Bassist Chris Wolstenholme of Muse spoke to Leona Graham on the 5th episode of her new podcast, released on 10th February 2025, about the band’s plans for a new album in 2026.
“I think we'll start very, very soon, like in the next couple of months… I don't think the idea is to do anything really serious until next year, so I would imagine, you know, 2026 will probably be a new album, barring any disasters of any sort.”
Chris also reveals that the origin of his iconic distorted bass sound was down to his desire to be heard, tells the spine-tingling story of Muse’s first Wembley performance, and shares his top advice for budding bassists.
“maybe a bit of ego where I was just like, I wanna be f****** heard, you know, I need people to notice me”
“I think you have to do what you do for a love of music, and you have to love what you do, ‘cause I don't think you can really be successful as a musician if your motives are anything else”
A Side
What was the first instrument you learnt?
The first instrument I learned it was actually - my mum bought me, well my mum and dad bought me some kind of weird organ for Christmas one year when I was about 6, and I've got this vague memory of learning how to play ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. And I was about 5 or 6 years old, and everybody was so impressed. I've got this memory of like having my organ carted into school and being shoved up on stage in the assembly hall in front of everybody and wondering what was going on, and that was like my first experience of playing an instrument and performing in front of people, I guess.
So was it drumming then you picked up after that?
No, it was guitar after that. I think it was when we started in high school and started having music lessons just as part of the curriculum, I guess. And everybody had an option to learn an instrument, so you could either learn piano, guitar, you know, clarinets, things like that. And I'd always been really into guitar music, so as soon as the opportunity was there to play guitar, I took it. And I just - I think that was my first experience of ever being genuinely obsessed with something. I was like, I don't know, I think it was almost like my first experience of love, you know, with a guitar, it was crazy really.
So how did you go from that to being bass player in Muse?
So I mean it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a weird journey cos I was - I started with a band with some other kids that were in my school year. And it was a 5 piece band with two guitar players and then our drummer left. And there wasn't really anybody else who could play the drums, so I kind of put my hand up and said, look, let's go down to one guitar and, and I'll play the drums, and we became a four piece. And Matt and Dom were in another band with the brother of our old drummer, so we all kind of knew each other and did gigs together. And Matt pulled me aside one day and said that he was starting a new band and that he didn't want to do cover songs anymore, but he was looking for a bass player who could do backing vocals. And because he'd seen me playing the drums and doing backing vocals, and he knew that I'd played guitar before that, he thought that I could probably play bass. I don't think I'd picked up a bass in my life but I kind of figured that, you know, it was sort of like a guitar, I'll figure it out. And I think the first time I ever played bass was the first rehearsal we had at the school, and it was the first time I'd ever played.
What made you think I'm just gonna quit it all, I'm gonna go with this guy, Matt, did you have a good feeling about it?
I was a bit reluctant at first because I did say to him and Dom that I didn't want to leave the band that I was in because they were kind of like my best mates and I'd kind of grown up through school with them. I've got this vague memory of Matt saying something like, ‘you do realise you're going nowhere with that lot? You know, we're gonna do our own songs, this is gonna be great. You know, if you want a chance of making it, then you need to come and join us.’ So I said I'd join them if I could keep both bands going. And then I think I had 2 or 3 rehearsals with Matt and Dom and, I don't know, something was just very different about the way it all operated and just the chemistry with the three of us and it was just straight off the bat, it was just a level above anything we'd done before and I think the fact that we were doing our own stuff just kind of got me excited ‘cause you know, up until that point, as much fun as it was, I was kind of getting a bit bored of, you know, Nirvana covers and, you know, we were playing stuff like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Senseless Things and Mega City Four, that was all kind of fairly big at the time.
And of course at the beginning as well, you had lots of different names. Where did these names come from that you went through?
