(MUSE) Muse - A Seaside Rendezvous
September 2009
RINGMASTER: Roll up! Roll up! Welcome to Seaside Rendezvous!
(This is cut with footage of Muse live, crowds etc)
Muse.
3 Lads From Devon.
Over 10 Million Records Sold.
Global Rock Gods.
Now What?
Footage of Muse live, music, crowds, people buying tickets stop and we cut to a beach scene with gulls singing, before cutting away to newspaper articles and the like.
V/O: Muse confirm two homecoming shows in Teignmouth, Devon on the 4th & 5th September
PRESENTER: 2,000 rock fans queued overnight in Teignmouth to get tickets to see local supergroup, Muse.
MATTHEW: Some new songs, a couple of lasers
MAN: I'm in Teignmouth!
MATTHEW (interview footage): It'll be about ten years since the first album came out, and there's going be something really quite poignant about that, about playing at our hometown, and then going away again...
MATTHEW (footage on stage): Great to be back
FAN: Definitely one of those gigs for the history books.
PRESENTER: Not going to get a greater genearation gap than a bunch of ambitious musicians who want to go and see the world, and a retirement village.
DOMINIC: Over the moon really, to be playing this gig. It's going to mean alot.
CHRISTOPHER: The whole town is going to be an absolute carnage, you know?
WOMAN: Incredible. Worth the twenty-four hours on the plane. Yeah!!!
FINALLY TITLE CREDITS - 'MUSE, A SEASIDE RENDEZVOUS - 4TH & 5TH SEPTEMBER 2009 - THE DEN, TEIGNMOUTH, DEVON
Bucolic scenes of Teignmouth - gulls, wind turbines, etc.
"Ten years after the release of their debut album, Muse are about to kick off their world tour and new album, by playing their hometown of Teignmouth, South Devon"
DOMINIC: We decided that it would be a good idea to come back to Devon, and kind of...remind ourselves where we came from. It felt like a good time to do it. Like a good time to come back and spend a lot more time here, and revisit the place, and uh, and kind of get back to our roots in some kind of way.
CHRISTOPHER: I think you need to get out of Teignmouth though to appreciate it though, that's the thing. I mean it's...you know...I couldn't imagine, you know, being in Teignmouth all the time. Um, I think once you've had the opportunity to travel and see other places, then it's a great place to come back to. When you sort of disappear for a while, and then come back slightly older, you...you see it from a different angle. You know?
CONCERT FOOTAGE, AND THEN CUT TO THE TEIGNMOUTH SEAFRONT
The shows will take place on Teignmouth's Historic seafront.
CHRISTOPHER (IN TOWN WITH DOMINIC, BY THE PIER): I don't think this place has changed since 1930 to be honest. The pier used to be longer, and that's all that's changed. A storm came, and wiped out the back half of it. So that's the development in Teignmouth over the last sixty years, I guess.
DOMINIC (INSIDE AN ARCADE WITH CHRISTOPHER): A lot of all this...they've still got the same games. Like, this has been here for about twenty-five years. I'm sure we're not the only people...but we used to come in here, like accidentally fall onto these machines so that the money falls out, and like grab it and run away quickly.
CHRISTOPHER: We used to uh, go on the beach down by the side, run through the side, come through in our swimming trunks, and jump off the side. And uh, some old guy (who works I think...he still works here...still owns it) used to chase us around, and get into trouble.
(CUT TO A GAME CALLED 'TUCK SHOP')
CHRISTOPHER: Now see, this was the highlight. 'The Tuck Shop', my mum grew up in Teignmouth, and that was there when she was a child as well.
DOMINIC: What do you got to do?
CHRISTOPHER: You put 10p in...and every time...every time it bounces, on one of these springs, the lights change. And if it goes through there, and the lights turn green, you get a packet of sweets.
(They then come across a GUITAR HERO game)
DOMINIC: I'm doing easy
CHRISTOPHER: 'Doing easy'?
DOMINIC: I can't do the guitar
CHRISTOPHER: It's easy
DOMINIC: I've never done it
CHRISTOPHER: It's fine. Put it on hard, at least.
(THEY PLAY)
DOMINIC (taking the guitar off): Love Rage Against The Machine. (CONT) Matt's on the new one, Guitar Hero 5, like his actual character...
But, is being a real guitar hero, all it's cracked up to be?
