Joshi

belldom week 2026 will officially be taking place from 5th to 11th october!

with the poll closed, i've tallied up all the votes and here are 2026's belldom week prompts. we had a total of 59 voters which is CRAZY and so exciting.

some quick FAQs:

can i create something for every prompt? yes!

can i create something for only one prompt? yes!

can i create something for some prompts but not all? yes!

can i combine prompts? yes!

i don't want to create something, how else can i participate? interact with the creations everyone else is sharing, PLEASE. leaving comments and reblogging/retweeting things are the best way to show creators that you love what they've done. the whole point of a ship week is to bring fandom together and part of that is hyping up everyone's amazing work.

i'm not a writer or artist, would [insert type of fanwork] count? of course! meta/analysis posts, collages, videos, pinterest boards, whatever you want to contribute. i just ask that we all as a fandom avoid AI-generated content – we all want to see more belldom in the world, but i think we'd all rather it came from the heart than from a chatbot or image generator.

We Have Come For Your Children

Think MUSE are a pretentious indie band? You haven’t heard ‘Plug-In Baby’. Meet the men behind the most berzerk single of the year…

Words: Dave Everley Photos: Dave Willis

WHEN MATT Bellamy was a teenager, his father passed on a piece of advice. Matt had just told his dad, George, that he had formed a band called Muse with two schoolfriends, Dom Howard and Chris Wolstenholme, and that making music was the career path he wanted to follow.

George Bellamy knew exactly what to say to his son. In the early ’60s, he played rhythm guitar with The Tornados, a largely instrumental group whose seminal hit ‘Telstar’ was the first song to top both the UK and US singles charts. He’d seen how the dreams of musicians could turn into nightmares literally overnight: The Tornados never replicated the success of ‘Telstar’, and they eventually dissolved amid much bitterness and acrimony. It was the weight of his experience, he reasoned, that would help Matt survive as he plunged head-first into the shark-infested pool that is the music business.

A decade or so later, Muse’s supernaturally slender frontman sits on a comfortable sofa in an upmarket King’s Cross hotel, gazing out of the window onto the traffic clogging up Euston Road and pondering the information Bellamy Sr had to impart. His father’s advice has stuck with him over the years, through the lean times at the beginning of his band’s career to the more recent success of their debut album, ‘Showbiz’, and arena-straddling US tours with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters. It stood him in good stead when Muse came under fire from critics who dismissed them as nothing more than a rock Radiohead; more importantly, it helped him survive a prolonged bout of touring that could easily send him over the edge.

Matt Bellamy – vocal acrobat, bona fide guitar hero and frontman of the band set to become one of British music’s brightest stars over the next six months – smiles as he recalls his dad’s words of wisdom.

“He said, ‘Enjoy it while you’re young and get laid’.”

“We’ve been talking about losing the plot this year…” Dom Howard

THERE ARE roughly three popular misconceptions surrounding Muse. One: They are an ‘indie’ band. Two: They want to be Radiohead. Three: They are, at best, aloof and, at worst, downright pretentious.

Wrong on all counts. Muse are unequivocally, unashamedly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a rock band. Matt Bellamy and his bandmates Chris Wolstenholme (bass) and Dom Howard (drums) might admit to a love of early ’90s Midlands crusties Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, but there’s nothing fey or wistful or willingly understated here. Witness their sheer musical scope (jagged guitars to piano-led balladry, frequently in the same song), their skillfully controlled histrionics (visual and sonic), the sheer sense of devotion that’s practically tangible at their gigs.

Love it or hate it, 1999’s debut album ‘Showbiz’ was nothing if not assured. Yes, it nodded towards Radiohead (and, vocally at least, the glorious transcendence of the late Jeff Buckley), but there was more to it than that: listen to the glorious bombast of ‘Sunburn’ and ‘Muscle Museum’, or the sweeping tones of ‘Unintended’, and then go and stick the studied middle-class tedium of ‘OK Computer’ and ‘Kid A’ up your arse. The 180,000 people who own ‘Showbiz’ already have.

