It’s a tar-melting June afternoon in Lisbon and two of the members of mega-selling British alt-rock trio Muse are looking decidedly pasty-faced and hungover.
“We’ve been rehearsing for the last few days, but we hadn’t seen the crew or our tour manager in a while, so we all had a few drinks last night,” raven-haired singer Matt Bellamy confesses. “So I’m not feeling too good today, to be honest.”
While Bellamy and drummer Dominic Howard were drinking more than was sensible, affable bassist Christopher Wolstenholme spent his evening engaging in activities that were far more befitting a rock star. No, he wasn’t snorting lines of Charlie off a supermodel’s posterior (he is married with three children, after all). Rather, he was snugly curled up in bed watching a movie – about a rock star.
“I watched that really bad film with Mark Walburg in it,” he laughs. “What’s it called? Oh yeah, Rock Star. I just couldn’t sleep and it was about two in the morning. It was that bad I had to watch it until the end just for the comedy value. He was just so stereotypical. There was one scene where he does his first gig and his wife wakes up in bed with two blokes and he goes out into the lounge and there’s all these naked women all over the place. Doesn’t happen, mate!”
He shakes his head and smiles, before clarifying, “At least not after your first gig!”
Are Muse a hard-partying band generally?
“Not really, no,” he says. “I think we went through our hard partying period with the early albums. That sort of transition period from being in Teignmouth all the time and signing on the dole to all of a sudden having a little bit of money and being on tour all the time, I think we all kinda lost it a little bit. Not in a bad way. Especially during the Origin Of Symmetry period, there was definitely a lot of loose parties going on and a lot of alcohol being consumed and that kind of stuff.”
In roughly eight hours' time, Muse will be playing what’ll be only their fifth gig of 2008 (to date, they’ve played two shows in South Africa and one each in Dubai and the Royal Albert Hall) to a crowd of 100,000 Portuguese fans at the city’s Rock In Rio festival, but for now they’ve got an hour’s worth of media duties. There’s no new album due or anything so it’s nothing too heavy. There’s an MTV Europe crew here filming a special on the festival. And seeing as the band will be playing Marlay Park in August, they’ve kindly agreed to speak to Hot Press as well.
Although they’ve a fairly dark and gloomy image, and are notoriously media shy, today they come across as three likeable, unpretentious and easygoing Devon lads. Formed while they were still schoolboys in the small town of Teignmouth, Muse have been in existence for 14 years (though they were first grouped under the moniker Rocket Baby Dolls). Several albums, millions of sales and countless air-miles later, they’re still going stronger than ever. They maintain success hasn’t changed them. In fact, they can barely believe they’ve been going so long.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be 10 years next September,” says Dominic. “Well, that’s from the release date of Showbiz, but we’ve actually been going since 1994. It’s amazing really. We’ve done well. We’ve had a good run so far.”
“It doesn’t feel that long ago that we were playing to 30 people at the Cavern Club in Exeter,” Chris laughs. “It was 10 or 12 years ago, but it doesn’t seem like that at all. Touring, life just goes by so fast.”
Speaking of things going fast, time is reasonably tight and they’ve still got to cross town to soundcheck. Their tour manager suggests rotating the interviews. Matt will grab a bite to eat, Chris will do an interview with MTV, and Dominic will talk to me. After 15 minutes, Matt will talk to me, Chris will talk to MTV, and Dominic will grab a bite. Then we’ll all change over again. Sounds like a plan.
Dominic and I sit out on the veranda and get straight down to business. The drummer is skinny as a rake and hiding behind a massive pair of Ray Bans. However, while he’s obviously slightly hungover, his pale demeanour might be more down to the fact that he’s spent much of the last few days underground in the band’s brand spanking new Italian studio.
“We’ve got a studio near Lake Como and we’ve been rehearsing and working on new material. But we’ve only really just got the studio off the ground – it’s all starting to work now, and we’re starting to work in it. So it’s a great location for starting the whole creative process for the album. It’s just so beautiful. You know, you’re in a pretty dark studio – underground – and then you come out between takes and you’re looking at the lake and the mountains, taking big deep breaths of fresh air and just... relax.”
The new studio is situated near Matt’s lakeside home, which he’s shared with his Italian girlfriend for the last few years. Chris is still living in Devon with his wife and children, while Dominic is London-based. Does that distance make things difficult?
