by Lucie

Around 60,000 people were hoping for this to be the gig of the century. I haven’t quite got around to surveying all the results of this theory now that it’s over, but I can safely confirm that not only was the night immensely well-received, but many many people are more in love with their favourite apocalyptic rock band than ever.
There was certainly no need to camp outside Wembley stadium at 4pm the afternoon before, because I and gig buddy Kat sauntered in at 3:30pm on the Saturday afternoon, and still got into the Golden Circle. We’d spent much of the day deciding on which songs Muse would play, filling up on junk food to avoid having to spend £6 on a hotdog, and getting heavily rained on, all of which was forgotten by the time things started to liven up, with Zane Lowe entertaining us before the live music started, and then between bands. Nobody wants that volume of people getting arsey, do they? He saw off any boredom, mainly with the use of terrible dancing and attempting to be “gangsta” – always compelling.
Rodrigo y Gabriela, who I hadn’t previously heard of, are a Mexican duet with only the use of their acoustic guitars to prove themselves. But they did just that, keeping the crowd enraptured by such skill even our beloved Matt Bellamy couldn’t match. Their guitars were used as percussion too, to add a lively beat to their spicy music, themed by their home. The Espanola-tinted version of Stairway To Heaven held the audience captive, and proved the enormous power of the acoustic guitar, when played so skilfully. You NEED to check them out.
Next up were the disappointingly shit Dirty Pretty Things. They truly bored me, and going to the toilet seemed a more entertaining option, so I missed a portion of their set. It didn’t help that the vocals at the beginning were very fuzzy, and Carl Barat’s lyrics faded into the dreary guitar licks, but even as the sound improved, the performance didn’t. It seems to me that the band is far better on record, which is a shame, but the pace was picked up again by an unlikely source.
I didn’t used to like The Streets, and was expecting their hour-long slot to be tedious and nothing more, but they truly shocked my by how damn entertaining they were, and Kat forced me to eat my words, and my hat. Mike Skinner worked Wembley Stadium like a pro, showing genuine excitement at being there, and getting us to join in with several bouts of the chorus to Radio Ga Ga, and jumping whenever the drummer stood up and sat down again. They are undeniably fun to watch, and the audience was drawn into it entirely. So much so that all of the thousands of seated audience members spent the latter half of the set doing Mexican waves around the entire stadium.
The Streets got us on a high, and left us to wind ourselves up with excitement. Zane Lowe was gone by that point, double-booked with a stint DJing for Reading university students, and so we waited for the longest forty minutes to see the band we had given up at least £40 and our whole Saturday for. The section we were standing in was set up in such a way that there was a small bridge in the middle of the pitch, and a runway leading to the stage. The mystery was whether the band would emerge on the stage and Matt would use the runway for extended wailing solos, or whether they would make a grand entrance from beneath the bridge, rise, and stroll to the stage from there. As the background music stopped and the lights went down, we all knew it was time. Myself and Kat had prime places against the barrier next to the runway, and did impressions of tennis spectators staring up and down it, wondering where the boys would pop up from. Then there was a blast of dark classical music, clouds of dry ice lifting from the bridge, an eruption of confetti, and Dominic Howard, Chris Wolstenholme, and Matt Bellamy showed themselves, smiling as they strode through the centre of tens of thousands of screaming fans. They sure know how to make an entrance.
They opened, as I suspected, with the last song on Black Holes and Revelations, much-loved favourite Knights of Cydonia. The band’s penchant for huge elaborate light shows was made epic for this weekend, to match their music. As Matt began to scream the chorus to this grand and intense song, the words “NO ONE’S GOING TO TAKE ME ALIVE” shone enormous on the screens behind him, dwarfing all else and stunning the audience. Dominic did most of the talking to us, adorably over-excited at being where he was – behind a risen drum kit, overlooking the entirety of Wembley Stadium (wearing the most fantastic lime green jeans). Matt, in his red suit, gave the impression that he was totally at home here, and as always played for every single person in the crowd, like he does at every show, whatever size. Chris rocked ever quietly, with his head in danger of falling off, laying the foundations of the intense sound that the band has spent years honing to perfection. I do think that they’ve finally found the perfect ingredients for that – although I believe that they’ll only get better and better.
The band played the perfect mixture of old and new songs, spanning their four studio albums, driving the crowd wild with Sunburn (the first song from Showbiz), Plug In Baby (possibly their most well-known song, from the second album Origin Of Symmetry), New Born (also from Origin), their gloriously dark cover of Feeling Good, and Hysteria and Stockholm Syndrome from Absolution, along with the majority of Black Holes and Revelations; in my opinion, the best record yet. Matt wielded his trusty silver mirror effect guitar, also rocking a sparkly red number, and whereas the last time I saw them he had a huge piano with red lights all over the front, this time he had an ordinary-looking instrument, only the lid was transparent, and squares of light flashed within the glass when Matt played. Chris joined in with the bright onstage colour scheme not with his outfit, but with the use of his florescent orange bass.
There is no doubt that these boys are born stadium rockers. The first band/artist to sell out the new Wembley Stadium, they had us hanging on their every word. When Matt asked us to all get our mobile phones out, we did it instinctively. And as I looked above me, I knew why he had suggested it; all around the tiers of the frighteningly massive place white, blue, orange and red lights were glowing, and we held out phone aloft, hoping that those so high above us could see what we were seeing. At this point, the band chose to play the haunting Blackout, which fitted the mood perfectly, and they also released two massive lit-up balloons from behind the stage, each with an acrobat attached underneath, slowly rolling and turning to the music. The effect was mesmerising, nobody could look stageward for four minutes, and everybody I could see was transfixed by the poignant grandeur of it.
Matt later played a few songs by himself, just him and his acoustic guitar. He made my century by playing Soldier’s Poem, a much underrated but very beautiful song from Black Holes and Revelations. He followed that with Unintended from their first album, Showbiz, a gloriously simple old favourite.
The band played two encores, drowning the audience in the opulence of their music, pouring emotion over the top. They ended with Take A Bow, something I was initially sceptical of, being a song I rarely listen to, but hearing it live shone a whole new dazzling green light on it, especially as the final words “you will burn in hell for your sins” spurred an eruption of fire from the front of the stage. Muse took their bows, and left me higher than the stars, just as they do when I’ve spent a good few hours listening to their albums on full blast.
Live Muse is all about theatrics, lights, and making the most exquisite noise three little boys from Devon can possibly make. All the ‘best live band’ awards they’ve won are so very much deserved; this has been confirmed to me after seeing them for the second time. They are so at home in the hugest arenas, it’s now hard to imagine them playing in anything smaller.

The setlists:

16/06/07

Encore 2:
Plug In Baby
Stockholm Syndrome
Take A Bow