This week, Muse release their new single, ‘Plug-In Baby’. Recorded at the end of last year, after completing a worldwide tour that saw them go from the backroom of the Camden Falcon to the enormodromes of America, it’s a song that will hold a gun to the head of the band’s detractors until they change their mind. A swaggering hybrid of serrated guitar noise, fluttering melody, classical flourishes and that unearthly wail, it is, quite frankly, barking. It’s also just about the greatest single released so far this year.

MATT BELLAMY, Dominic Howard and Chris Wolstenholme formed Muse some seven years ago. All three had played in bands around the Teignmouth area: Bellamy and Howard in the unfortunately-named Gothic Plague, Wolstenholme in the marginally more acceptable Fixed Penalty (“They kicked me out,” moans the latter, “because I liked Status Quo.”).

The trio’s first gig together was at a local Battle Of The Bands, where they adopted the monicker Rocket Baby Doll. It was a triumph: despite yet another truly diabolical name, they came first.

“That was about the time we thought, ‘Hmm, maybe we could make something of this’,” recalls Chris Wolstenholme with a grin.

Of the three members of Muse, Wolstensholme is the most amiable. The towering four-stringer – imagine a taller, slimmer version of Alan ‘Jonathan Creek’ Davis – is also the only member in a full-time relationship. He’s been with his girlfriend, Kelly, for three-and-a-half years, and they have an 18-month-old son, Alfie.

Dominic Howard describes Chris as “really quiet, but with the capacity to surprise everyone – you’ll turn around and he’ll be acting out this little play in front of people”. Chris, in turn describes Dom as “the most laid-back person I know”.

It’s an apt description. The drummer seems to spend all his time in a permanent state of bliss, a constant half-smile on his face. Like his bandmates, he speaks with no trace of an accent, and his answers are short and to the point without seeming curt. He stresses that the band are, first and foremost, friends.

“There’s never really any big personal arguments around us,” he says. “If we do argue, it’s always about something else that goes on around us.”

Compared to Dom Howard and Chris Wolstensholme, Matt Bellamy is a ball of nervous energy. Waif-skinny and sharp-featured, Muse isn’t ‘Matt’s band’ – far from it – but he is both its focal point and its most vocal component. Whereas the other two speak in mates-down-the-pub tones, Bellamy gives any subject his utmost attention, before shooting off at a completely different tangent. He talks at a ridiculously fast speed in a startlingly deep voice, sometimes finishing his sentences off with a giggle, sometimes leaving them hanging in the air completely. He’s prone to on-the-spot philosophising, some of it impromptu, most of it well thought out. He seems a little shy and insecure, muttering something about existentialism, before stressing that he doesn’t really know that much on the subject. He rarely makes eye-contact.

There is also a hint of eccentricity about him. He describes how he was recently plagued by recurring waking dreams of being lost in a bone-dry desert, while a metal blade circled him and ultimately plunged into the side of his head (it was, he explains, related to dehydration). He also talks about a bizarre period of last year, where he dyed his hair blue and began tracing lines of ink over the veins in his arms.

“I actually enquired about getting them tattooed,” he concludes, “but they refused to do them. I think it was a case of me wanting to be someone else.”

“It bothers me when people think I’m pretentious. I don’t think I’m cooler or better than anyone…” Matt Bellamy

MATTHEW JAMES Bellamy was born in Cambridge on June 9, 1978, and moved to Dawlish, on the south coast of Devon, seven years later. At the age of 13, his steady family life was shaken when his parents split up.

“The thing that shocked me the most about it was that I didn’t feel anything,” he recalls. “I couldn’t feel gutted. I tried, but I couldn’t. I found it a little disturbing about myself.”

Matt moved with his mother to nearby Teignmouth, visiting his father once every few weeks. Around the same time, inspired by Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr, he began singing and playing the guitar.

