(MUSE) WELCOME. Prepare yourself for lift off...

NME ICONS MUSE
May 2010

Introduction

At first glance-back in the straightforward, unchallenging, meat-and-potatoes, cigarettes-and-alcohol, chuck-us-over-that-there-stool-our-lad- I'm-coming-over-all-acoustic Dadrock days of 1998 when Oasis and The Verve ruled the airwaves - Muse emerged as a baffling proposition. They looked like yer average indie band, they talked like yer average indie band and, after a hefty bout of frenzied space rock, they sure as hell smelt like yer average indie band. But the second they started playing they were something else entirely ~ willowy Arabian ‘guitar lines weaved around chunks of meaty metallica, falsettos leapt out of galactic prog episodes, the lyrics spoke of randy cavemen, muscle museums and android ladyfriends. They really were from an entirely different musical dimension, way bigger than our puny minds could comprehend, Even when Muse were a small band, they were already supermassive.
 No wonder it took us all a while to get our heads around them, and Muse weren't going to wait around for us to catch up. As word of their genius spread they were already composing operatic opuses and staging gigs full of geometrical delights on ‘Origin Of Symmetry’. By the time everyone realised they were on course to be one of the biggest bands in the world they were already plotting trajectories to entirely different galaxies with ‘Absolution’. And since then they've grown bigger than we could ever have imagined, but as big as they were always supposed to be: Number Three in America with ‘The Resistance’, filling Wembley with sold-out crowds, collecting Best Live and Best Band awards across the globe and now playing to millions of fans worldwide from their own personal tower blocks and headlining Glastonbury 2010.
 Muse are the first 21st Century stadium band, an inspiration to an entire generation of bands that you can actually get as big as you think. So in their honour we've trawled the NME archives to compile their greatest interviews and weirdest quotes, their hottest shots and greatest triumphs in one place. In addition we've put Matt Bellamy’s lyrics and wildest conspiracy theories under the microscope and polled the world of rock for their views on Muse's inexorable rise.
Revelations? We got ‘em all, right here...

Mark Beaumont 
(Editor/Muse obsessive/author (‘Out of This Word: The Story Of Muse’)

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