Band manager Anthony Addis confirmed the group is already working on what comes next – album number six.
“They've now gone into the recording studio,” Addis tells Billboard.biz. “The plan is to do it all in London...Hopefully, [the album] might come out October next year. They've written a lot of material already but you don't know how it's going to gel between them all. They write constantly. They write on the road, so before or after a gig they'll write nearly every night. It's a serious process, but you don't know how it's going to turn out [until] you start practicing it together, because everybody's done it individually.”
As a manager, Addis doesn’t get involved in pre-screening Muse’s early work-in-progress.
“No, I will not listen to it. I'm not interested until they believe it's in the right form,” he explains. “If you trust an artist, you've got to trust the music that they make. You've got to trust that they will get it right. What's the use of listening to something that is half-baked? Our job is to plan the next two and half/three years from when you think they will finish it.”
Even with the success of The Resistance Tour, Addis is aware there’s room to grow for the band, although the current economic climate isn’t helping.
“In America, the answer is yes - although I think the sheds are a problem. We did a joint headline show with Rage Against The Machine in L.A. at the 90,000-capacity Memorial Coliseum and there were about 55,000 people there. People haven't got the money anymore. I think it's worldwide. I think it's just hitting into the U.K. now, as you can see with retail.”
Muse has prided itself on maintaining reasonable ticket prices for fans and that plan will continue as thing move forward.
“Our strategy is never to rip off the fans,” says Addis. “The fan comes to have an experience. He or she has worked for that money. Either that or they robbed a bank. So you've got to give them an experience at the right price. We've increased worldwide [ticket sales] by 40% each time. And that's how we increase the fan base, because they've enjoyed it as a spectacle. Every night after the show we have an analysis of what went down right and what didn't, and all of that is logged in into a database. We know what happened in every show and every city going back all the years. If a number didn't go down well, then it will not appear in the set next time.”
Read more of Addis’ plans for Muse at Billboard.biz here.
Muse Muse – Uprising
Later with Jools Holland – 2009
See also:
VIDEO: James Durbin rocks Guns N’ Roses, Muse on American Idol tour
VIDEO: James Durbin rocks Muse on American Idol