“Not really, because we’re always together. I mean, we occasionally spend weeks apart, but if you look at the percentage of time we’re together in a year, it’s probably 90%. So a few weeks here and there is fine. And being spread apart is no big deal. The more you travel, the more the world gets smaller. So jumping on a plane to Italy is like driving down to Devon. So it’s totally fine. There’s no issues about distance, creative or otherwise.”
Muse have spent much of the last two years out on the road, incessantly touring 2006’s bombastic, quasi-classical and often quite brilliant Black Holes & Revelations. Although it’s very much early days for their next album, he says it’s great to finally be back in the recording studio, experimenting with weird synths and percussion.
“It’s exciting times, really. We’re just getting back into it all. You get really involved in the creative side of things, playing around with strange instruments and things that you don’t normally get your hands on, and then you go on tour for two years and forget it all! So it’s nice to get back in there again.”
What’s more important to you – the tours or the albums?
“Oh, it’s all good I think,” he shrugs, smiling. “They’re obviously radically different things and you get a very different feeling from each one. But they’re equally as important. You need to create to keep your mind and abilities and the band moving forward – and obviously that needs to happen. But you get so much fulfilment playing those songs around the world in different countries to different people. It’s amazing. So they’re very, very equal and I don’t really have a preference.
“We’re kind of lucky as a band in that we all enjoy touring,” he continues. “We meet a lot of bands who just can’t handle it or just don’t want to. Fair enough, but we really enjoy it. We’re still kind of touring now. Not a whole lot, mind. But it’s nice to do bits and pieces rather than just hibernating for a year.”
We’re meeting just a week after Jim Corr gave that controversial interview to The Last Word in which he voiced his suspicions that the 9/11 attacks had been orchestrated by rogue elements within the Bush administration. As some of Muse’s more apocalyptic lyrics (not to mention many of their previous interviews) might suggest, the band are fairly fond of conspiracy theories.
When I tell Dominic about Corr’s theory, he nods sagely. “For us, that all felt very believable – or for me, at least. There seemed to be so many just hard facts about the way in which the actual area of Ground Zero... the way in which the buildings fell down, and the speed of it, and how the other buildings ended up falling down. Let alone other facts about the plane wreckage in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.”
So you’re saying...?
“It’s all bullshit! You only have to look at it to see that it’s a complete joke. It’s so dark that America would pull that kind of wool over the public’s eyes, but I guess a lot of people bought it. They were in a vulnerable period so they were open to believe anything like that. It’s dark.”
Is this the kind of subject that the band while away the hours discussing on the tour bus?
“Well, not so much 9/11 – that was just one thing that happened many years ago. But sure, we talk about all sorts of stuff. You’re hanging around with your mates. You chat, don’t you?”
Do you think that famous musicians have a responsibility to talk about political issues?
“No, not really,” he says. “I don’t think you’ve a responsibility to talk about political issues or anything. I know certain musicians do. But if you’re in a band or you’re a musician or an artist then you’re on some kind of platform and have the ability to say what you think about anything in public. And if you’re into politics that might come out through the music or the way you talk. But it’s certainly not a responsibility that we take on. I think we’ve only ever spoken about things that we found relevant to our music or the way that we’re feeling. And I’m sure we’ve talked about all sorts of stupid ridiculous things in the past. Ha, ha!”
Talk turns to the music industry and new methods of music distribution. With Ash announcing that they’ve totally abandoned the album format, and Radiohead giving their stuff away for free, do Muse have any radical new distribution plans up their sleeves for the next opus?
“We haven’t really discussed it,” he avers. “It’s just open days it seems these days. It’s becoming way more open for artists to come up with different creative ideas as to how you release music, rather than just going down the typical traditional format of releasing a CD.
“But we’re not against the idea of releasing albums – like a group of songs together – at all. If there’s a point to it being together then it needs to be together. If the songs tie-in or if it’s a conceptual piece or they just sound good together then you should release them together. I think it’s just totally open. I mean, we haven’t decided exactly what we’re going to do, at all. The music is going to dictate how it works. But I think the traditional record company route of releasing CDs has proven to be finished. It must be, because they’re all skint. Ha, ha!
“There’s definitely an element of freedom for artists these days, though, which is really nice. Of course, it’s easier for established bands who’ve got a fan base. But it’s good times, I don’t think it’s the end of the music industry. The door’s opening for a lot more creative freedom in the music world.”
