FROM THE DAYS when they were three teenagers growing up as aspiring musicians in the sleepy coastal town of Teignmouth on Britain's south coast, to their early days as a band often dismissed as a cut-price Radiohead, Muse are used to being labelled outsiders.
But with a reputation now as one of the world's best live bands - with a Mercury Music Prize nomination for their last album, Black Holes and Revelations - they've finally earned some respect.
It was a difficult transition, but bassist Chris Wolstenholme harbours no grudges about the band's difficult rise. He says it's helped them realise their potential. 'It's the best way for any band,' Wolstenholme says from Australia, where Muse have been touring as part of the Big Day Out festival. 'I think we're different. We haven't had an instant success like a lot of bands. Not many bands get to grow up slowly. A lot get big off the first single, then expectations add a huge amount of pressure. It's not necessarily healthy.'
Muse had their own pressure, chiefly to overcome their many detractors. Their 1999 debut, Showbiz, drew comparisons with Radiohead, partly because singer Matt Bellamy's warbling vocals were similar to Thom Yorke's. 'A lot of new bands get [comparisons],' says Wolstenholme. 'We'd been together five or six years by the time the first album came out. We just felt grateful for the opportunity to record an album.'
On their second album, Origins of Symmetry, Muse departed from that sound with a more classically influenced, grandiose collection of songs, but again fell foul of critics, who accused them of being pompous. 'We didn't take too much notice of the things that people said,' says Wolstenholme.
That self-belief paid off in 2003, when their third album, Absolution, won over critics, radio DJs and fans in droves. Headline slots at Reading and Glastonbury festivals raised their profile and inspired Muse to their best work yet: the quasi-operatic Black Holes and Revelations.
The album unashamedly displayed their prog-rock tendencies - with Bellamy delivering a Freddie Mercury-esque falsetto and a cover design by former Pink Floyd artist Storm Thorgerson - but they were universally hailed as rock's new heroes. 'I think each album was very representative of the time,' says Wolstenholme.
