VH1 presents Muse in Lake Como

July 2009

Videohits.com.au

(The interviewer is a lady named FUZZY)

FUZZY: Hey guys, welcome back to 'Video Hits', coming to you from the very beautiful Lake Como in Italy. Hanging out with Matt and Dom from Muse. It's all about The Resistance and I've got to say, love the album, love being here...the last time you guys were on the show, two years ago, you were saying, Matt, that you saw George Clooney ride up and down your street on a bicycle, and you really really wanted to play Poker with him...

MATTHEW: Yes

FUZZY (CONT): Have you had that game?

MATTHEW: I still haven't got the Poker game going, no. I think I need to earn a bit more money, and sell a few more records, before he will let me sit at his table. You know, so, hopefully this album does well. I'll be able to play Poker with Clooney and Brad Pitt. I've seen both of them hanging around here on occasion...

FUZZY: Really? 

MATTHEW: Yeah, so...but I'm not in their gang yet, unfortunately. 

(FOOTAGE - STARLIGHT VIDEO)

FUZZY: I want to talk about other projects that you guys have been working on. Matt, I believe you have been working on a soundtrack? 

MATTHEW: Uh, I did...I did the end credits of some film called 'The International', and I'm currently doing a couple of bits for a film called 'Clash Of The Titans'

FUZZY: Wow

MATTHEW: I mean, whether it gets used or not, I don't know*. But, it's difficult in doing so much with Muse. It's very difficult to have time to do anything else outside. But you know...I sort of...I get offered film stuff quite a lot, but I don't really have time to do anything else outside...

FUZZY: Wow, that's really cool...

MATTHEW: I don't really have time to sort of get into it, but I do bits and pieces when I can. 

FUZZY: Yeah? 

MATTHEW: When I have a bit of time off

(VIDEO FOOTAGE - BLACK HOLES & REVELATIONS)

FUZZY: What other music is out there, that, say in the last eighteen months, that you have been absolutely impressed by?  

DOMINIC: Ummm...lets see...I've become a very big fan of Justice... 

FUZZY: Yeah. Nice. 

DOMINIC (CONT): It's their debut album, isn't it? That was really, really great. And we got to see them live. But it looked bad from what I could tell. Um. That's good (laughs). 

MATTHEW: What was it? Anti-Pop Consortium, wasn't it?

DOMINIC: Oh yeah, that's true.

MATTHEW: That was someone we listened to in the studio, that was really blowing us away. We'd never heard anything like it before, so that may have had a bit of influence. 

DOMINIC: Yeah, for sure. 

FUZZY: On our travels as well, we've chatted to Kasabian. They claimed to have released an album they think is the best album in the last decade. 

DOMINIC: That's good. I've heard it. It's a good album. 

FUZZY: Yeah? West Ryder.

DOMINIC: Their good. It's a great live band as well.

FUZZY: Mmm, mmm. They are. 

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FUZZY: How many tracks did you guys come up with initially? 

MATTHEW: Eleven. 

(LAUGHTER)

FUZZY: Oh okay...awesome. 

MATTHEW: And that's it. Basically, the album, and that is it. 

FUZZY: Not too much ????? then? 

MATTHEW: No, nothing else. And that was it. It was quite unusual in that way. I think with all previous albums we've always had like sixteen or seventeen songs, or twenty ideas, and you say 'Oh, I'll use ten or eleven of the best ones', this one we just came up with eleven, and that's it. That's the album. There's just nothing else. 

(VIDEO FOOTAGE: UPRISING)

FUZZY: Key tracks, The Uprising; 'the green belts wrapped around our minds, and endless red tape to keep the truth confined'. Nice. Is this in reference to one key political issue? 

MATTHEW: Oh well, being English there has been that whole banking crisis. It's been a real big deal there, you know. I think it's been a big deal everywhere, but you know, people are really pissed off about it all, you know...and also these politicians, you know, all these MP Expenses on it...you maybe don't hear about it...

FUZZY: Yes...

MATTHEW: Maybe you don't hear about it...

FUZZY: No, no, I'm sure it happens all around the world...

MATTHEW: But, in England there's a real, sort of like...you know...just not happy with it, you know like, the general public is not happy with the politicians, the bankers, and all of it...they just see them all as just a bunch of corrupt people, you know. So that song's quite aimed towards those persons...

FUZZY: Right...keeping them in check? 

MATTHEW (quietly): Yes

FUZZY: United States Of Eurasia, I have to say, it's such a beautiful sounding song. It's so diverse.  

MATTHEW: Seventies(?) production that one...yeah, that was good fun. That was one of my favourites to work on.

DOMINIC: Definitely. 

FUZZY: Yeah. Cool. 

DOMINIC: I suppose that's one example of...that really started to take on a character. Especially in the kind of the instrumental bit that sounds like almost Middle Eastern influenced. And it started to sound like we were, kind of, riding across the desert on camels you know, or something like that.  

MATTHEW: That's what we had in mind...

DOMINIC: Yeah, that's what we started to think about. I think once we started to format that kind of picture in our mind, we thought 'Okay, it's nearly done. It's nearly finished'. 

FUZZY: Alright...nice. Now, it's time for a request from you guys. What would you like to see on the show? 

MATTHEW: I'd love to see, uh...surely the...I've got to pick...a music video? 

FUZZY: Yes, a music video. 

MATTHEW: I think it's fitting to play Thriller by Michael Jackson. Best video of all time. 

FUZZY: High Five again (they High Five) come on. Where were you when this whole thing went down, when you find out about Michael Jackson? 