Given that you all live apart, are any of you planning any musical side projects?
“Not yet. I think we’ve still got a healthy ambition between the three of us to kind of discover more, create more music, evolve and change and try and become better at what we do. So we’ve a lot of aspirations to do that, really. It feels like a really positive time. There’s a lot of things we still feel like we want to accomplish. Like a world stadium tour. Until we’ve done that...” He laughs again.
Hot Press’s next question is purely pun-based. Nick Cave once said that he’d never allow his music to be used in advertising because it would offend his muse. Do Muse allow their music to be used in advertising?
“Not much,” he says, shrugging. “Some stuff accidentally gets slipped out or used without your consent. We’ve always drawn the line on supermarket products. Anything you can buy in a shop like that. You know, it’s got nothing to do with music. Nescafé used our track ‘Feeling Good’ once – we sued them, they paid us off and we gave the money to Oxfam. That kind of thing definitely cheapens it. Obviously it depends on what it is.”
What would be your ideal advertising product?
“Em... space travel,” he smiles.
This is hardly surprising. There’s a lot of apocalyptical and science fictional themes running through their work. Dominic says he’s never heard of the paranoid dystopian author Philip K. Dick (though he has seen Blade Runner), but he does mention Arthur C. Clarke as being a major influence on Matt’s lyrics. “Oh, there’s an element of otherworldly stuff that’s always hanging around.”
Given that ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ took its title from a region in the Northern hemisphere of Mars, I wonder has he seen the startlingly clear images of the planet’s surface just beamed back by the NASA space probe.
“No, I haven’t seen them,” he says, looking interested. “I must have missed them! Matt, have you heard anything about this? Images from Mars?”
Matt Bellamy has just walked over to the table. “I saw them, yeah,” he mutters quietly. “They were really cool.”
It’s obviously interview switch-around time. I bid the drummer adieu, and Matt slips into the hot seat. He’s a shifty and distracted kind of interviewee – rarely looking you straight in the eyes (though, in all fairness, that may be down to the intense sunshine). He speaks very quickly and intensely in staccato bursts, and punctuates almost every break in every sentence with the words “I think” or “I suppose.” His teeth are absolutely terrible for a millionaire rock star, but we can forgive him that.
He’ll turn 30 the day after tomorrow. Will it be a big milestone?
“Yeah, I suppose so,” he says. “It’s the end of my 20s, isn’t it? Though someone said the other day that your 30s are the new 20s so I’m hoping that that’s a factual statement. Of course, the person who said it was in their 30s. When they’re in their 40s, they’ll probably say that your 40s are the new 30s!
“But I suppose I’m glad that I got there, really. I suppose it’s a very specific birthday. It’s nice to look back on what I did in my 20s. I’m sure it’ll be a bit different from now on, though I’m not sure how. I’m glad the band’s still going strong. We didn’t necessarily expect to still be going in our 30s, if you like. When you start as a teenager, you see it as a much more short-term thing.”
Did you have a plan B back then?
“Well, the Plan Bs sort of disappeared about five years ago,” he smiles. “I can’t quite recall what they were. They were probably quite boring really. I think at one time I figured I could go off and be a scuba diving instructor. You know, go off and live in the sun for a while...”
Can you scuba dive?
“Yeah. I learnt how to do it when I was a bit younger. I was about 18, I think, when I learnt. And I got quite into it and did all these advanced courses. It’s quite easy to go through the processes and end up being an instructor and then get a job in Thailand or somewhere like that.”
It’s just as well his rock ‘n’ roll career worked out, because he doesn’t really look like the scuba-instructing type. Having said that, nor is he as obviously strange and mercurial as his intense reputation would have it. Actually, he comes across as quite cerebral for a man who, as legend has it, once cancelled an American press tour and fled the country on the grounds that he’d heard an asteroid was about to strike (he simply laughs when I mention the incident).
But maybe it’s not Mr. Matthew Bellamy who’s strange, just the people he attracts. It was recently reported that he’d been having some problems with a stalker at his Italian home.
“I’m not sure if I could call it a stalker,” he muses (sorry!). “There was this guy... I’m just trying to remember what happened. I was away in Australia and I got a call from my girlfriend who’d been freaked out by this guy who’d been hanging around outside the house for two or three days. He disappeared eventually, but I live next door to this hotel. And it turned out that he’d gone into the hotel and given the guy who runs the hotel – who I know quite well – he’d given him a big bag to give to me, telling him that he was a cousin of mine.