Well, I think the first name was Rocket Baby Dolls. That was the first name that the three of us had. And I think that came from some sort of porn film that we watched. It was back in the days, remember like when RTL was on when it was the old school satellite and you had the German channels and if you tuned in at a certain time, you got like a nice little treat? It was something to do with that and then I think it was something on Sky or some old satellite channel, and Matt saw something, it was called Rocket Baby Dolls, and that was where that came from. And then. Pretty quickly switched to Muse.
What I liked about the Muse name was you chose it partly because it just looked good, it's just, you know, four simple letters.
Yeah, we all thought like Muse, just four massive great simple letters with the two lines just really stands out. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unseen it, you know?
Coming to you individually now - your bass playing - you’re quite well known for using distortion on your bass, what made you start that?
I think when, when we first started, I think a lot of the rock bands that we listened to were 3 piece bands, so we listened to, you know, Rage Against the Machine, we listened to Nirvana. But the one thing that always kind of bugged me about three piece bands - I always really liked the space in a three piece band - but I always had this weird thing where when a guitarist kind of went off and, you know, did a solo or or whatever, I always felt like there was this massive hole that was left in the sound. So I started messing around. I had this old amp, it was called a PV Bandit, and I borrowed it off one of my mates. I don't think I ever gave it back to him actually. I don't know where it is now, but he lent me this amp, and I can remember having this pedal that I could kind of split the signal, so I kind of plugged my bass in and sent one signal to my actual bass amp and then sent another signal to this PV Bandit, and I just remembered like distorting the f*** out of this thing and then blending the two sounds together and it was like - it sort of sounds like a bass and a guitar at the same time and sort of fills that sonic space. And I can remember the next rehearsal taking this, this double amp rig in and showing the guys. And we were rehearsing in this, it was like a community centre in the next village along from where we lived and it was, you know, horrible sounding room, just wooden floors, echoey. We had this bass rig on full blast, and everyone was like, yeah, this is wicked! And you know, I don't think many people were doing that at the time, you know. I always just had this thing with bass. I liked playing it but I always felt like it sounded a bit boring.
Is it because you were a guitarist first, do you think that you tried to involve it?
Maybe, I mean maybe it was that and maybe a bit of ego where I was just like, I wanna be f****** heard, you know, I need people to notice me. So I think I just started messing around with stuff and I think obviously once we got in the studio, particularly on the second album - I actually went into a 3 way split for the second album, so I had my kind of clean bass amp and then one output with one distortion, one output with another, and panned one to one side, one to the other, and it was almost like this complete sound all in one, it sort of like didn't need a guitarist, and I can remember that became a thing for a while, particularly, I think from Origin Of Symmetry up to Absolution and Black Holes [And Revelations]. We always have this thing where the band has to be heavy before the guitars are laid down. They're just the bass and drums on that, that's where the heaviness has to come from, because that gives Matt the freedom to kind of go off on one and do what he wants without the band losing that heaviness, if you know what I mean?
Which Muse song features your favourite bass line and why?
God, it's a tough one. I mean, you know, I think ‘Hysteria’ is probably one of the obvious ones. I mean that song started life as this weird - it actually came about in a sound check in Doncaster of all places. And Matt started playing, he was sort of playing the bass riff, but he was playing it on the guitar. And he was sort of playing it almost like a bit of a bluesy kind of thing. And we started jamming it out, and I think I added the 16th in things to make it sound like this machine gun type thing going on. And then it became the bass line and then Matt ended up having this other guitar part. But I remember at the time, I mean, even in the studio, we were really focusing a lot on the sound with that, and then we had a synth just to give it a bit of weight as well, and I guess at the time that, you know, it was quite different. I mean, I don't think anyone had really done anything like that before. But I'd say, you know, ‘Hysteria’ was up there. You know, I always used to really enjoy ‘Stockholm [Syndrome]’ actually, cos ‘Stockholm’ was a real challenge to play. And it's not one of those songs you would immediately think as having like a crazy bass line, but it's really fast the way it goes, and it's always like a challenge every gig to get to the end of the first verse without my hands cramping up. And then you get that little break for the chorus, then you've got to do it again.
