Muse live review - Saturday - Pyramid Stage [Q Review (Glastonbury 2010)]
ANOTHER SPECIAL GUEST ON THE PYRAMID STAGE, AND A ROCK MASTERCLASS.
In the run-up to Glastonbury, the big question was: which of the two stadium giant headliners would triumph. U2 or Muse? The old guard or the new? One bad back later, we briefly got both at the same time.
If there were ever a band to see on a pyramid-shaped stage built on leylines, it’s the conspiracy theory-obsessed, alien-loving Muse. The threesome – last here in 2004 – swagger onstage like returning heroes, bassist Chris Wolstenholme nonchalantly puffing on a pipe between songs, and frontman Matt Bellamy pulling Freddie Mercury poses before he even plays a note.
The opening tracks set a standard the Teignmouth rockers struggle to sustain for the rest of the first hour, the thunderous Uprising, Supermassive Black Hole and New Born hitting like a triple whammy of heavy artillery. The onslaught becomes more real in United States Of Eurasia, when images of guns and tanks accompanied bombastic lyrics about “wars that can’t be won”.
But, in spite of the bombast, the band don’t pull out all the theatrical stops. At the beginning of the month, they sent a giant spaceship over the crowd at Germany’s Rock Am Ring festival. For us? Not a sausage. Not even a firework, bar the ones lit by the everyday pyromaniacs in the crowd.
Without the bells and whistles, the band’s musicianship has to dazzle, and dazzle it does. A man so musical he turns a tune-up into House Of The Rising Sun, Bellamy is the gadget-loving James Bond of prog, a futuristic effects pad attached to his guitar and a neon-glowing keytar in the wings for Undisclosed Desires. He even plays both ends of a double-necked guitar simultaneously in The Resistance – something usually prohibited for humans with fewer than three arms.
The main set culminates in a savage Stockholm Syndrome, but the boys have saved up a substantial secret weapon for the encore: The Edge, live on stage, performs Where The Streets Have No Name, like a brilliant vision of U2 in a parallel universe. Even Bellamy points at him in disbelief.
Despite their guest’s star power, the last hurrah still belongs to Muse – Knights Of Cydonia has the fingers of Guitar Hero-playing audience members twitching via muscle memory, while plumes of smoke fill the stage. This is Muse au naturel, a two-hour masterclass from a band who play to mega-crowds like it’s their birthright. But next time, chaps, do bring the spaceship.
DS
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