Author: E.B. Walcott

Hollywood Hills

Interviewer: “What are you wearing, where are you, and what are you doing today Alex?”

Alex: “I’m wearing a leather all in one, like Evel Knievel; a stunt suit,”

Interviewer : “[Laughs] Anything underneath that?”

Alex: “[Pause] There’s something up the sleeve; but that’s all that’s underneath.”

• Interview with an Australian radio, Tripple J, after release of AM in 2013.

Interviewer: “Wait — what about Def Leppard? They’re also from Sheffield, so it’d be a hometown smackdown!”

Alex: “We already have a feud with them.”

Interviewer: “About who’s more successful?”

Alex: “Just kidding. Probably, on paper, Def Leppard would kick our ass in that regard. I mean, they were quite big in the States, weren’t they?”

Interviewer: “Hysteria was a huge album”

Alex: “So, yeah. We still need our Hysteria; in the literal sense.”

I really want it to sound good in the car. We’ve been in L.A. a lot these past few years, so I suppose we’ve been in the car a lot. When you’ve got your phone in the car and you’re on shuffle, there’s all sorts of things hiding in the depths there. If 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” comes on in the car, you can’t skip it. Just the way the rhythm sounds. I wanted to have a bit of that. It comes on in the car and it has that husky drum sound. – A.T talking to Spin Magazine

You don’t meet that many people that you can talk about Roots Manuva with, but that was my favorite in school, this record of his called Run Come Save Me. When I first started writing lyrics, it came from that. Roots Manuva used to tell stories, this everyday shit, but he was a fucking stoner, so it’s all got this weird, canted angle. He has this tune called “Evil Rabbit,” and that gives you an idea. – A.T talking to Spin Magazine

The orwells tour/ criticism:

“They should have been out trying to get laid instead of watching us every night,” he said.

Read more at https://www.nme.com/news/music/the-orwells-4-1234105#vtda2bT5olsPSJcf.99

Ironically The Orwells later disbanded after allegations of sexual exploitations of their female fans.

To understand how and why Arctic Monkeys created their r&b infused rock album, AM, it’s imperative to revisit the circumstance around it’s birth. It’s December 9th 2011, and Arctic Monkeys just sold out the infamous Madison Square Garden (MSG) in New York City in about 15 minutes since the tickets went on sale. Well however true, that is not a fully accurate story, as Arctic Monkeys were simply the opening act for the hottest band in America at the moment, a band everyone is talking about, The Black Keys. Fast forward to March 22nd, Arctic Monkeys are promoting their love infused Suck it And See for the second time opening up at MSG for The Black Keys. By this time Alex Turner and the band had started noticing that some of their newer material from Suck it and See pails in comparison to The Black Keys newer, heavier, big drum stomping Blues and R&B infused hits such as “Lonely Boy”, “Howlin’ For You”, and “Gold On The Ceiling” which have all taken the US radio-waves by storm and translated extremely well into Arena rock. 

It’s not to say that Arctic Monkeys’ fast paced set wasn’t anything but extraordinary, it’s simply a fact that The Black Keys had set a new trend in American Rock music and permanently changed audiences taste for slower and more blues infused stomping rhythms, something straight out of hip hop production. “Gold On The Ceiling” for example was heavily used while promoting NBA games in America exposing it to very large audiences, eventually reaching a household name status (simply meaning a person or thing that is well known by the public).

We get to play an hour which is good for the openers, but there are people there who’ve come to see us. You can definitely see a few Arctic Monkeys’ T-shirts and people who know the words in the crowd but it’s a completely different thing. We’re playing R U Mine at the end because we want more people to hear it.

They’re [The Black Keys] fun to watch too. I’ve been watching side of stage every night, Pat their drummer is great and a really nice guy as well. A few games of football are on the cards I believe.”