So you mentioned that Muse aren't signed at the moment, is that right? So what's the deal with that? Are you gonna be signing with someone or what's the sort of future for Muse?
Yeah, I mean, we will, obviously. I think we're gonna start work on on the next record fairly soon. I think for the last few albums we've, you know, we've been with Warners and we've just extended after each album, and I think, you know, we may do the same again, we may go with a new label, who knows.
So you're just looking at your options?
Just looking at options, yeah. I think there's always that kind of natural break when you've, you know, when you finish touring an album, and I think again, because, you know, the band's been around a bit longer, so the gaps between albums get a little bit bigger, you know. I don't think we can be banging out new albums every two years like we used to. But it just kind of gives you that opportunity to just kind of reset a little bit and think about what's gonna happen going forward But I think from our point of view, you know, we can get on and make a record.
What's the time scale for that, do you think? When can we look forward to a new album or when might you start working on it?
I think we'll start very, very soon, like in the next couple of months. We've got a few gigs in June. Only a handful - that's the only gigs we're doing this year. I don't think the idea is to do anything really serious until next year, so I would imagine, you know, 2026 will probably be a new album, barring any disasters of any sort.
And do you know what direction that's gonna go in, any clues yet, or are you just gonna start from scratch?
Yeah, just start from scratch. What's been quite nice recently, I think the last few times we've hung out, well a lot of the sort of personal times we've hung out over the last year or so, we haven't really talked about the band at all. Me and Matt have got kids of similar ages at the moment, so, you know, we've done quite a lot of family stuff and kids' birthday parties.
I mean, we do need to point out at this point, you do have 10 children, so it's quite a hectic life!
It sounds worse than it is. 3 of them are grown up. But yeah, we have a wide range of children from 25 right down to 3. So obviously I had 6 children in my previous marriage. My wife had 2 children in her previous relationship. And then clearly we thought 8 was not enough, and we thought we'd have 2 more.
Listen to the full B side and all episodes of The Leona Graham Podcast which are available to stream now free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
“I think we'll start very, very soon, like in the next couple of months… I don't think the idea is to do anything really serious until next year, so I would imagine, you know, 2026 will probably be a new album, barring any disasters of any sort.”
Chris also reveals that the origin of his iconic distorted bass sound was down to his desire to be heard, tells the spine-tingling story of Muse’s first Wembley performance, and shares his top advice for budding bassists.
“maybe a bit of ego where I was just like, I wanna be f****** heard, you know, I need people to notice me”
“I think you have to do what you do for a love of music, and you have to love what you do, ‘cause I don't think you can really be successful as a musician if your motives are anything else”
A Side
What was the first instrument you learnt?
The first instrument I learned it was actually - my mum bought me, well my mum and dad bought me some kind of weird organ for Christmas one year when I was about 6, and I've got this vague memory of learning how to play ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’. And I was about 5 or 6 years old, and everybody was so impressed. I've got this memory of like having my organ carted into school and being shoved up on stage in the assembly hall in front of everybody and wondering what was going on, and that was like my first experience of playing an instrument and performing in front of people, I guess.
So was it drumming then you picked up after that?
No, it was guitar after that. I think it was when we started in high school and started having music lessons just as part of the curriculum, I guess. And everybody had an option to learn an instrument, so you could either learn piano, guitar, you know, clarinets, things like that. And I'd always been really into guitar music, so as soon as the opportunity was there to play guitar, I took it. And I just - I think that was my first experience of ever being genuinely obsessed with something. I was like, I don't know, I think it was almost like my first experience of love, you know, with a guitar, it was crazy really.
So how did you go from that to being bass player in Muse?