“Maybe that’s one of the reasons I coped with my parents’ split so well,” he ponders aloud. “Up until then I’d never played guitar. Maybe that was my way of dealing with it. It sounds like a very American, psycho-analytical thing to say, but looking back on it, it could have been. Our music has always been intense, and maybe it’s reflected stuff I couldn’t really express in everyday life.”

One of the biggest influences on the young Matt was Teignmouth and its career opportunities. Or rather the lack of them.

“If you grow up in London, you’ve got all these possibilities,” he says, gesturing towards the window. “You can become a rock star, you can become a journalist, you can become whatever. In Teignmouth, you can become the owner of a sweet shop. At best. You learn that from an early age, and it gives you this attitude – like, ‘I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to make something outside of this place’. Being from a place like that was a major influence on the music. But it’s also helped us develop something that’s completely unique.”

It’s not just the small-town claustrophobia of Teignmouth that helped shaped Matt Bellamy. As a teenager, the singer immersed himself in “books on science-factual stuff – breakthroughs in science, that sort of thing”. It is, as ‘Plug-In Baby’ testifies, a subject that still interests him.

“It’s always intrigued me as to where mankind is going to go from here,” he says, gazing out of the window once more. “When I was 16 or 17, I read a book that was all about the future of the evolution of man. We’re all going to be wired into some sort of heaven situation, but we’ll make our own heaven because we’ll have abandoned religion. Being an atheist means that you have to realise that when you die, that really is it. Which means you’ve got to make the most of what you’ve got here and spread as much influence as you can. I believe you only really live through the influence you spread, whether that means having a kid and giving all your knowledge to your kid or not having kids and trying to make music.”

Muse is your legacy, that’s what you’re trying to say?

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “I suppose we’re trying to leave something behind.”

MUSE MIGHT have sold almost 200,000 copies of ‘Showbiz’ and circumnavigated the globe, but Matt Bellamy still occasionally has to stop and pinch himself on his arm to make sure he’s not dreaming all of this.

“Now more than ever,” he nods. “When you’re on tour, your mind-set changes. You’re just trying to have a good time as much as you can; you don’t have time to stop and think. We came off tour last year to record ‘Plug-In Baby’, and that was really amazing. It was the first time we’d had a break in months, and we finally realised that we were about to record a new album and that it was all about to go again, only this time it would be more the way we wanted it to be. The thing that topped it off was that we woke up one morning, and the field next to the studio was covered in magic mushrooms. So we picked them all and spent the next four days naked in a jacuzzi.”

Hearing Matt Bellamy talk about drugs is like hearing the Pope holding a seminar on anal sex. Whereas some – actually, make that most – musicians brandish their pharmaceutical excesses like an Olympic medal, Bellamy has been coy to the point of avoidance about the subject in the past. Okay, drugs. Do you use them as a creative tool?

“Mushrooms, whenever I do them, I find quite inspirational,” he shrugs. “I only really do them once, maybe twice, a year, but when I do them, I really do them: two or three days at a time. I have difficulty with anything that’s man-made. I used to live in a house where drugs were around – this was above a sex shop in Exeter, just after I first moved out when I was 19 or 20 – and I’d see that stuff around me all the time. All sorts of people used to come around, and after a while it turned into a scene from ‘Trainspotting’, but I never really took part in it. I saw people going from one drug to the next, to the harder ones. I’ve always just been into hallucinogenics and hash, really.”

What about sex? Do Muse get groupies? Again, it’s something you’ve been pretty tight-lipped about in the past.

“I find it very difficult to talk about that sort of thing,” he begins, staring uncomfortably at the table between us, “firstly because I’m trying to hold a relationship…”

He trails off, then starts again. “To be honest, it’s difficult to talk about that sort of thing without sounding like an arsehole or a wanker, but, yeah, you get that sort of stuff going on the road, but you’ve got to be careful. If I do do something like that, I prefer to spend my time with people who aren’t necessarily fans of the band. I think it’s a dangerous thing to do with people who are fanatical about the band, about any band. There’s a couple of experiences that Dom has had where people have ended up following him around, going to every single gig. It’s something I’m a bit wary of, because I don’t want to give out the wrong impression.”