 – Matt Helders talking to Q the Music

   Arctic Monkeys’ adoration of The Black Keys of course goes back a lot further than their tour together. Matt Helders included The Black Keys’ “Thickfreakness” on his Late Night Tales compilation. Although Arctic Monkeys have opened up for other bands before such as Oasis and Queens of the Stone Age (although many fans believed Oasis was the opening act), it was only for one or two nights. But their decision to be a supporting touring band for the very first time in their professional music career was a humbling but a very rewarding experience, one which ultimately drove the band to create the grammy nominated “Do I Wanna Know?” which borrows as much from The Black Keys as it does from Dr Dre. It is not a coincidence that Arctic Monkeys changed up their sound production process by hiring Tchad Blake and Brian Lucey to mix and master the AM record respectively, the same two men who worked on The Black Keys‘ “Brothers” and “El Camino”. “Brothers” most obviously used some of the same techniques of distorting the drums while adding the appropriate drum samples for a hip hop feel with Dan Auerbach pushing Blake to experiment with crunching, distorting, and pushing drums to the absolute limit during the mixing process. The same process was used later for Matt Helders‘ drum takes.   

Arctic Monkeys, the English band that opened the concert with an hourlong set, juggle more elaborate musical ingredients. A punk-speed rhythm section and frenetic yet precise guitars gallop and gnash.

Alex Turner, the band’s leader, sustains melodies within the clamor, singing hard-nosed observations — sometimes cryptic, sometimes bitterly cynical — in a baleful baritone croon. They were running, skillfully, on caffeine and adrenaline; the Black Keys, when they took over, burned diesel. – Jon Pareles reviewing the MSG show for NYTimes

During their supporting slot at MSG the largely tame crowd was only two thirds filled and a lot of them simply occupying space waiting for The Black Keys to arrive. Turner even showed a bit of frustration in a rare but quite irked manner getting upset when the crowd does not fully obey his commands to clap their hands after asking for it repeatedly. 

“Come on Madison Square Garden! Clap your hands! Don’t be a dick about it!” 

– Alex Turner at MSG

Even their newest single “R U Mine” didn’t manage to get the crowd on their feet entirely. Those early performances of the song were much faster in tempo almost fitting their first two albums.

In an interview with Rolling Stone Turner reflects on their eye opening arena tour saying: “We went on at 8 p.m. every night, when everyone was buying popcorn and shit,” says Turner. “We’d see a guy two-thirds of the way back start the show on his BlackBerry. By the end of our set, he was fucking pogo’ing.”

But half an hour later as the Black Keys stomped through their “Howlin’ for You” and “Next Girl” there wasn’t a seated person in the fully packed arena.

Also seeing a “two man” blues band play as a six man band encouraged Arctic Monkeys to further expand their live personnel. The band wanted to get back into the studio quickly motivate to march forward with a new style that would be more exciting to play live as they’ve grown tired of their set. But the whole idea came to an abrupt stop as they were asked to play the opening ceremony for the summer’s Olympics in London along with Paul McCartney and J.K. Rowling. The band knew they couldn’t say no, and decided to put the new album on hold for a little while. Even though the band performed only for a short 10 minutes, it took them months to prepare, as they decided to cover  The Beatles’ world known hit “Come Together” and they wanted to get it right. The opening ceremony was watched by an estimated 42 million people in the USA alone, while the global audience was estimated at 1 billion. It was truly a monumental 10 minute show for the Arctic Monkeys that would bring in many new fans. A gig too big to turn down by any band, and it trumps even the biggest festivals they’ve played to date in terms of total viewers. The band played it safe and went with the tried and true: “I bet you look good on the dancefloor” as the other song, rather than picking a newer single. 

“That’s sort of like a once-in-a-lifetime gig on the moon. It was only five minutes, but it took months of preparation.” —Alex Turner reflecting on the summer Olympics

When Arctic Monkeys came back to Madison Square Garden in 2014 as a headlining band forever gone were the “She’s Thunderstorms”, “Brick by Brick”, and “Library Pictures” replaced with slower r&b infused “Do I Wanna Know?”, “Snap Out of It”, and “Arabella”, out of the 20 live songs the band only played the heavy hitting “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” off of their previous album.

Of course this major breakthrough in the US market didn’t just happen overnight and with one record. Arctic Monkeys had toured the US relentlessly for the past 7 years promoting each one of their #1 UK albums, mostly playing large clubs and festivals. AM is largely an accumulation of hard work that enabled the band to finally book their first headlining US arena tour, which may come as a surprise to UK fans who have seen the band headline Glastonbury festival and generally regarded the band as the next Oasis. 