“In fact, first of all he was asking if there was any way he could get into the house – saying he was a guest of mine or something like that. It was a bit edgy. Anyway, the contents of the bag were a bit scary, I think. There was a lot of end of the world poetry and these sort of cryptic clues and weird things. There was a pair of football trainers and he’d written ‘Bellamy’s Football Club’ or something on them. It was all quite scary. Well, not scary, but very unusual, not normal sort of gifts. It was like he was trying to symbolise something or try and tell me some kind of weird message I think. But as I said, I wasn’t there at the time. My girlfriend was quite freaked out about it, though. But I don’t think it was anything to worry about.”
She’s a psychology student, isn’t she?
“Yeah, so she probably read into it too much! She’s just finished the Masters and all that stuff. But she’s now specialising in sex psychology. And that’s really... all I should say. Ha, ha!”
Seeing as we’re talking Italians, I mention something about Berlusconi, but he just laughs again. “Italian politics? You know, I don’t pay too much attention to it. Everyone over there doesn’t seem to take it too seriously. They regard it all as quite corrupt and stuff. I think everyone’s got their own little governments in their towns and their own way of dealing with things.”
Like the Mafia?
“Ha, ha! I’m not sure about that. But I’ve certainly come across a few suspects who you might think might be in that area. But politics isn’t as active in everyday conversation as it is in America, say, where everybody’s just absolutely obsessed with the election.”
Are you following that?
“Yeah. Well, obviously every newspaper you pick up has got something about it, hasn’t it, so it’s difficult to avoid it. I’m pretty up to speed on what’s going on. Barack Obama seems like he’s probably a good bloke. I think he might be doing the reverse of what’s been going on in the past, which is quite nice. Whereas in the past you’d hear all these people say they’re gonna do all these good things – and then they get into power and they either don’t do anything or they do the complete opposite.
“I like the way Barack Obama is starting to talk about Iran and all this kind of stuff. I’m hoping that he’s just blagging, you know what I mean? He’s just saying the things he knows he needs to say just to get in. And then once he gets in he’s gonna go, ‘Actually, I’m gonna do loads of good stuff!’ So I think he might be the reverse of everyone else.”
He pulls a slightly wary face when I mention that I’d been talking to Dominic about 9/11 conspiracy theories. However, he doesn’t shy away from talking about it.
“There’s three camps, I suppose. There’s the anti-conspiracy theory camp, which is people who just won’t entertain anything that suggests that people in power would ever do anything against their own people. Then the other camp – regarding 9/11 – is those people who believe that they didn’t make it happen, but they allowed it to happen. Then there’s the third camp who say that they actually made it happen.”
And which one is your tent pitched in?
“I’m probably in the second one somewhere. I think there’s definitely a sense that they were partially aware of what was going to happen, but understood that there could be some – sounds like a terrible thing to say – great motives for them to let it happen. And unfortunately there’s a history of that. A lot of people debate Pearl Harbour for the same reasons.”
Incidentally, I read on Wikipedia yesterday that you’re a big fan of psilocybin...
“Psilo-what?” he says, looking puzzled.
Magic mushrooms...
“Oh right!” he laughs. “I’d say ‘fan’ is a bit strong, but I think through the influence of people like Bill Hicks or someone or David Icke and these kind of people... Even great music from the ‘60s, bands like the Beatles and that kind of stuff. I’ve never taken LSD or anything, but I think being from Devon where mushrooms grow naturally, it doesn’t seem unusual to take them. I’m surprised it’s even seen as an illegal thing. But I’m not really into chemical stuff – manmade stuff I don’t really trust. Even official medicine I don’t really trust. I don’t take vaccines or anything like that. But I think if it grows in nature, you can’t really argue with that, can you? I think it was Bill Hicks who asked ‘How can you ban nature? How can we make nature illegal?’”
But enough about conspiracy theories and psychedelic drugs. Let’s talk about the music. Dominic tells me that you’ve gone back into the studio recently ...
“Well, I wouldn’t say we’ve done any serious recording yet, we’ve mostly just done demos and things and we’re seeing how they go. You know, and then going back to them and making changes to them and letting things develop that way. Which is unusual for us. But it’s going pretty well. We’ve got quite a few good songs. There’s definitely a little bit of U2 creeping in there I’d say. A little whisper of early U2. I can hear a bit of that in there. We’ve got a song that sounds a little like ‘New Year’s Day’.”