Have you had serious problems with stalkers?

“I wouldn’t say serious problems,” he replies. “I had to change my e-mail address, cos I was getting serious amounts of stuff. We’ve had a couple of letters where people talked about how the music stopped them from killing themselves.”

That sounds pretty heavy.

“I believe we all influence each other,” he states. “It’s like chaos theory – an action you take here may cause something else to happen somewhere else. It’s just that when you’re in a band, you see the results of your actions.”

DOM HOWARD describes Matt Bellamy as “very cool, very focussed – he’s got very clear ideas of what he wants to do and what he wants to be seen as”. Onstage, the introversion that shrouded the singer when ‘Showbiz’ first emerged in 1999 has vanished, replaced by a florid, fluid sense of showmanship that can, on frequent occasions, be nothing short of awe-inspiring. Watch Bellamy shaking noises out of his guitar that Jimi Hendrix would be proud of while simultaneously sending his voice soaring up to the heavens and back down again and it becomes clear just why Muse inspire such devotion. But ask the frontman whether he’s comfortable with the idea of being a figurehead, and a pained look crosses his face.

“I never want to be seen as a spokesperson for things outside of music,” he says.

What about devotion on a personal level?

“I don’t think that’s something you should strive for. It’s something that gets given to you, and if that happens then you try and deal with it the best you can. If you’re the sort of person who aims for that, then you’re obviously looking for something corrupt.”

How do you think the public perceive Muse?

“On the first album, everyone just thought we were copyists,” he smiles. “If I was a cynical journalist, I could probably see why. It’ll take time to get people to see us the way we want them to see us. I want us to be seen as an alternative to what everyone else is doing at the moment.”

Do you realise that some people see you as being aloof?

“Maybe we are,” he quips, laughing nervously.

And pretentious?

“That bothers me, because if people knew me, they’d realise that I’m not like that at all. I don’t regard what I do as being any more special than what anyone else does. I’ve got no big ego, I don’t spend hours in front of the mirror, I don’t really care what I look like. When I talk about things of, I dunno, a philosophical nature, I’m not trying to make out that I know about those things – I’ve studied them, it’s just, like, layman’s philosophy.”

He sighs and looks mildly dejected.

“I do care when people think that about me. Pretentious is when you think that you’re cooler or better than other people. And I don’t think I’m cooler or better than anyone.”

YESTERDAY, SOMETHING strange happened to Muse. Out exploring the upmarket shops and eateries of London’s Covent Garden, the three of them were stopped in the street and asked for their autographs.

“It was quite funny,” says Dom Howard. “Surprising. The best thing about people coming up to you is their reaction when they leave. They’re always pretty cool – ‘Yeah, nice one, see you later’ – and then they get back to their mates and you see them going (clenches fist in triumph) ‘YEAAHHHH!!!’. It doesn’t happen very often, though.”

It will. Over the next six months, Muse’s profile is set to skyrocket.

As we talk, news filters through that ‘Plug-In Baby’ has been added to Radio 1’s all-important A-list, guaranteeing them at least 30 plays a week on daytime radio. The band’s management are predicting a Top 10 hit; maybe even Top Five. And you can bet that when the follow-up to ‘Showbiz’ finally emerges – it’s currently scheduled for June – things will explode.

“Do you think so?” asks Matt, genuine surprise in his eyes. “I always assume that people are going to think the worst. I’ve never set out to write music that I thought would connect with millions of people at once. I’d much rather earn things slowly and gradually.”

Their singer’s nerves aside, Muse are girding their loins for the inevitable adrenaline rush of the next few months. Matt says he’s looking forward to “going to new places, seeing new things, meeting new people”, and Chris admits to a twinge of sadness at the thought of leaving his girlfriend and son behind when the promotional grind begins.

As for Dom Howard… Well, he’s just looking forward to losing the plot.