MATTHEW: All that stuff...all that success stuff, is not really that important. I think coming back to a place like this, makes you realize what is important in life. Obviously, it's the cliché, but it is friends and family, those are the things that stay with you long term, you know? Success, and the ups and downs and all that stuff doesn't really stay with you. It's just something that's transitory, and most of the time when you become very successful, people don't like you anyway, and especially if you express it openly.
CUT to the infamous moment when...'Band label their old town, 'living hell'. Newspaper article, "WE ARE NOT A-MUSED"
VIV WILSON MBE (Local Historian): Muse was just becoming to be a name that people recognized, and their first CD came out, and the mayor at the time was kind of whipped up into throwing the CD publicily in a wheelie bin, with a big headline, 'We Are Not A-Mused", but I'm sure all that's quite forgotten now.
VINCENT FUSCO (Mayor of Teignmouth): To think that they are actually coming back home to actually play for us. Marvellous. It is all about here, and Muse coming to the town, and I feel it gives a terrific um, profile to the town as well and um prestige. And I feel that it will help the town quite considerably. But it is very nice, uh, to visit. It's nice and flat for people to come here to visit, and to walk along the promenade. We've got a really nice play area here, as you can see.
(The Mayor is out doing his mayoral duties)
VINCENT FUSCO (cont): Our putting area, if you want to call it our mini golf, and this gives great enjoyment to all ages.
The bowling green (which is over there), and it's really took off very very well indeed.
(Electric guitar music plays over kids doing wheelies on their bikes, skateboarding etc)
VINCENT FUSCO: Indeed they do skateboard, I must admit along the seafront, not that we want to encourage them too much, but, uh...yes they do actually along the seafront, but as I say...no...
MIKE HAWMAN (local BMXer): You've got to do what you can do for yourself, really around here. There's nothing, um, for people my age upwards, apart from like you know, pubs and clubs. Um, we've got like a skatepark hopefully up and coming soon next year, um, which has taken, you know, gone thirty years to get across to the council that we really need one.
LOCAL GIRL 1: There's not a lot to do, and there's not like big things that happen like the concert.
LOCAL GIRL 2: You have to make your own entertainment really. Like, to find your own sort of stuff to do.
GIRL 3: And people like, aren't inclined to do that in a way. They're...they're the ones that probably get into smoking and drugs and things, because there isn't anything, for...(giggles) yeah, there isn't anything for them to do, so it's kind of the only thing I guess they see to do.
MIKE HAWMAN: It's not really the best place for work, and you...you've got to travel to get a decent job.
BAND MEMBER - THE QUALLS (Teignmouth Indie Band): It's too easy to fall by the wayside and just get sucked into not really uh doing a lot, just you know, just drinking. There's a lack of opportunity around here, and so that's why people leave.
MIKE HAWMAN: Yeah, but you know, a lot of people are really happy to hear about Muse playing at The Den.
2 WEEKS TO GO...
(DOMINIC and CHRISTOPHER are visiting The Den)
DOMINIC: This is where we're going to be doing the gig. It's going to be nice, you know.
The stage here.
It's going to be quite a big stage as well, but I guess standing here, we can now see what the view is actually going to be like.
CHRISTOPHER: There's going to be so many faces in the crowd that's going to pop out, you know, there's going to be all sorts of haunts from the past.
MATTHEW: I was hanging around with a different kind of crowd from Dom. Dom was all like long hair. Nirvana I think was going on, so he was dressed up like Kurt Cobain and stuff (faint laughter from the background), and me and my mates used to take the piss out of them as they looked really silly, you know?
DOMINIC: I kind of knew from school that he was a pretty good musician, cuz I'd seen him like playing a bit of like blues, piano, here and there, and a little bit of guitar, but I didn't really know him very well.
CHRISTOPHER: And when Dom and Matt asked me to join their band, I think I realized pretty quickly, probably after the first rehearsal, what we were doing. Even though looking back it probably wasn't great at the time, but you know, for that time it was leagues ahead of what we were doing in our other bands.
(Shots of driving through Teignmouth)
(CUT to DOMINIC and CHRISTOPHER, walking along a forest path)
DOMINIC: We're going to talk a walk up to The Nest, which is the big rock that we probably saw from Teignmouth. Yeah, it's very nice up here. I mean, you really feel completely just detached from uh, the small town of Teignmouth. And maybe the small town vibe that we were feeling.
CHRISTOPHER: We sort of had to find our own way, and uh, you know, work out what the music was that we wanted to make, because there wasn't really anything else around that was inspiring us musically in the area.