What? Punky new-wave sort of stuff?
“No, there’s something about the rhythm section. I think in U2’s early stuff they had a lot of really good minimal rhythm section stuff – you know, quite simple guitar parts and bass and drums. Not too many cymbals – more toms and drums. That’s what we’re definitely aiming for. A bit more primal and bit more stripped down.”
Not the usual Muse way of doing things...
“No, it probably won’t sound that way by the time we’re finished!” he laughs. “What else do we have, though? Oh yeah, we’ve got a bit of glam rock creeping in there as well, a bit of Marc Bolan-style. Which I think is a bit of fun, really. I think we can get away with that at this stage.”
In fairness, Muse do have a tendency to throw the kitchen sink at it in terms of studio effects!
“Ha, ha! I think at this stage we’re still throwing everything at it, but I’m hoping that we’ll all be a bit more calm and collected when we put together a song list for the album. I think we’ve done certain things before and gone to great lengths to test our range, if you like. But now we’d like to do some really good songs.”
Can you play much of your material acoustically or on a piano?
“In the past, we have done some but really a lot of our songs don’t work that way. But I think this time there are definitely a few songs coming through which are coming from that kind of simple background of playing them on a piano or playing on a guitar. And they work like that. Whereas some songs we’ve done certainly wouldn’t work acoustically.”
As it happens, Matt’s from quite a serious musical background. Although it all happened before he was born, Matt’s father was once a member of The Tornados – the first British band to ever have a US Number One single.
“His period was the late ‘50 and early ‘60s. When I was growing up he was still playing little sessions things here and there and little pub gigs and stuff, but he wasn’t in a big band or anything at that point. He was well retired from the touring thing.”
Still, he must have been an influence?
“I suppose I grew up thinking that being in a band wasn’t necessarily something unusual. That was the main impact I suppose. And being a musician who had success of some kind didn’t seem unusual either. So I suppose it gave me some kind of confidence. But I didn’t really take any influence from his music initially . Except on the last album, maybe, on a song like ‘Knights of Cydonia’ for the first time I played a little bit of homage to that sort of late 1950s style.”
Is your dad a Muse fan?
“Yeah, he likes it, yeah. He’s into it. And he’s definitely given us advice on how to stay together.”
What’s your take on the Radiohead In Rainbows free download? Is it a business model that Muse would follow?
“I don’t really like it, to be honest. I can see why they did it, and I can see why bands like Nine Inch Nails do it. And we could probably do it. But the bigger bands have got the luxury of saying that recorded music is just a way of making their gigs better – like they’re adding new songs to their gigs. Which I suppose is how it was when music first started, before recorded music came along. It’s almost like the recorded music boom has died now, and people have to go out and play live for a living. Which I think is good, but the negative side is it’s a shame for new bands or young bands...
“But giving it away is a bit of a sign of like we’ve got loads of money and we don’t need it. How do young bands get their foot in the door when the people they’re looking up to are giving it away for free? Unfortunately, a lot of these big bands would never be in the position they’re in to be able give it away for free if it wasn’t for the fact that they had a big company behind them for years pushing them. So I think it’s a bad example. And we might give bits away – the occasional song or bits and bobs here and there – but generally we’ll only do it to try and generate something for an album.”
His tour manager approaches and signals that time’s up. So, finally, Matt, are you looking forward to playing Ireland in August?
“Yeah, it’ll be good,” he enthuses. “I think it’s the only other gig we’re doing this year that’s actually our own gig and not a festival. So I’m looking forward to it for that reason. And we’ll definitely try and bring in a few different aspects to our stage set – and hopefully play one or two new things as well.”
A few minutes and a little discussion later, Hot Press is back inside the hotel with Chris. As fellow expectant fathers (his fourth child with wife Kelly is due in October; my own is due in a matter of weeks), we waste a certain amount of precious interview time discussing pregnancy and fatherhood.
Chris has two sons and a daughter, aged between five and nine. Is it hard having kids and being in a constantly touring band like Muse?
“It is hard, yeah. It always has been. There’s a certain element of just getting used to it. It’s been really nice this year, actually, because we finished touring at the end of November in New Zealand and, apart from that, I think the longest I’ve been away from home is five days.”