“We’ve been talking about it,” beams the drummer. “We started losing the plot towards the end of last year – having more parties, being a bit more excessive. Maybe this year we’ll completely lose it, just become full-on alcoholics and drug addicts and die at a young age.”

Booze, drugs, death… 2001 could feasibly hold all of them in store for Messrs Bellamy, Holland and Wolstenholme – although whether the band truly want to tumble off the twig at this stage of their careers is very much open to debate. The one thing that is absolutely certain is that the next few months will see Muse soar higher than ever.

“Yeah, I think so,” concludes Matt Bellamy with a grin. “It’s basically about having a bit of humour about life and not letting it get to you. That and trying to avoid getting a real job for as long as possible.” ●

MUSE’s new single, ‘Plug-In Baby’, is out now. The band kick off a UK tour on April 5.

Translator’s Note: There are SO MANY typos here and there in this Kerrang! interview, but I’m keeping some of the typos around because nothing is as funny as getting a typo on a surname and ending up with Dom Holland lmao

Heres belldom kissing you sickos, and then them looking cute (if u cant tell they consume me)

fred talking about oscar and logan:

🗣️: "when you first started in formula 3, you raced alongside oscar piastri and logan sargeant. and fans are still loving talking about the trio of, like, fol of you guys. i've seen so many fun videos from that era. and oscar mentioned that you used to be neighbors together. and logan recently mentioned that racing alongside you and oscar was one of his most cherished memories. so what's your memory of that racing alongside them?"

‘I DON’T CARE IF I F*** IT UP ANY MORE’

AFTER THEIR TRIUMPHANT GLASTO APPEARANCE, THE MAKER JOINS MUSE FOR AN ARTY DAY AT LONDON’S TATE MODERN – AND FINDS MATT BELLAMY IN UNUSUALLY SELF-DOUBTING MOOD…

TATE IN THE DAY: ROBIN BRESNARK (WORDS) & PIERS ALLARDYCE (PICS)

‘I SAW SOME REALLY DARK STUFF IN THE USA. INVOLVING YOUNG GIRLS AND OLD MEN. THAT GOT TO ME’ – MATT

“SPIDERS rule the universe,” whispers Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, with all the nervous panic of a lesser cast member from “Star Trek”. A lesser cast member who’s just lost his comrades, his communicator and the contents of his bowels somewhere on a hostile, alien planet. A lesser cast member, in fact, who’s about to lose a large chunk of his intestines to a million-foot-tall, metal spider called “Maman”. No, really. Any minute now…

Except, of course, he’s not. Because this particular mammoth spider, my friends, is art. At least it is to the hundreds of tourists, advertising executives and single-blokes-out-on-the-shark here at London’s new art empire, Tate Modern. To Matt, though, this is war. “I hate spiders!” he quivers, glancing fearfully up at the huge, metal bug. “I hate them because they’re superior. Spiders are the only animals on our planet which have travelled further into space than us. They go into suspended animation, and they are able to stay in that state for eternity until they hit the right conditions. Then – bam! – they spawn back into life.”

Life in… um, space. Uh-huh. So how do they get up there?

“They just float!” he screams, terror blighting his eyes. “They float off in the air currents. They’re tiny, though! Tiny! So small you could never see them with the naked eye. There is a theory that we might have evolved from spiders, actually. They came down in a comet, hit this planet, and that’s how life actually started on Earth.”

He turns away grimly, and says the oddest thing we’ve heard all day.

“I’d hate to have come from a spider.” Erm… quite.

MATT thinks about these things too much. We can say that with a degree of certainty because we’ve never once considered the fact that we might’ve evolved from spiders and yet – strangely – we’ve managed to live happy, secure and productive lives. Then again, we never snapped up an astonishing record deal when we were barely out of short trousers, we never recorded a debut album as intensely powerful as Muse’s “Showbiz” and we’ve never managed to get our hair to be quite so spiky. But we are not in Muse. We’re not fighting to make the world a more exciting place.

