Muse Drummer Dominic James Howard, better known as Dom, was born on 7th of December in Stockport, not far from the more famous Manchester. His “childish” and funny looks deceive him, in fact he’s the oldest member of the band, though not the wisest, even if Matthew and Chris describe him as the trio’s boss. He considers himself ’sad, negative, pessimist’ but also ‘happy, honest and optimistic’. He’s definitely the most accessible member of the band. Always ready to tease and make others laugh, he’s got a great sense of humour. In fact his favourite thing about being in Muse is the contact with people they meet on the road. According to him, when he’s on tour he misses nothing.
When 8-9 years old he moved with his family to Teignmouth, a small town on the Devon ‘Riviera’. Unlike the band mates, he plays just one instrument: the drums. He begun at about 11, when he was struck by a jazz band performing at school. He also tried his elder sister’s electronic keyboard at the age of 5. Through his sister, who was attending a School of Arts, he begun to have his first contacts with the world of art, although it wasn’t at all related with his future job. As he says in an interview, “When I was a boy, music was something I heard on TV.”
Dominic is inspired by drummers like Stewart Copeland, Dave Grohl and Buddy Rich. Besides he’s a great Jimi Hendrix fan. His taste in music is relatively wide, because he loves as much Pavement, Radiohead, Deus and Smashing Pumpkins, as Primus, Rage Against The Machine or Limp Bizkit!
Dom’s first band was named “Carnage Mayhem and this is a Michael Jackson song”, he explains, and it was the coolest band in the school, the band in which everyone wanted to play. Meanwhile he befriended Matt Bellamy, who played guitar but hadn’t a stable band. Not long after, when the old guitarist gave up, Matt was faced with the chance of entering Dom’s band. After two years of drop outs, remained only Dom and Matt… Apparently the others gave up because of the latter!!! At that time entered the scene Chris Wolstenholme, who played drums in Fixed Penalty, and with a great ’spirit of sacrifice’ he begun to play bass. In the first months of 1994 Gothic Plague were thus born, then Rocket Baby Dolls (Dom:”They all had death metal names but we all played cheesy pop!”), then finally MUSE. From this moment on, things get more serious for Dominic and the others. To maintain himself Dom does odd jobs (we don’t know which), as well as the other members of the band, until the hard work is repaid by the success of Showbiz, Origin Of Symmetry, Hullabaloo and Absolution.
