occasionally, you'll walk out and someone will take a snap, but it's like…whatever. You get in a car and you're off. Honestly, nothing like that has bothered me. It's not been hard at all.'

Bellamy might believe in panspermia theory (that suggests an extraterrestrial origin of life on Earth), and that the alignment of the contours of Mars's Cydonia region with the position of the Avebury circle and and Stonehenge is no coincidence, but he's as interested in politics and society as he is in conspiracy theory and extraterrestrial possibilities. The lyrics of 'Uprising'—with its order to 'rise up and take the power back/it's time the fat cats had a heart attack' (written around the time of the G20 protests)—from 'The Resistance' are only a hint. Is it galling that despite your well-articulated political views, to many people you're just 'the mad bloke from Muse'?

'I think young people tend to see certain things much more clearly than older generations can,' says Bellamy, 'regarding how the world is structured around the banking system, how democracy is not as pure as it's made out to be, how ideologies clash and how they're manipulated by corporations to fight each other in order to make money… I think everybody goes through that stuff when they're younger, to an extent. It's just that I've expressed it in public.'

Considering the coalition government that's flopped unconvincingly into power, how do you feel now about the possibilities of 'uprising' and 'resistance'?

'Good question. I think the powers that be—corporate owners, government spin doctors, the media in general—are teetering on the edge, in that it wouldn't take much for what happened in Greece to happen in other countries.'

Next week, Muse will play their second two-night stand at Wembley and the expected gee-wow elements are obviously in place. The set design is a collaboration between the band and set designer Ez Devlin, whose background is in contemporary opera and theatre. If it looks as impressive as it sounds, then Muse have clearly refused to acknowledge the sky as a limit.

'I've attempted to throw in some references to "1984", in particular The Ministries, which Orwell describes as being pyramid-like office buildings,' says Bellamy. 'So we've created on of those and are basically playing inside it. There's this technology called projection mapping that's been around in advertising for a while, and we open that up on this Ministry building, so it looks like all the windows open and there are people walking around… I'm hoping the set design, the video content and the music together will be impactful enough to fill up a stadium like Wembley.'

Bellamy once said he'd love to meet David Icke. Wouldn't he rather meet a brainiac like Stephen Hawking? The two of them could have a good yak about contacting extraterrestrial life. Does Bellamy agree with Hawking that—as it's highly likely that any such life will be both more intelligent than us and extremely hostile, viewing Earth simply as a resource to be stripped—we should steer well clear?

'The current theories—based on the anthropic principle—suggest that there should be loads of life out there. Should we shy clear of it? No, I don't think we shold. The worst that can happen is that the whole place gets wiped out!' Bellamy cackles. 'But that's going to happen in the next few billion years anyway, so I'd b a risk-taker, like all the best adventurers. They just went out there in a boat and, for all they knew, they were going to fall off the end of the earth, but they ended up discovering new lands. It's exciting and it's part of our genetic makeup, to explore and expand. Whether you like it or not, the desire to expand and move forward is fundamentally ingrained in all living creatures.'

The thrill of expansion. The excitement of exploration. The risk of spectacular implosion as you grow bigger and bigger. Some killjoys' idea of pomposity and bombast, maybe. But watching Muse rise to their own challenge is entertainment of a curiously compelling, uber-impressive kind.