“Still stuff is boring,” complains Matt, prowling around the Tate Modern’s galleries, searching among the mutilated canvases and twisted installations, among Damien Hirst’s infamous “Pharmacy” (Matt: “It doesn’t mean a thing to me”) and Donald Judd’s large, aluminium boxes (Matt: “It’s just a box, isn’t it? Look! It’s called ‘Untitled’ as well!”) for signs of a bright, technological future. A future where virtual-reality lasers will zap into his eyeballs, sending him into a fantasy land where colour has a smell and everyone needs to be plugged in overnight to recharge. “That’s the whole problem with this place,” he adds, “with all art galleries they’re too still. They don’t really look like anything new. Everyone knows what modern technology’s capable of, but where is it? Where can we get hold of it?”

So what you’re saying is that modern art just isn’t modern enough?

“Well, where’s the stuff that’s really gonna be remembered?” frowns Matt. “You only really remember the pioneering stuff, and too much modern art is all about playing with some concept from 50 years before. It’s nothing new. Like, who do we even remember from 100 years ago in music? I wonder if any of the bands who are around now are going to be remembered. I reckon the vast majority of them will be forgotten.”

Including you?

“Probably. But maybe we’re just not modern enough. As people we are. F***ing hell! We’re here! In the present! Right now! But, musically, everything we do has been done before. We do have a little bit of uniqueness I suppose, but, at the end of the day, we just… well, we get a bit rock’n’roll, you know?”

And that’s dated?

“I think it is,” he hums. “Yes.”

THIS isn’t the Matthew Bellamy you were expecting, is it? It’s certainly not the one we’d read about: the decadent bon viveur who couldn’t give a shit if fascists take over Europe, as long as he has record company money coming out of his arse, his champagne’s been perfectly chilled and his cigar’s been rolled on the most virginal of thighs. He seems… well, less pretentious than we’d been led to believe, more full of fears and doubts and insecurities. And it’s not something he’s unaware of, either.

“I think I was a bit pretentious for a little bit,” he says, settling in a nearby pub. “For a moment, I thought that the music was… well, really good. And I accidentally answered questions in a way that might’ve sounded really twattish and anal. I’m definitely aware of that.”

But maybe there was a class element working away there too, Matt. Maybe people thought Muse were all pretentious gits because you don’t come across like the usual rock’n’roll scrubbers we’re all used to.

“Well, that’s another misconception about us,” he groans. “People think we’re public school and we’re not. Not even remotely. I’ve never even walked past a public school! Well, actually I have. I’ve thrown bricks at them, but that’s it, you know? The misconception is that people think we had very simple, nice, middle-class lives, and that’s not the case at all.”

As it happens, you do have quite a scrubby background, don’t you, Matt? We’ve heard stories about car theft and all sorts…

“Hmmm,” he blushes, fidgeting with his shirt sleeve. “Yeah. But it’s nothing I’m proud of. I never wanted to be doing stuff like that, and it sounds much more dramatic than it actually was. I just got involved with a really dodgy crowd. I’ve always managed to get involved with really dodgy people, for some reason.”

He pauses. Sips his drink. Looks at bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard. Blushes again. Then laughs. “Apart from these two. But trust me, if you ever want to fall in with a dodgy crowd, get a job cleaning toilets on a camp site. That’s where I met a lot of dodgy people. I’ve done all the jobs, me. I’ve had the glove up to there, unblocking drains. But why on earth are we talking about this?”

Because otherwise people will think you’re the kind of ponces who swan about art galleries all day!

“Look,” he smiles, “if we’re bright in any way, it’s not university cleverness. It’s common sense. It’s just common sense.”

You realise that makes you sound like a smug, Tory bastard, don’t you?

“Aaaaaargh! Jesus!”

All right, Matt. We’ll stop being mean. Let’s move on to dribbling over your ridiculously abundant talent, shall we?

OR maybe not. Barely has the second round of drinks staggered its way to the table than Matt says the following. And, trust us, he actually means this.