(PANORAMA of Teignmouth bay)
DOMINIC: Coming to like these places, I guess yeah, we'd just kind of hang out and uh, sit around, talk about music, and uh, kind of feel quite detached, and uh, isolated almost from like this town that you can see. This is Teighnmouth here. It would give us like a feeling of uh, escapism or something, or feel like we're actually just getting away from it all.
MATTHEW: We often appeared playing quite a lot of concerts. We...we, you know, tried to get down to places like Falmouth in Cornwall, Camborne...I don't think we really were making any money at that point. You know, it was just barely covering fuel costs, shuffling around toilet venues, you know. I think we were funding it mainly with our jobs, you know? We were paying to play, as they say, you know...those early years. It wasn't until much later...until Madonna offered us a million quid, that we actually gave up our day jobs (laughter).
THE CAVERN CLUB, EXETER
Where Muse played their early gigs
DAVID (CAVERN CLUB MANAGER): The idea of a band coming from a small town, and breaking the gravitational pull of the earth, doesn't happen very often...
PIPPA: They still pop in sometimes. Like a traditional trip to the cavern every Christmas.
CHRISTOPHER: And then it was like such a gradual build up between albums, that you don't really notice what is happening until you stop for a bit, and then sort of sit back and go, 'hang on a minute, we just played Wembley Stadium.'
THE THREE OF THEM ARE WALKING ALONG THE ROCKY PART OF A BEACH.
MATTHEW: Really exciting being on this side, actually looking over, because you can kind of see the whole zone that it's going to be in. I've already started getting loads of e-mails to sort out tickets for old school friends and stuff, so...
(TWO people wave from a boat)
CHRISTOPHER: It's been fifteen years since we played here. You know, it always shocks me the amount of people that know the band, they've heard the albums, they haven't actually seen us live because there's no venues to play here.
DOMINIC: This is going to be crazy I think...how we have caused so much of a scene in the town that we grew up in is going to feel kind of funny, and uh, you know it's going to feel great. It's going to be great to play, and it's going to be a good vibe.
SECRET REHEARSAL SPACE - DARTMOOR
CHRISTOPHER: I think we were in Italy about four or five months ago, and one of us said something about playing in Teignmouth, and you know, my initial thought was they'll never let it happen, you know? Because nothing of that scale has ever taken place in Teignmouth.
(REHEARSAL FOOTAGE)
CHRISTOPHER : There's been a few hurdles, but you know, it was all approved the other day, and obviously, it can all go ahead now which is great. Uh, you know hopefully it'll be something that in you know, years to come, people will still remember.
MUSE MANIA MOUNTS
BBC NEWS FOOTAGE
NEWSREADER: Now more than 2,000 rock fans queued overnight in Teignmouth to get tickets to see local supergroup, Muse.
(Crowd footage - people queueing, tickets, and an old lady flogging old pictures and bookmarks)
V/O: They're the hottest tickets in town, well this town at any rate, as Muse come home. By this morning a couple of thousand were in line for tickets, as Muse Mania swept through the South Devon resort.
MALE FAN: We've been here since yesterday
MALE FANS: We've been queuing since half three yesterday
FEMALE FAN: We only had like, two hours sleep
MALE FAN (WITH FEMALE FAN): We're the first people in Teignmouth to get a ticket, and it's amazing.
(CONCERT FOOTAGE)
3 DAYS TO GO
(Timelapse footage is shown of the set being constructed)
VIV WILSON: The physical transformation is absolutely unbelievable, nobody's ever seen anything like this in Teignmouth before. In 1967, 5,000 teenagers waited several hours for The Beatles to come and stay at The Royal Hotel, and that caused a tremendous stir. And the only time prior to that there was anything really big happening in Teignmouth, was in 1943 when the American Navy came here to prepare for the D-DAY landings.
THE QUAILS REHEARSAL STUDIO
(Which takes place in "Gary Baber Carpet & Flooring Special")
LEAD SINGER: We're in Teignmouth, our home town. We're getting ready for the Muse gig. We're on support, so everyone's quite nervous a bit, anticipating what it's going to be like, but I think this is going to be the make or break for our career. The build up to the gig has been absolutely immense...
BAND MEMBER 1: The last couple of weeks
LEAD SINGER: Yeah, all we've heard is "Muse...Muse" from all the locals, they're all absolutely buzzing about it.
WOMAN: We're welcoming all the Muse fans to our café.
MAN: There's obviously a lot of people that have come down to stay for the whole week, which has been good for business.