The accomplishment and significance of selling out and headlining MSG is not lost on Turner as he uses his wit to introduce their cover of “All My Loving” by a band that invaded the US exactly 50 years ago just 24 blocks down the street, The Beatles. 

“Apparently one in three Americans watched that [Beatles] performance, and if we’re lucky, maybe, one or three Americans will see this performance on YouTube.” 

– Alex Turner live at MSG

The third time Turner arrived on the MSG stage —gone were the simple “triumph” t-shirt and jeans— replaced by the black suit, slicked back hair, and a rock n roll sex appeal of Billy Fury, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley rolled up into one.  Turner walked on stage looking like he walked straight out of GQ magazine; which he sort of did. 

When Arctic Monkeys came back to play “R U Mine” for this third time in 2014, the song was slowed down considerably and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house with Turner announcing the song in a sort of a British Elvis like accent “Are you mine baby?!”. Needless to say by this time the entire audience was singing every word just like the band has grown accustomed to over the years everywhere they’ve played.

After a long and exhausting tour promoting Suck it and See all around the world, the band decided to write a new fresh song they can debut on their Black Keys tour to make their live set more exciting. While tracking the B-side track “Electricity” in Sheffield the band quickly put together “R U Mine” from some working ideas they had from playing around with some heavier sounding ideas from the song “Evil Twin”. Allegedly the riff of the song was accidentally written by Nick O’Malley while recording the B-side “Evil Twin”. The band wanted the new material to sound somewhere along the lines of Spiders from Mars, the David Bowie Backing, band covering Aaliyah, the famous American 90s R&B singer. Although at times the sound is more on the lines of Queens of the Stone Age covering Haim, the L.A. band Turner had gotten into and even went as far as inviting the three sisters in the band to sing backup vocals on AM, but due to scheduling conflicts Haim were forced to turn it down. Of course, Arctic Monkeys once again achieve an original sound effortlessly without sounding like any of their influences directly. Haim’s debut album was co-produced by Arctic Monkeys’ long time friend and producer, James Ford. The bridge for Knee Socks especially sounds like it was written with Haim in mind, perhaps for the band to record backup vocals. In the end it is Josh Homme who gets his feature.

After the band tracked “R U Mine” they rushed to make a music video based around Matt Helders’ idea of them simply listening to it in the car. Focus Creeps Production was quickly hired once again prompting Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell to put something together quickly and just in time before The Black Keys tour. It’s a possible reason why Jamie Cook only appears on the TV in the video, he is one of the members permanently living in the UK and possibly had obligations. The band never intended the song to take off as a hit Single as they put as much effort in the video as they did with “Brick by Brick”. But the simple video ended up winning Best Video at the 2013 NME Awards. The music video shows the DJ Steve Jones, formerly of Sex Pistols, debuting the song on KROQ-FM while the band minus Jamie Cook listens on their car drive.  

We’d been on the road longer than usual, and the opportunity came up to do the Black Keys tour (Spring 2012). We’d exhausted ‘Suck It And See’, so we thought we should do a new tune. That tour made us raise the bar as a live act: you’re playing as everyone’s walking in and buying their hotdogs, you’ve got to bring it a little more. ‘R U Mine?’ was a ray of light moment, What I was most excited about is the vocal production, it was something we hadn’t explored to that extent before. I wanted to do these meandering melodies that don’t repeat, like contemporary R&B. – Alex Turner talking to Mojo

It’s fairly obvious to anyone paying close attention that Turner is quite enamored with Stand Up commend and comics in general. He certainly proves that he would have been great at that profession as well by the sort of on the spot wit he comes up with. 

Interviewer: “Do you guys consider yourself an ‘internet band’ (due to the band’s original popularity outbreak via Myspace)”

Alex: “No, I wouldn’t say so. You know how The Beach Boys didn’t really surf? Well, we’re the sort of internet band that [pauses]; didn’t really surf.“

This sort of comedy act is prevalent through out Turner’s past interviews including a public announcement of his admiration for Louis C.K standup noting it sort of inspires his lyrics at times, albeit all of this was said before the sexual allegations came to light against Louis C.K. In an interview with the Guardian Turner professes that the Louis C.K comment was taken out of context, although he does appreciate the comedian’s stand up. Further in the interview Turner makes a comment about every musician wanting to be a standup comic, although it might be true in the circle of musicians Turner resides in, but it is by no means prevalent for the entire music industry. There are however some notable singer-songwriter crossing into standup and vice versa, even more rare are the successful ones. 

