with through music. It's quite possible I'm slightly paranoid." A giggle. "But I'd say making music is an expression of feelings of helplessness and lack of control that I think a lot of people can relate to." His songwriting stems from the belief that music can transform and transcend the everyday. "I remember the first classical music I heard, Berlioz and Chopin -- it did something to me that I still can't put into words. It's a sense of timelessness. It's something to do with the whole condition of life and death and time. It somehow makes all those things connect." He's full of wonder when he talks about music, but laughs neurotically whenever I mention fame or ambition. "Dom's the one to speak to about ambition," he says. "I think basically the band's career is me trying to please Dom." Dom Howard is Muse's unflappable rock pro: the free-and-single, up-all-night one who uses the phrase "rocking out" without reservation. "Even when we were sitting around in Matt's nan's basement writing songs we'd be dreaming of headlining the main stage at Reading ," he says. "We've always had our sights set on being the biggest band in the world." He laughs, because it's an unfashionable thing to say these days, but not that hard, because he means it. "Still going for it. Why not? If you're going to do it, do it properly." Before they wanted to be the biggest band in the world, Muse simply wanted to be bigger