Cheerful and easygoing, he’s obviously a very stable kind of character. He and Kelly will celebrate their eleventh anniversary next New Year’s Eve (“It’s always New Year’s Eve when couples get together, isn’t it?”) and he’s still based in Devon.
“I just kinda like it there, really,” he explains. “I’ve toyed with the idea of maybe moving up to London a few times, but unless you’re gonna take advantage of what London’s got to offer, there’s no point being there, really. When you’ve got a wife and kids, 95 per cent of the time you’re sat in watching Eastenders anyway. You could do that anywhere! So I’d rather do it in Devon. It’s just a nice part of the country to bring your kids up.”
Are you a local celeb in Teignmouth?
“A little bit. It’s quite funny sometimes, but I think for a while it was a really big deal to a lot of people, but because I’ve been at home so much for the past six months, it’s not such a big deal anymore. They’ve seen me walking in and out of the pub and going out for lunch or whatever.”
Matt was telling me about his stalker earlier. Muse do tend to get some extreme fans, don’t they?
“They’re pretty full-on sometimes,” he admits. “I don’t know if it’s because of the kind of band we are or what. I mean, they’ve always been very loyal. I’ve not come across many people who’ve said, ‘I loved your first album but I’ve hated everything you’ve done since’. It seems like everyone loves everything we’ve done. And as we’ve grown and grown, the fans have stayed with us. Which is nice. Because we’re not the kind of band who did their first album and got massive right away. We started off very small and it got bigger and bigger and bigger.
“Especially from a live point of view. It seems that there’s a lot of fans who’re fans of the band without owning albums. Which is quite unusual. With a lot of bands, it’s all about the albums and the live side of things is a bonus. Whereas there’s a lot of people who’ve been to a shitload of gigs that we’ve done, but don’t own any albums.”
Do you prefer gigging to recording?
“They’re two totally different things. I guess albums are almost like writing a diary. It’s just a document that represents where you were at a particular point in time. Obviously when we play live we tend to veer more towards our newer stuff, but that’s only because it’s the stuff that feels fresher to you and more exciting. But I don’t think we ever see ourselves as being in any particular album period. Like, at the moment we’re working on a new album and still playing the odd few gigs here and there. We don’t see ourselves as touring Black Holes – we’re just having a laugh.”
How does it work creatively when you’re all in the studio?
“Matt writes the songs and he’ll come in with the ideas – some stuff more developed than others sometimes. I think pretty much on each album there have been songs that Matt has a pretty strong idea on where they’re going before me and Dom have even heard them. But the other half of the stuff, Matt will come in with a rough arrangement and loose ideas of where it wants to go, but it’s all very open to suggestions and to individual opinions.
“I mean, a lot of the stuff we’ve been working on recently, Matt’s come in with a very basic structure but certain things that either me or Dom will put in can often drastically alter the way the song will go. But obviously everyone has to be happy with it. We do it democratically. There may be a song that me and Dom absolutely love, but Matt doesn’t so much. It isn’t fair to put anyone in a position of having to go on tour for three years and have to play a song they don’t like.”
Will Rich Costey be producing the next album?
“At the moment we’re just writing, so we’re pretty much in on our own. We’ve got an engineer guy who comes in and tells us how to work everything. Other than that we’re left on our own. We’re not really sure what to do. Rich is a really good bloke and we’ve done two albums with him now so we’re obviously comfortable with him. But it might be a time to do something new as well.
“I think there’s only so much you can do if you work with the same person over and over again, without it sounding the same. Because obviously people just have certain characteristics about them that always come across. So I’m not saying we’re not gonna work with him. At the moment, I’m into getting loose in the studio with an engineer and seeing what happens. It might be shit!”
The tour manager returns and announces that it’s time to leave for the soundcheck. But just before he leaves, I ask Chris about Muse’s future ambitions. They’re working on album number five but how much longer can he see the band staying together?
“Sometimes it’s dangerous to look too far ahead, because as soon as you do that it’s like you’re assuming that it’s always gonna be there. I think we’re all quite realistic about the music business, much as it’s great being a part of it. We all love being in a band, we love playing music, we love touring – but it’s fickle as shit, it really is. One minute you could be absolutely massive, the next you could be absolutely nobody. We’ve already done well in releasing four albums and so far we haven’t really experienced a dip – you know, it’s gotten bigger and better with each album. But I’m sure it’ll come. Just hopefully not for a while!”