Alex Turner answering the Esquire Magazine question of what makes a good frontman:

Certainly, in this day and age, a sense of humour. Because it’s pretty ridiculous. In 1969, there probably weren’t many laughs in rock’n’roll. But then they were probably funny people. They had a sense of humour, they just didn’t use it. Not to name-drop, but we bumped into Robert Plant last night and he’s hilarious. Just funny, straight away. [These days] I think if you start taking it too seriously, which I’m, like, sometimes definitely in danger of doing… then it gets ugly.

The melodies kind of have this cosmic operatic soft quality, which I think kind of clashes perfectly with the ’70s rock thing. Just listen to the melodies from the guitar. There was a lot of sitting up on my own all night long battling with the puzzle this time, probably more than before. I had a dartboard in the back garden, and I’d throw arrows as I’d sit there trying to write. There was definitely some symmetry in how the words were going and where the darts would land; a fair amount of missing the board altogether brought me the occasional treble 20.

– Alex Turner talking to Interview Magazine

Turner’s interest in that sort of comical lyricism found in his songs is also evident by his admiration for Josh Tillman’s work, who is better known as Father John Misty. Arctic Monkeys have been heard playing Father John Misty’s “Only Son of the Ladiesman” at several sound checks on their tour. There are more than a few similarities between the two singers, both stylistically and aesthetically. Josh Tillman can be seen sporting a dark suit with a white shirt on David Letterman in 2012 moving his hands and hips in a manner nearly identical to how Turner did it performing live on the late night circuit as well as their cover of Drake’s Hold on We’re going home in 2013 while promoting AM. 

Turner of course caused a much bigger reaction with his hips than Josh Tillman; some positive and a lot of negative, as is tradition with anything new Turner does. Eventually though through perseverance, fans grow accustomed to the new style and self expression, and eventually fall in love with it. 

I did just get a set of drums the other week! It’s a hobby of mine. Matt sings all over this album, and Nick, the bass player, does too. A lot of those high vocals are those two guys. Return of the Space Choir Boys! 

– AT talking to interview magazine

Although many have speculated that the album title refers to AM radio or simply early morning hours, the idea for the album name and artwork portraying radio waves with a small AM in the middle is sort of a heavy nod to Velvet Underground’s VU compilation album featuring a Volume Unit (VU) Meter on the cover. Turner goes and admits as much in all the interviews he is asked that. It is however a very clever idea and the initials AM play perfectly into it.

I would have called it Arctic Monkeys if “Arctic Monkeys” wasn’t such a silly name. We were into the radio wave idea, and that really seemed to fit perfectly. It’s in this style of underground records, with a picture of a VU meter, and that’s where the idea sort of originated. I really like the look of the letters, as well; the peaks and drops. 

The album art is something I originally sketched on a piece of paper, and then some grown-ups tweaked it a little bit. 

I can’t draw. I’m good on the yo-yo, but I don’t draw.

 —Alex Turner, explaining the AM title origins

If anyone asks me about songwriting, I guess I’d say that you just gotta do it. I remember being afraid almost, to write sh*t down. It’s not strictly like—it is a craft, and there’s definitely an element… you need a little bit of luck and a little bit of magic as well. It’s just about practice; you get better. 

— Alex Turner on songwriting

LIMITED VINYL RELEASE, DIFFERENT MIX

QUIFF HAIRCUT IN AUSTIN

…Johnny Clarke just sneaks onstage with a plastic bag full of these scraps of paper. His hair is branching off, and he has these little blue glasses and drainpipe pants. . He’s talking 100 miles an hour, and he’s really funny and reading “Chickentown,” that poem of his where he’s like, “The f***ing train is f***ing.” And it just blew my mind, I couldn’t stop watching. Guinness was overflowing, all over me hand. Just one of them moments. 

-AT remembering seeing Johnny Clarke in Sheffield when he was first starting out

NEW GUITAR, INSPIRATION FOR DO I WANNA KNOW

It just began to be like wanting to push, wanting to make 12 songs like “R U Mine”, but not wanting to make 12 songs like “R U Mine.” So what else is there from that world that you can somehow incorporate?

