SUPERMASSIVE The Making Of

This month’s gigs at the new Wembley Stadium confirm Muse’s status as Britain’s biggest rock band. Ben Myers traces their rise from Devon schooldays to superstardom

It’s safe to say that, aside from the band members and a couple of their closest friends, the few people who gathered at the Battle Of The Bands competition at Teignmouth’s Broadmeadow Sports Centre in February 1994 could have predicted the fate that awaited the youngest, newest act on the bill. The band were a local trio of 16-year-olds called Rocket Baby Dolls, comprised of three fresh-faced Devon schoolfriends, singer/guitarist Matthew Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard.

Over the previous months, the members had played in a number of bands, largely confined to jamming in school classrooms: Dom in The Magic Roundabout, Dom and Matt in Carnal Mayhem, Youngblood and the excruciatingly named Gothic Plague and Chris in Fixed Penalty, a band a year younger than Gothic Plague, for whom he was drumming, but pooled from the same circle of friends centered around Teign Secondary School in Kingsteignton, five miles down the road from Teignmouth. All were short-lived and little more than hobby projects tackling the rudiments of the big rock bands of the day – most notably Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine, but also melodic UK guitar bands such as Senseless Things and Mega City Four – yet it was here that the very first seeds of Muse were sown. Gothic Plague collapsed amid acrimony when the other members …

by Ben Myers
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