00:11They've sold 10 million albums around the world, they've won eight NME Awards, two Brits and a
00:17Grammy, they have the most devoted fans on the planet and they're one of the most explosively
00:22exciting live bands ever. This is the incredible story of news as told by the pages of NME.
00:36These days we're used to Muse being supermassive global stars. It's easy to forget that back
00:41in 1999 there were just three skinny Devon boys who everyone thought sounded a bit like
00:45Radiohead. Matt Bellamy, Dom Howard and Chris Wolstenholme formed in 1992 when they were still
00:50all teenagers. But it wasn't until their debut self-titled EP was released six years later
00:56that the wider world started to take notice. In February 1998 they bagged their first feature
01:01in NME. The writer of the piece was Mark Beaumont.
01:04Immediately I think they were one of those bands that really captured the imagination and
01:08you could tell they were going to be massive. They just had that essence to them. I don't
01:12think it was until Plugin Baby came along that you knew they were definitely going to make
01:17it. But when you'd see them live in those early shows, they would just go mad on stage. I
01:22mean, just incredible. Matt would just go mental. He'd just smash everything up at the end of
01:27every show. Because they wanted to do these massive gigs, these massive productions, but
01:33they couldn't afford anything. So the best they could do was just go wild and chuck cymbals
01:37about and just make themselves as much of a spectacle as they could.
01:48Their debut album Showbiz, released the following year, was good enough to earn Muse the NME
01:52award for Best New Band. At the ceremony they performed alongside another fledgling band
01:57who'd just released their debut album called Coldplay. But if their early trajectory mimicked
02:02that of Chris Martin and co, Muse were about to become a very different sort of rock band
02:06indeed. Oasis, combined with the Verve, people like that had sort of ground music down to
02:12this slow, sort of stompy sludge. And here were Muse coming through sounding with certain
02:18metal elements to them, and metal and pop elements, and making something that really was, yeah it
02:23did stand out. It was quite bright and vibrant. Origin of Symmetry, released in June 2001, saw
02:29them tackle far heavier and more distinctive material. Suddenly, everything was turned up to
02:342011. And nowhere more so than on the lead single, Plugin Baby, featuring a guitarist that's gone
02:40on to become one of the most recognisable of the 21st century.
02:50Enemy was suitably blown away, writing the origin of Symmetry burns with a genuinely new
02:56art punk rage. By now, Muse graduated from playing toilet venues to big arenas, and were fast earning
03:02reputation as the best live band around.
03:04Exposed your lies, baby. The underneath's no big surprise. Now's time for changes.
03:20.
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