I really want it to sound good in the car. We’ve been in L.A. a lot these past few years, so I suppose we’ve been in the car a lot. When you’ve got your phone in the car and you’re on shuffle, there’s all sorts of things hiding in the depths there. If 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” comes on in the car, you can’t skip it. Just the way the rhythm sounds. I wanted to have a bit of that. It comes on in the car and it has that husky drum sound. – AT talking to Spin Magazine

“Perhaps it’s a slightly different character from ten years ago, but neither of them are really ‘me’, Now they’re saying, ‘You’ve got this quiff, you’re doing this pointing ‘thing’, the way you dress is different and you seem like you’re having a good time.’ But that’s still an image as well. Like it or not, it’s still an act!” – AT talking to GQ magazine

“It would be boss to have a plane. Bands in the Seventies, they had a plane… You could have a beer belly and wear just a waistcoat with the belly. Now you have to go to the gym and fly commercial.” – AT talking to GQ magazine

“I think, much like a yoga instructor, he’s [Turner] always stretching himself and he’s finding new places to reach. He’s willing to take big risks and I really respect that and think it’s the way to do it.” – Josh Homme on AT songwriting

“I love the Jam, the Kinks and the Smiths, but I don’t to be a homage to them. I want to do something else, I want to make some music that’s got some sticky fuzz guitars and sounds like a Sixties Tina Turner in cassette-tape-grey leather trousers on a chopper. But in a very 2013 way.” – AT talking to GQ magazine

There are a few notable moments that Turner credits to the origin of the idea for AM sonic direction. One of them is being mesmerized as The Black Keys run through a powerful guitar blues ruckus set night after night before retreating into their tour van to listen to Ginuwine’s R&B single “Pony” among other R&B hits. Turner has always been hungry to discover hidden gems from the depths of the music history. While living in Brooklyn he struck a friendly rapport with a local waiter in one of his frequent restaurants near his then residence. The waiter, who loved The Last Shadow Puppet’s side of Turner’s songwriting, would leave little song recommendations on napkins for him. One of the recommendations was Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor, a relatively unknown English folk rock singer songwriter from the late 60s and early 70s. Turner particularly enjoyed the lyrics of Chapman’s “Kodak Ghosts”, a folk rock ballad about loneliness and relationship gone sour. 

After stumbling upon a new guitar, a 12 string late 60s cherry red Vox Starstream guitar, and deciding to write his take on “Are you lonesome tonight?”, most notably made famous by Elvis in 1960, while keeping a slower version of “R U Mine?” in the back of his head, the band ultimately arrived at their biggest hit to date, “Do I wanna know?”. According to James Ford, Turner originally got the guitar as a sort of a joke because it’s a 12 string guitar that included built in effects including a distortion effect going from mild overdrive to 60s fuzz, a repeater, and palm-operated wah-wah effect all powered by a 9V battery accessible on the back of the body. Turner had a bit of a laugh when he first put it on, but a lot of the riffs came pouring out of his fingers on that particular guitar that ended up on the AM record so he decided to keep it a permanent part of his live and studio setup. The gimmicky part of the guitar turned into a bit of technical problem before performing “Do I Wanna Know?” live in Jimmy Kimmel in 2013 prompting Turner to instead perform on a safer choice, a 12-String Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar.          

THE LOOK:

I’d had the old shaggy mop for a while. I just thought, time for a change. Matt had had this kinda Joe Strummer thing, and Jamie had got this WWII fighter pilot thing going on and I just fucking wanted to be back in the gang, you know what I mean? I tell you what, though, Sean, the maintenance I’m not used to. That’s the thing, I gotta reset the alarm these days. – AT talking to GQ

 During a stop in Austin, TX, Turner decided to update his look to keep up with the rest of the guys in the band who’d recently cut their hair. Helders and Turner stumbled into a random barber shop near popular bat bridge on Congress Avenue and simply asked for an Elvis inspired pompadour with a prominent quiff. From then on Turner would carry a comb to keep his quiff looking fresh, occasionally flipping it out of his pocket on stage to a ruckus reaction from the crowd. 