“I think I’m crap. I’m a crap guitar player. I’m really not very good. And I thought I was a good singer until I met Coldplay. That guy’s got a real voice. He can sing.”

You read Melody Maker. There’s a fair chance you’ve heard Muse by now. Maybe you’ve even seen them play one of their unspeakably explosive live shows. Well, Matt can play guitar, can’t he? And he can definitely sing. Boy, can he sing…

“Naaaaaah,” he piffles, wafting the suggestion away with his flapping hands. “I used to think I was an all right singer, but I’ve gone off myself recently. I’ve just started screaming at gigs now, doing weird voices and stuff. A year ago, I was like: ‘Sing! Sing lovely notes and beautiful melodies!’ I never used to scream at gigs, in case I damaged my voice, but I just don’t care if I f*** it up any more.”

Isn’t that a bit ungrateful?

“Is it?” he shrugs. “Look, I admit there was a time, when we were recording the album last year, when I did think I was good at something. But, since then, I’ve gone out into the world and toured with people who are way better than I could ever be. Take Flea from the Chili Peppers – he’s an absolute genius. He’s like Jimi Hendrix on the bass. People have been saying in reviews that I’m the new Hendrix, but that just makes me go, ‘Baaaaah, bollocks!’ I do put everything I can into my playing, into this music, but there’s so much more to learn. And I’m really gonna make sure I get the chance to do that learning, even if it means disappearing for a long time.”

Learn what? You’re already the best live band in the world!

“Ha!” he laughs. “That’s definitely not true. No, no, no. Rage Against The Machine, Tom Waits, The Flaming Lips – excellent shows. Even bands like Korn or Slipknot. Slipknot are f***ing amazing! They are!”

“That’s a show!” grins Dom. “But don’t they just kick each other’s arses onstage? Which is almost what we do, but in a more negative way.”

“Nah,” counters Matt, “underneath those masks, they’re loving it, really! Actually, speaking of masks, I nearly did a mask thing on our last tour. I was gonna wear one of those typical, white-faced alien masks, and I was gonna dress up in white and have a projection on me. Just for ‘Unintended’. It was gonna be a love song from an alien’s point of view – wanting to be part of the human race, but just not quite able to get in. I was… um, advised not to do that. You see, I’m losing the care about how I look onstage these days. That’s how we are in rehearsals, pissing about and rolling around. I’m always making a twat of myself. God knows why people want to pay good money to look at me wriggling about, though! I wouldn’t!

“What I’m getting into is prolonging the ending,” he adds. “Staying onstage longer than we’re welcome. I’m starting to have private moments in public, playing with the strobe lights, lying on the floor until I get really comfy. One night, on the last tour, I ended up on the floor with these smashed speaker cabinets around me, got really comfy and just lay there for about 15 minutes. The tour manager had to come on and ask me whether I was asleep or not! That’s my aim – to fall asleep onstage at the end of a gig. Smash everything then huddle down, just appreciate the peace.”

‘THAT’S MY AIM – TO FALL ASLEEP ONSTAGE AT THE END OF A GIG’ – MATT

TIME to cut to the chase. Matthew Bellamy, I put it to you that, despite your wriggling, despite your protestations, despite your ridiculous sense of unworthy guilt, you have become a star.

“Noooo.”

Yeeeeeeeees.

“Noooooooooooooo. No, no, no, no, no! That’s not what I’m after at all. Definitely not. It’s not something I’ve ever intended, or wanted, or something I’m aiming to expand on. Besides, we’re not a big band at all. Of course you’re gonna be treated that way at your own gigs, but it just doesn’t work that way in day-to-day life.”

But it does with you. Everything about you screams, “Big, rock pig superstar waiting to happen”. You might be young, but everyone around you scuttles about like you’re this great, heroic butterfly who’s about to crawl out of the low-rent, indie chrysalis and take over the world. Any minute now. You’ve even started smashing up dressing rooms, and how star-like is that?