So I mean it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a weird journey cos I was - I started with a band with some other kids that were in my school year. And it was a 5 piece band with two guitar players and then our drummer left. And there wasn't really anybody else who could play the drums, so I kind of put my hand up and said, look, let's go down to one guitar and, and I'll play the drums, and we became a four piece. And Matt and Dom were in another band with the brother of our old drummer, so we all kind of knew each other and did gigs together. And Matt pulled me aside one day and said that he was starting a new band and that he didn't want to do cover songs anymore, but he was looking for a bass player who could do backing vocals. And because he'd seen me playing the drums and doing backing vocals, and he knew that I'd played guitar before that, he thought that I could probably play bass. I don't think I'd picked up a bass in my life but I kind of figured that, you know, it was sort of like a guitar, I'll figure it out. And I think the first time I ever played bass was the first rehearsal we had at the school, and it was the first time I'd ever played.
What made you think I'm just gonna quit it all, I'm gonna go with this guy, Matt, did you have a good feeling about it?
I was a bit reluctant at first because I did say to him and Dom that I didn't want to leave the band that I was in because they were kind of like my best mates and I'd kind of grown up through school with them. I've got this vague memory of Matt saying something like, ‘you do realise you're going nowhere with that lot? You know, we're gonna do our own songs, this is gonna be great. You know, if you want a chance of making it, then you need to come and join us.’ So I said I'd join them if I could keep both bands going. And then I think I had 2 or 3 rehearsals with Matt and Dom and, I don't know, something was just very different about the way it all operated and just the chemistry with the three of us and it was just straight off the bat, it was just a level above anything we'd done before and I think the fact that we were doing our own stuff just kind of got me excited ‘cause you know, up until that point, as much fun as it was, I was kind of getting a bit bored of, you know, Nirvana covers and, you know, we were playing stuff like Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and The Senseless Things and Mega City Four, that was all kind of fairly big at the time.
And of course at the beginning as well, you had lots of different names. Where did these names come from that you went through?
Well, I think the first name was Rocket Baby Dolls. That was the first name that the three of us had. And I think that came from some sort of porn film that we watched. It was back in the days, remember like when RTL was on when it was the old school satellite and you had the German channels and if you tuned in at a certain time, you got like a nice little treat? It was something to do with that and then I think it was something on Sky or some old satellite channel, and Matt saw something, it was called Rocket Baby Dolls, and that was where that came from. And then. Pretty quickly switched to Muse.
What I liked about the Muse name was you chose it partly because it just looked good, it's just, you know, four simple letters.
Yeah, we all thought like Muse, just four massive great simple letters with the two lines just really stands out. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unseen it, you know?
Coming to you individually now - your bass playing - you’re quite well known for using distortion on your bass, what made you start that?
I think when, when we first started, I think a lot of the rock bands that we listened to were 3 piece bands, so we listened to, you know, Rage Against the Machine, we listened to Nirvana. But the one thing that always kind of bugged me about three piece bands - I always really liked the space in a three piece band - but I always had this weird thing where when a guitarist kind of went off and, you know, did a solo or or whatever, I always felt like there was this massive hole that was left in the sound. So I started messing around. I had this old amp, it was called a PV Bandit, and I borrowed it off one of my mates. I don't think I ever gave it back to him actually. I don't know where it is now, but he lent me this amp, and I can remember having this pedal that I could kind of split the signal, so I kind of plugged my bass in and sent one signal to my actual bass amp and then sent another signal to this PV Bandit, and I just remembered like distorting the f*** out of this thing and then blending the two sounds together and it was like - it sort of sounds like a bass and a guitar at the same time and sort of fills that sonic space. And I can remember the next rehearsal taking this, this double amp rig in and showing the guys. And we were rehearsing in this, it was like a community centre in the next village along from where we lived and it was, you know, horrible sounding room, just wooden floors, echoey. We had this bass rig on full blast, and everyone was like, yeah, this is wicked! And you know, I don't think many people were doing that at the time, you know. I always just had this thing with bass. I liked playing it but I always felt like it sounded a bit boring.
Is it because you were a guitarist first, do you think that you tried to involve it?
