Muse’s Matt Bellamy: “The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument”

As perpetual stadium and festival headliners, Muse are bastions of contemporary mainstream rock, but frontman Matt Bellamy clearly doesn’t put their success down to his six-string pyrotechnics, telling the BBC, “The guitar has become a textural instrument rather than a lead instrument.”

The guitarist went on to say, “What's exciting about this period of music is you can mix classical with hip-hop and rock in the same song.

“As a rock band you're slightly one foot in the past, playing instruments like guitar, bass and drums.”

His comments come amidst debt rumours circulating guitar giant Gibson and even God himself stating “maybe the guitar is over”.

But before we come over all doom and gloom, we’d like to point out that guitar’s changing role in today’s musical climate is by no means A Bad Thing; it all ensures the instrument evolves and remains relevant - and how long have commentators been predicting the death of the guitar, anyway?

If anything, Bellamy’s comments prove that if rock dies, the guitar will live on, which is a very good thing in our book - particularly if, as the frontman goes on to say, genre boundaries are a thing of the past.

“It's almost like genre was an aesthetic that people attached themselves to, not just in music but also in the way they dressed and the kind of friends they hung around with,” says Bellamy.

“I feel like that age has come to an end and what's interesting about music now is not just the style-blending but the era-blending.

“So you'll have an artist like Lana Del Rey doing a song that sounds and feels like it's set in the 1950s, but she's singing about video games.

“It's an interesting time for era-blending and creating something which is timeless, and not particularly attached to any time. It becomes something ethereal and different.”