“That only happened once!” he protests and, fair enough, that’s true. It was at the German equivalent of MTV’s Five Night Stand a couple of months ago. Muse’s gig was pulled at the 11th hour and £3,000 worth of damage was inflicted on whatever the band could grab and smash. Nevertheless, Travis have never behaved like that. Ever.

“But we were f***ing ready for that gig,” explains Matt. “The energy was there! So, when it was pulled, we were f***ing gutted. The level of negativity which set in at that point was immense, almost as if that was it, the end of the f***ing band.”

Don’t apologise. Kurt Cobain would be proud of you. John Lennon would probably give you a big sloppy kiss. It’s brilliant.

“Look,” he panics, half enjoying the praise, but seeming every bit as concerned that it might actually be true, “I know what you’re saying, but I’m only like that when things go terribly wrong. I’m not a prima donna! I’ve never said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Ever!”

That, Matt, is because everyone already does.

STILL, there are limits. And, yes, Muse remain a very small band in the bigger scheme of things. Their big-push single, “Unintended”, only went to Number 20, despite everyone’s sure-fire Top 10 predictions; they’re getting played on Radio 1, but they’re still a long way from A-listing Sonique out of the way; and, though they’re playing over 40 festivals this summer – taking in sites as unlikely as Israel, Turkey and Greece – it’s not as if they’re headlining any of them. Still, Muse have all the spirit they’ll need to see them grow. And, in spite of Matt’s unease, they have more than enough talent to reap the highest rewards. They’re just desperate to avoid the traditional pitfalls. That’s all.

“I saw some really dark stuff in the USA,” reveals Matt, edgily, as the pub’s kicking-out-time draws close. “I don’t want to name names, and it was far more crew and industry than the bands themselves, but I saw… well, very dark-side stuff. Pure dark-side. Stuff that makes you sleep less comfortably. People getting hurt. Psychologically. And some of that got to me. Some of the stuff involving young girls and old men. That got to me. Quite seriously.”

And perhaps that’s why, for the time being at least, Muse’s ambitions are humble. Dom’s got his eyes set on bedding (or should that be “bushing”?) the unquestionably over-age Appleton Sisters when Muse play T In The Park next week; Matt’s working on some highfalutin scheme to reinvent crowd-surfing; and Chris is just sitting back, counting the pennies and dreaming of the day he can buy Rotherham United Football Club (new shirt slogan: “F*** Off!”). Simple dreams. Certain futures.

“When you’re younger,” explains Matt, finally, “you dream of being known all over the world, massively famous, purely because it’s the exact opposite of what you are. But, when you get to where we are now, that really doesn’t seem so important any more. That’s sad? Ah, but the thing you’re missing is that we probably will become massively famous!

“In fact,” he grins, getting up to leave, “I think we definitely will.”

And that really is an end to it.

MUSE PLAY T IN THE PARK ON JULY 9

PICK AN ART THAT'S NEW

MATT ON THE MODERN ART DEBATE

“I don’t know if the stuff in Tate Modern is art. I don’t have a clue what art is! But the stuff in here is interesting. It makes me question it. If you had a great big canvas with a huge rip down the middle hanging on your wall, it’d probably attract loads more attention than, say, a picture of some dogs or something. People would go: ‘Why on earth have you got that there?’ And that’s the point.”

Translator's Note: Now, for those who have trawled through MuseWiki before, you might find this article familiar to you, and that's because the text version of said article is already in MuseWiki. But from what I recall (and currently can't check MuseWiki for it due to issues connecting to the website), there wasn't any scans of said article, and there wasn't even an actual date of when said article was published on Melody Maker. It just said '??-06-2000', so I had to go by hunch when I was going through eBay. And luckily, my hunch was spot on and the magazine issue for it was available too. So now we get to enjoy both the scans and the article text.

Also, Showbiz era Matt really did just said anything back then. His personality was such an opposite to Chris Martin that when you look back at it, it's no wonder the media and fans were so fascinated by both Chris and Matt back then.