Maybe, I mean maybe it was that and maybe a bit of ego where I was just like, I wanna be f****** heard, you know, I need people to notice me. So I think I just started messing around with stuff and I think obviously once we got in the studio, particularly on the second album - I actually went into a 3 way split for the second album, so I had my kind of clean bass amp and then one output with one distortion, one output with another, and panned one to one side, one to the other, and it was almost like this complete sound all in one, it sort of like didn't need a guitarist, and I can remember that became a thing for a while, particularly, I think from Origin Of Symmetry up to Absolution and Black Holes [And Revelations]. We always have this thing where the band has to be heavy before the guitars are laid down. They're just the bass and drums on that, that's where the heaviness has to come from, because that gives Matt the freedom to kind of go off on one and do what he wants without the band losing that heaviness, if you know what I mean?
Which Muse song features your favourite bass line and why?
God, it's a tough one. I mean, you know, I think ‘Hysteria’ is probably one of the obvious ones. I mean that song started life as this weird - it actually came about in a sound check in Doncaster of all places. And Matt started playing, he was sort of playing the bass riff, but he was playing it on the guitar. And he was sort of playing it almost like a bit of a bluesy kind of thing. And we started jamming it out, and I think I added the 16th in things to make it sound like this machine gun type thing going on. And then it became the bass line and then Matt ended up having this other guitar part. But I remember at the time, I mean, even in the studio, we were really focusing a lot on the sound with that, and then we had a synth just to give it a bit of weight as well, and I guess at the time that, you know, it was quite different. I mean, I don't think anyone had really done anything like that before. But I'd say, you know, ‘Hysteria’ was up there. You know, I always used to really enjoy ‘Stockholm [Syndrome]’ actually, cos ‘Stockholm’ was a real challenge to play. And it's not one of those songs you would immediately think as having like a crazy bass line, but it's really fast the way it goes, and it's always like a challenge every gig to get to the end of the first verse without my hands cramping up. And then you get that little break for the chorus, then you've got to do it again.
So you mentioned that Muse aren't signed at the moment, is that right? So what's the deal with that? Are you gonna be signing with someone or what's the sort of future for Muse?
Yeah, I mean, we will, obviously. I think we're gonna start work on on the next record fairly soon. I think for the last few albums we've, you know, we've been with Warners and we've just extended after each album, and I think, you know, we may do the same again, we may go with a new label, who knows.
So you're just looking at your options?
Just looking at options, yeah. I think there's always that kind of natural break when you've, you know, when you finish touring an album, and I think again, because, you know, the band's been around a bit longer, so the gaps between albums get a little bit bigger, you know. I don't think we can be banging out new albums every two years like we used to. But it just kind of gives you that opportunity to just kind of reset a little bit and think about what's gonna happen going forward But I think from our point of view, you know, we can get on and make a record.
What's the time scale for that, do you think? When can we look forward to a new album or when might you start working on it?
I think we'll start very, very soon, like in the next couple of months. We've got a few gigs in June. Only a handful - that's the only gigs we're doing this year. I don't think the idea is to do anything really serious until next year, so I would imagine, you know, 2026 will probably be a new album, barring any disasters of any sort.
And do you know what direction that's gonna go in, any clues yet, or are you just gonna start from scratch?
Yeah, just start from scratch. What's been quite nice recently, I think the last few times we've hung out, well a lot of the sort of personal times we've hung out over the last year or so, we haven't really talked about the band at all. Me and Matt have got kids of similar ages at the moment, so, you know, we've done quite a lot of family stuff and kids' birthday parties.
I mean, we do need to point out at this point, you do have 10 children, so it's quite a hectic life!
It sounds worse than it is. 3 of them are grown up. But yeah, we have a wide range of children from 25 right down to 3. So obviously I had 6 children in my previous marriage. My wife had 2 children in her previous relationship. And then clearly we thought 8 was not enough, and we thought we'd have 2 more.
Listen to the full B side and all episodes of The Leona Graham Podcast which are available to stream now free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
