(MUSE) 100 Drum Heroes 2015 - Dom Howard
Rhythm Magazine
When Rhythm meet up with the very, very busy man behind Muse’s powerful grooves, Dom Howard is on excellent form - despite nursing something of a hangover from a rare night off the evening before.
Even a numbness of head doesn’t derail Dom’s thoughtful, considered conversation, in which he’s very happy to talk about taking the production reins for their most recent album "The Resistance" and how, even now, he usually tenses up on stage. In the same way that the band deliver their wide-ranging, ambitious music with panache, Dom talks with incisive clarity. It’s this kind of no-messing, deliberate approach that has propelled Muse to the peak of their game. Which is why it’s almost a surprise that the band haven’t taken the plunge and produced a record themselves before.
Q: Did producing "The Resistance" feel like a big step forward as a band?
DOMINIC: Every album has felt like we’ve taken a leap from the one before, to be honest. We can’t release anything unless we know we’ve pushed ourselves and done things better than we have in the past. This one did feel different, though. It was a huge challenge to produce by ourselves and the three of us have a real sense of achievement having managed to do that.
Q: How did the decision to take on the producer's mantle come about?
DOMINIC: In the course of making the last record (2006's "Black Holes And Revelations") we really learned a lot about the technicalities of producing. We gained a lot of experience and that stood us in good stead to work on this one on our own. We’ve had a studio - which is in a beautiful spot where Matt lives in Italy - for a while, so it was a case of having both a place to make the record and, for the first time, the confidence to do it. So it was just a case of thinking, why the hell not?
Q: Did you enjoy the process of working on your own, or were there down-sides?
DOMINIC: We loved it. The thing is, for starters the studio is just a lovely place to be. So it’s hard not to have a good time. On top of that we felt a real freedom to explore and express ideas. We didn’t rush the creative process, so it took a while to write. And as things came together there was a definite collective glimmer in our eyes. We really enjoyed making this record, probably more so than any other. The only thing we were conscious of was not taking too long when it came to actually recording the songs. We were all aware that without some form of outside help, and some discipline, we could mess about with sounds and ideas forever.
Q: Was there a master plan for the album's sound before you started working on tracks?
DOMINIC: We started off thinking that we’d do something that was simple and raw. But we ended up not liking it, so as time went on we delved further and further into making a more produced, complex record.
We took quite an experimental approach with a lot of it, but it was still very much a case of treating every song individually. Everything has its own personality and so we kind of let each song find its own path in terms of the arrangement and production level that we took it to.”
Q: The album tips the nod to a wide variety of genres; bombastic rock, epic ballads, classical symphony and even r'n'b. It's only really Queen who have managed to sell billions of albums with that kind of scope in the past. . .
DOMINIC: Well I, for one, have always been a big fan of Queen. They are a perfect example of a band being able to cover an amazing amount of musical ground in one album. They had that classical influence, which added a sense of epic-ness to certain tracks, but it also had an impact on their group sense of ambition, I think. Queen were thinking on a huge scale, and that involved not limiting themselves to being a straightforward rock band. Take an album like "A Night At The Opera" - you’ve got the songs ‘You’re My Best Friend’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ all next to each other. To be brave enough, and to be good enough, to get away with that is incredible and a real source of inspiration.”
Q: It's fair to say that Muse have Queen's sense of ambition. You've never been a band to limit yourselves, have you?
DOMINIC: No, we’ve always wanted to be a big band, and I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with that. As a band we take in a lot of influences, and a lot of stuff goes in subconsciously. And I don’t mean just musically people that we meet, places that we go, things that we do, all shape us as a band and that in turn has an effect on the music that we make. And those influences also have a wider effect on how you think and what your goals end up being.
Q: What about your approach to the drums on "The Resistance?
DOMINIC: I didn’t really have any preconceived ideas about how I wanted the album to turn out in terms of my playing. In the back of my mind I wanted it to be natural and spontaneous, though, and just to react in whichever way felt right to what Matt and Chris were doing.”
Q: With as expansive a record as this one, was it always clear where the drums would fit?
DOMINIC: With ‘United States Of Eurasia’, it was pretty obvious what needed to happen as far as the drums were concerned. Others drive you up the wall - sometimes you can try things for weeks and it never sits right. ‘Undisclosed Desires’ was a bit like that. In fact we had to put it to one side for a while.
Q: With the huge range of sounds that crop up on a typical Muse album, do you ever worry about how to translate songs from studio to stage?
DOMINIC: We don’t tend to think too much about how we’re going to pull something off on stage while we’re writing. There’s always a way to deliver it live. And things tend to change anyway, to adapt to how we want it to come across on tour, so we don’t restrict ourselves. ‘Undisclosed Desires’ is already changing - we’re playing it differently than it appears on the album, and I’m sure several of the new songs will do that.
Q: When it comes to arranging parts and playing live, how does the group dynamic work?
DOMINIC: I tend to lock in with Chris (Wolstenholme, bass), but it’s not always a case of the two of us playing very similar rhythmic things. An awful lot of the time we play parts that are very different, but are complementary to each other when you hear them together. I think that might be to do with being a three-piece - if we were to do a lot of unison parts it loses the ‘bigness’ of sound that you need on stage. Chris has a massive sound. He’s got three channels of different bass tones going on at any one time, so it’s a huge foundation for us to play off. And obviously Matt’s got an incredibly complex set-up that produces a massive variety of tones, so we can sound as big as we want to.
Q: You've achieved a huge amount as a band and as a drummer - how do you see your playing developing in the coming years?
DOMINIC: Musicianship is in constant evolution and I’m always looking to expand my own abilities, in particular when it comes to being comfortable on stage. It’s something that Andy Burrows (ex-Razorlight drummer) and I have talked about in the past - about how tense you can get on stage and how different you feel when you get up there as opposed to when you’re in the rehearsal studio. There’s definitely some weird psychology going on there and you need to combat that by being on top of your game so you can play within your limits. I don’t think that we’ll ever stop learning as players, there’s still a lot we want to do.
It’s the things we haven’t done yet that keep us driven and moving forward.
WORDS: JORDAN MCLACHLAN
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