ELDELY WOMAN: The chip shops are open until midnight, and the public 'ouses I think are open until two.
LOCAL PROPIETOR: Hopefully, it'll be the place to be this weekend.
CONCERT FOOTAGE.
THE DAY OF THE SHOW - 4TH SEPTEMBER 2009
LOCAL GIRL 1: We're really excited. Really. We've been waiting for it, for like, four weeks now? So yeah, feeling really good.
LOCAL GIRL 2: To actually get there and see what it's like for the stage, cos you're not sure like, how big it's going to be. It's a really small space.
VINCENT FUSCO: We've just come down from home at the moment, and uh, my daughter who is the Mayoress, has come to accompany me as well. It really is nice weather for the Musers coming down. It's actually terrific. It has been a very busy week, yes, but a very nice week as well.
LOCAL BOY 1: You don't really get a lot happening around here, so yeah, um, it's kind of cool to have something this big. I think it's the biggest thing we've had. It's a better Friday night than usual.
(FOOTAGE OF FANS ARRIVING AT THE VENUE)
Man in hat: Come on, Teignmouth!
WOMAN: Buzzing...buzzing...what an atmosphere! I mean. God almighty
GIRL: This is so unlike Teignmouth. Like most of the time you're like, 'Oh, you know, wouldn't really bother.' Teignmouth is the place to be today.
GIRL 2: We can get some food, and then go to the gig.
VINCENT FUSCO: It's terrific, actually, that the boys have come back to their hometown to play for us, absolutely marvellous. Hah! I like those in the hat there, very nice...certainly something different.
BACKSTAGE a man in stilts emerges, the camera takes us to the QUAILS dressing room.
QUAILS BAND MEMBER: It's been quite surreal, getting on that stage, loaded in, soundcheck and what not, and its just, you know, big empty space. Now we've just been assessing the situation, and it's not an empty space...
QUAILS BAND MEMBER 1: Not an empty space anymore by any means.
(CUT BACK TO CROWD)
LOCAL BOY 1: Um, we're gonna try and get through the queue. Um, we'll see if people are...I don't know which way we're going...where's the gate to get in?
THE QUAILS HEAD TO THE STAGE
(Crowd cheers them as they walk by)
LEAD SINGER (on stage): Hello! Is everyone all right, tonight?
MEANWHILE, BACKSTAGE
A white people carrier is arriving, which Muse get out of.
DOMINIC: The set up with what they've done here is really really cool, you know? It really works. It's like it's a perfect size for the den and everything, so it's been really really impressive really.
BACK TO THE CROWD
WOMAN: Some people actually slept out there to get to the front, so um, everyone's...everyone's up for a good gig.
MUSE BACKSTAGE
DOMINIC: Exciting. Nerve wracking.
MATTHEW: No, it'll be good. Play a bunch of new songs. The album hasn't leaked yet, so this will be the first time anyone has heard them, so uh yeah. Some new songs. Couple of lasers.
BACK TO THE CROWD
WOMAN: Epic. Yeah. Definitely EPIC.
MUSE BACKSTAGE
CHRISTOPHER: It's just...I think it's really unusual. Nothing like this has ever happened, so uh, people are loving it.
(FOOTAGE shows that people are even watching from the rooftops)
BOY IN CROWD: For this to come here, is like...just amazin'.
MUSE BACKSTAGE
MATTHEW: But yeah, it's lovely, it's nice, seeing lots of old friends out in the audience, it's a good vibe. Well. Friendly. Friendly atmosphere.
NOW IT IS TIME FOR THE CONCERT...
RINGMASTER: From Teignmouth, Devon
(CROWD cheers)
RINGMASTER: MUUUUUUUUUUUSE!
(CROWD goes EPIC)
MUSE take to the stage, and launch into 'UPRISING'.
(CONCERT FOOTAGE)
GIRL: I've been right down the front, we literally pushed our way in about ten seconds. It's like a mud bar. Your feet are sinking. Everyone's jumping up and down, you got people standing on your feet...it's mad, absolutely incredible.
WOMAN: Worth the twenty-four hours on the plane, yeah!
(FOOTAGE shows people - young and old, peering under barriers, with their faces up against it etc)
WOMAN: Fantastic. Really amazing.
MAN: IT ROCKS!
MAN 2: SUPERB!!
MAN 3: Good boys...we haven't seen anything like that down in Teignmouth before. It's awesome.
MAN 4: I've seen Green Day and The Chili's, but they are probably the best band I've seen live in a long time.
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