“I saw an Elvis picture where he had the curl, and I thought, ‘Maybe I could do that.’ Once you have the haircut, certain clothes just start to look right, don’t they?” – AT talking to GQ

With his new haircut, new clothes, and fresh new dance moves on stage, Turner frequently receives questions if he’s channeling his inner Elvis. Fans who are accusing Turner of impersonating Elvis simply aren’t aware of the 50s subculture movement, Cosh Boys, later coined as Teddy Boys. 

— rewrite :Although it’s more likely Turner is simply resurrecting the popular 1950s exclusively British fashion movement of Teddy Boys. 

Teddy boys were working-class teens who bought their expensive threads on layaway—only to brawl in them. Imagine a young tough stomping out a rival, then whipping out a comb to restyle his quiff.  – GQ magazine

Matt Helders recalls those early writing sessions for AM at The Joshua Treat to NME:

We went to Joshua Tree for a couple of weeks to do some writing and work on some ideas, and ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ is probably the only song that survived from that session, although not in the form it is now. It was really bassy and it didn’t have that big chorus – it was basically just the drum loop. But it was the one that set the path for the rest of the album, if you like. It was the one where, after we recorded it, we knew we were really on to something.

Alex Turner reiterated their need to go back to the desert to work on new material, telling the Rolling Stone: “We like to go out to the desert to ‘brown the garlic,’” Turner explains; “If you want to be black-and-white about it, that means we went there to write.” The trip paid off immensely, even though according to Turner there were a lot of dead ends, saying: “If you get the wrong amount of one element, smoke comes out of the test tube. There was a lot of demo’ing and dead ends.” But the band persevered, and took their ideas to a their new studio in Hollywood where they could focus on the work and not worry about overtime studio fees. 

At the time it was rumored the band had settled in Los Feliz, a popular neighborhood in central LA full of vintage dive bars made famous by the likes of Charles Bukowski, Lawrence Tierney, and many other prominent poets, artists, and drunks. Turner disputed the rumors, but of course wouldn’t give specifics. In an interview with Esquire Turner explains the band needed a nearby studio they can occupy and ride their motorcycles in every morning without the worry of going over schedule: “We wanted to arrive noisily and then carry on making noise”.

It’s a bit further out. Where we live: it’s not pretty. It’s not suburban. It’s just quiet. You can kind of get away from it all. And that’s… definitely a plus. One of the many differences between New York, let’s say because we’re here, and LA is that it’s a lot easier to scurry up the hill in LA. It’s kind of… I don’t even know why I’m even trying to describe it to you, to be honest.

I wouldn’t even describe it [the studio] as comfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I like going to those big studios where, I don’t know, Stevie Wonder’s piano is or something. I get a kick out of that. But if you’re spending a lot of time there to make an album, you get to this thing where it gets to midnight and you have to pay overtime. That kind of thing doesn’t put you in the mood to want to create. 

—Alex Turner speaking to Esquire in 2014 

Finally the band had found their own private studio with minimal distractions from the outside world. Until of course Jamie Cook found a way to change that when he decided to bring some in, an old arcade machine of Donkie Kong he found nearby for rent. 

Matt Helders tells the story to Esquire: “He [Jamie] found this guy in the Valley who rents old machines and he was really excited one morning. He was, like, ‘You’re not going to believe what I’ve done…’”

“’What I’ve sorted out for us…’” Turner interjects. “[I thought] there’s a stripper coming in this afternoon or something. And then this guy wheels in a Donkey Kong machine.”

“He [Jamie] spent the rest of the three months we were there going, ‘Oh, come on, Donkey Kong! You wanker!” Turner exclaims.

I don’t think I had one go on it. It’s too much. I know I’m not going to be able to get that far. I’m going to keep doing the first level and that’s it. It’s going to kill me. I shouldn’t have to keep doing that first level. I’m a grown-up. I like computer games, don’t get me wrong, but I like progress as well. 

—Matt Helders telling the story of Donkey Kong in the studio in 2014

Turner professed his interest in Rap music to Spin Magazine in 2013, saying: “I had a girlfriend in high school, and we’d sit in her room after school, and that’s the music she’d have on [90s R&B] when I had Dr. Dre’s 2001 playing on my headphones,” Turner explained. “It’s just recently that we’ve knocked the dust off of them records, or appreciated how well put together them tunes are. I’ve got fucking playlists of that shit. There’s so many little gems.”