MATTHEW: We were in New York, having a meeting with MTV, talking about what we were going to do for the MTV Awards, and then the news came through. It just really put a weird downer on the whole meeting, so we had to stop the meeting quickly. Everyone was quite moved by it really. But yeah, that would be my request, because it is simply the best video of all time. It's...it's definitely the peak of the music video an art form.

(Thriller plays)

FUZZY: From my understanding, there are some tracks that I have heard. I have heard them in several parts, so I assume that they kind of flow into one another, in some sort of way, yeah? So is this kind of your attempt to revive the album, instead of paying a dollar 69 for an iTunes single?  

MATTHEW (scratching his head): Um...well...

DOMINIC: I've always been a fan of the concept of an album. All the tracks work together well, and they relate to each other in some kind of way. That's the nice thing, you know? Erm. You know, it doesn't need to be like hugely conceptial for songs just to work together. I am not sure that this album is 'conceptial' in any kind of way with all the tracks together, but how they flow together is quite important. You want it just to flow well. You want the energy and the dynamics just to flow right. You know it's kind of simple sort of process really. 

MATTHEW: I think our albums they work both in...they work both as albums, and you can just take tracks off them. Do you know what I mean? I don't think we are against that idea, you know? I think a lot of the songs can be played in isolation. They sound totally...totally fine.  

FUZZY: Yeah, yeah. Tell us about some of the stuff that you have not attempted before, that you have attempted on this record. 

MATTHEW: Erm, the end of the album has got this kind of sort of symphonic type style peice, which is about twelve minutes long, in three parts, and it's very very heavily orchestral. Erm, so it's the first time we tried something like that, erm where we basically worked with an orchestra basically for the whole thing. So that was the first time we tried that. There was also another track called uh, Undisclosed, which is all programmed...very, very electronic sounding, and very programmed up. That was something that Dom...we had done before...that Dom was into doing...

(Throughout this, DOM is staring at him)

(CONCERT FOOTAGE)

FUZZY: I just want to talk about a few other things in relation to this album, will you guys be releasing anything off the back of this, like Hullaballoo? Or an EP? Anything extra? 

MATTHEW: It's difficult to say. I mean, we always tend to do live records with almost every record. I think it's because we always reinvent our live show, so much so that we feel that it has to be documented. Uh, I think if you had asked a few weeks ago, if we were going to do a live record this time, we probably would say no, but we have just been talkin' about production ideas, and the kind of thing we're going to do on tour, and so the ideas are really interesting. And so, if we end up with something that is really quite special, then I think we might feel like we've got to document it again. 

FUZZY: Fantastic

MATTHEW: But I don't think we would do like uh...we try and do something different every time, for example with like the third album did like a festival gig, for the last album we did like a stadium gig, this time we'll try and find something a bit different to go along with. 

(CONCERT FOOTAGE) 

FUZZY: So some of your first gigs, I think you are supporting U2, yeah? 

MATTHEW: Yeah, you know, in America yeah? 

FUZZY: That's their 360 Degree Tour. So how many degrees of that same 360 degrees will you get on that stage? 

MATTHEW: Oh well...that remains to be seen, we don't know...we may just be lucky to get a little... 

DOM: Five degrees or something...

MATTHEW: A little piece of...

DOMINIC: A wedge...

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEW: A little piece of um...of um...what is it...the drummers...the drum rising. I don't know. We'll see. We are going to be very very polite to them when we first see them, and do our best to sort of claim as much of our stage space as we can. But we will see, we will see how it goes. 

FUZZY: Tickets for your European tour are going for something like £600 pounds now online... 

MATTHEW: It's ridiculous isn't it?  

FUZZY: Isn't it insane? 

MATTHEW: It's a real shame, isn't it?

DOMINIC: It is a shame, because it's you know, it's the fans that are getting ripped off.

MATTHEW: We're not worth that much (laughs) We..we think that we set a price, or imagine that we set a price that we think that you shouldn't be spending one pound more than that for this band. It's a shame to think that there are people having to spend more than that.    

DOMINIC: The thing is, all the tickets were like a flat price as well, you know. They're all one price for everyone...

FUZZY: Right...

DOMINIC: And not too expensive or anything like that. And now there are like, you know, third party websites that are selling different areas that are more expensive for the floor, and this and that, and it's a shame.

MATTHEW: We've always cared about keeping...keeping ticket prices equal for everyone, so there's no sort of divisions between types of fans, you know. Erm. But in doing that, we get done over by all those scouts. Um..what do you call them? 

(Note: The look on Dominic's face!)

FUZZY: Touts...Scouts? 

DOMINIC: "Scalpers". It's an American term. 

MATTHEW: We get done over by them quite a lot, because we have unified ticket prices. I don't know. There is nothing you can do about it.

FUZZY: Well, truly a true...a true account of that would have to be to add more dates...to your tour? 

MATTHEW: Well, we're kind of booked up solid already until pretty much the end of the summer next year. So, we don't really have any time off. I mean like...we've already got...we're already fully booked...

DOMINIC: We're already full at the moment...

MATTHEW: Yeah, cuz we're touring everywhere. 

FUZZY: Well, guys, thank you so much for your time, and from Muse, "The Resistance" is out right now. Gentlemen, Cheers 

(They shake hands)

MATTHEW: Thanks. Pleasure to see you again.

DOMINIC: Thank you. 

FUZZY: Good to see you. 

NOTES

Clash Of The Titans: He apparently left the project before completion.