Although he has talked for years about making a smaller, quieter album, maybe acoustic, maybe electronic, one has yet to materialise. In the stage-design arms race, Muse are a superpower, known for deploying robots, acrobats, LED pyramids, aerial drones and all manner of cutting-edge tech. My brain’s been so manipulated by Stranger Things and 80s nostalgia that I can’t remember what’s real and what isn’tīellamy is currently plotting the shape of Muse’s next mega-tour. We’re not really a pop group.” In typical Muse fashion, one format will be the first ever chart-eligible NFT. “And I just don’t know if we’ve got enough hits. “It seems a bit like the end when you do a greatest hits,” Bellamy says.

When the record label requested a greatest hits album, Muse retorted with the story of their career – prog-metal, glam-rock, electro-pop, ballads – but told with new songs. Will of the People’s title has a double meaning: it is also about giving the people what they want. And the bigger the shows got, the grander their music became. “No physical movements, no eye contact.” After a few years, he realised that the more theatrical he was, the more people liked it. “I was way more shoe-gazey and standoffish,” he says.

Even when they were drawing smaller crowds than the local cover bands, they dreamed of being the biggest band in the world. He formed Muse in Teignmouth, Devon in 1994, with drummer Dom Howard and bass-player Chris Wolstenholme. Photograph: Jim Dyson/Getty Imagesīellamy is an introvert in an extrovert’s job. Matt Bellamy, front, with Dominic Howard, right, and Christopher Wolstenholme, left, in 1999. It changes the way you plan your day.” He exhales. That is a bit more invasive and aggressive. “Obviously, with my ex I was in a different type of fame,” he says. His presence in the pub goes unnoticed (he says he gets recognised once a day, if that), which is strange for the frontman of a rock band that has released six No 1 albums, headlined Glastonbury three times and filled stadiums from Moscow to Buenos Aires. He still has waywardly spiky hair, a stubbly rough draft of a goatee and a wry, misfit sense of humour. The 44-year-old seems mysteriously unchanged by his 12 years in LA, and by the passing of time in general. That heightened sense of risk is a double-edged sword.” The flipside of that is you get risk-takers and dreamers coming up with the craziest concepts. It’s literally on the edge of what could be a really big earthquake. He has twice had to evacuate from his home due to wildfires, one of which burned down his back yard and every house on the other side of the street. It seemed like it was one step away from complete chaos.” There was a moment when it felt like Mad Max 2. There are certain things you take for granted. “And whatever people say about the national health system, at least we have one. “Coming back here, you realise that there aren’t really any major natural disasters,” he says. He lives in Los Angeles during term-time to be close to his son with the actor Kate Hudson, but spends the holidays in London and hopes to move back permanently one day. Bellamy says all this while sipping lemon tea in the cool, dark corner of a favourite pub near his house in Primrose Hill.

Songs about being evil inside