Beneath the boardwalk

It would be wrong for me to pretend that the band was put together when four young chaps discovered a shared love for The Stooges, Andy Warhol or anything else that is considered ‘cool’ by so many. I mean no disrespect to people who genuinely love work by such acts or artists, I only find it hard to understand those who are led to pretending to. It sounds as if I am setting myself up to say something along the lines of; 

It was simply the Rock and Roll that brought us together and it is this that we all stand by and with Jack Daniels and cigarettes in hand we shall conquer!…but this is also not the case because as well as not acting as if I’m into something I’m not, I also refuse to talk about being the most ‘Rock and Roll’ as this is essentially rubbish and statements or actions deliberatly [sic] suggesting such nonsense have no place amongst Arctic Monkeys.

The truth is, in a way the idea of Arctic Monkeys was already in motion before there was any band members and the four of us just stepped into the roles, mostly learning to play with a view to the band. We knew we were a band before we knew that we were going to play, where we were going to play and when or if we would ever play to anyone and there is still this time spirit and idea in todays Arctic Monkeys. Nowadays having played, there is obviously more direction and we know what sounds we are going to make and when and where we are going to make them, but the initial feelings and attitudes amongst us still remain the same.

– biography written in 2005 on the band’s website by anonymous member of the band

* * *

It’s 2004, and Rick Martin (not to be confused with the latin singer Ricky Martin) is a 19 year old journalist student who just moved to Sheffield to start his Journalism degree at a local university. Based on sheer luck alone and not on any real merit he landed an opportunity to interview Arctic Monkeys for the Radar feature of NME magazine. These sorts of assignments weren’t usually handed down to total newbees who never wrote a music article, but Arctic Monkeys were just another unsigned band from Sheffield, and it wasn’t worth anyone’s time to send a “real” journalist. 

“You are meeting with an NME reporter to get the story out,” the band’s manager relayed the message making it seem rather important. “Okay, I guess we can do that,” Turner shrugged it off casually. 

The band decided to bring out Martin on their first run to Nottingham as a friendly meet and greet and bonding session. It wasn’t unusual for the bands to mingle with journalist especially when they were trying to make a name for themselves. 

Quick phone call from band’s manager to let Martin know the band’s on their way to pick him up. “Be ready to go, they’re on their way,” Martin was told. “Ok I’ll be right down,” Martin said trying to hide his excitement. After doing a quick check of his outfit and hair, Martin rolled down to meet the band. Turner and company rolled up casually in their white splitter van, blue jeans, and freshly popped polo collars. Equipment, drums, and banged up guitar cases piled up in the back of the van were scraping the ceiling. While drinks, smokes, and playstation equipped with a few controllers and a fifa game were taking center stage in the van. 

“You ready mate?” Turner asked casually with a confident smirk. Martin nodded quickly, hiding his nervousness before entering the tour bus. “Where do I sit?” Martin asked now a bit more nervously. It went unanswered for a while then someone yelled: “Wherever, mate.” The van drove off clipping each curve aggressively almost tipping over. The band were busy bonding about early memories of drinking White Lightning, a very cheap alcoholic cider that would become known as “tramp juice” in the UK media. Admitting to drinking “tramp juice” as a way of professing their blue collar roots boosting their so called “street cred”. On the rather bumpy ride to Nottingham, the band drank, smoked, bantered, and played lots of fifa rather competitively, with Cook and Turner leading the charge. 

“Gooooaaaal!” celebrated Cook as he pulled on the cord of the controller violently nearly pulling the playstation to the floor. “Ahh lucky goal,” sneered Turner. 

The band were in the middle of a small football tournament as the van rolled into Nottingham. “Do you lads need any help carrying equipment?” asked Martin. “No, we got it mate!” yelled someone from the street. With some time to kill, Martin unwisely decided to un-pause the game and score a couple goals as to improve his record. He kept it a secret, or so he thought. After the gig was over the band packed into the van quickly and headed back. Somewhere on the road back to Sheffield the band realized Martin’s Fifa cheating ways. The were unimpressed, and they took note of it. Strike one. 

Few months after the live review of their gig, Martin was scheduled to interview the band for NME’s Radar section (reserved for up and coming bands). The interview was to take place in the band’s practice space at an industrial unit in the city’s red light district, Neepsend. Again, Martin showed his inexperience when the batteries of his dictaphone died couple sentences into the interview. Requiring the band to send out their PR guy, Anton, to fetch a fresh set from the store. There wasn’t a store anywhere near the shady Neepsend practice space. The band waited impatiently for what seemed an eternity, looking at each other, making grim faces while looking at their wrist watches. As the time slowly ticked off, the band became more agitated by his unprofessionalism and took notice. Strike two.

Finally, as Anton returned with fresh batteries the interview continued. Martin tried working hard to get something usable out of the band for his first big cover piece for NME but he struggled to keep the band engaged. After the interview, the band said their goodbyes, and continued to practice “Scummy” as Martin departed unceremoniously. Martin’s editor would later have to phone the band a few times to get more quotes for the article as he was unimpressed by Martin’s work. 

“Helders was the most talkative and gave the best quote (slagging off the Kaisers). Cooky was the most guarded – he hated having his photos taken beforehand and refused to have his portrait done, I think. Alex interjected now and then – you could tell he was the brains of the operation. Nicholson was largely silent,” Martin told NME.

Some time would pass, but finally the NME magazine with the big Arctic Monkeys piece would hit the news stands all across the UK. As the band rushed to the news stands and picked up copies to to read, they were shocked. “What the hell?” exclaimed Helders as he read his own quotes in the article. It read:

“I don’t want it to be a niche thing like, ‘We’re from Sheffield so fuck everyone else.’ I’ve never understood that attitude,” frowns Alex. “It’s like Roots Manuva said, ‘I got love for every one of those scenes, but them pigeonholes were never nothing to hold me’.”

“Plus,” pipes up Matt at the end, “Tricky Ricky Wilson is just annoying.”

It was that last line that ticked them off in particular. Helders was especially furious his dis of Kaiser Chief’s frontman Ricky Wilson got into the press. They haven’t even released an album and already they were picking fights with big bands in the press. The band thought Martin had their back before this. Now betrayal was on everyone’s mind. Strike three.

From this point on Rick Martin was blacklisted from Arctic Monkeys’ gigs and interviews. He would not talk to the band ever again, nor would he be allowed at any gigs in the meantime. NME interview duties for Arctic Monkeys were taken away from Martin and given to more established journalists; Tim Jonze, Mark Beaumont, among others. Martin was disappointed, understandably so, but he knew it was mostly his own doing. The band had learned their lesson and from this point on shunned all intimate meeting with journalists especially at their practice space, tour busses, and backstages. 

Another reason for being blacklisted was Martin’s coverage of Arctic Monkeys’ mates —Milburn, a local band with a very similar sound at the time. One of which Martin was particularly critical of, calling the band a “terrible version” of Arctic Monkeys. “Not as talented as Arctic Monkeys,” Martin bashed often in reviews. Things would eventually come to a boiling point when Martin ran into Milburn’s drummer in a toilet in a Sheffield bar. Loud words were exchanged between the two with threats of violence.

Looking at where Arctic Monkeys are today —“not as talented”— doesn’t seem like much of an insult, all things considered.

* * *

It’s 2002, and Alex Turner, Matt Helders, Jamie Cook, and Andy Nicholson have just gotten together for the first time along with Glyn Jones, a fellow student at Stocksbridge High School, to form a rock band. “Arctic Monkeys!” exclaimed Cook during the band meeting. “That’s the name of our band,” he confirmed to the group with a grin to a somewhat mixed reaction. “Umm, right on mate,” Turner shrugged in a soft kind of affirmation. No one could come up with a better, more original name on the spot so they were stuck with it.

Glyn Jones was put in charge of vocal duties due to Turner’s initial shyness. With Turner and Cook on guitars, Nicholson on bass, and Helders on drums, the group were ready to take over the local scene. Turner perhaps wanting to emulate The Strokes, and be a 5-piece band with the singer exclusively in charge of the mic duties, was content at first not being the singer. That quickly changed however as Jones showed little interest in the band. As Jones exited, Turner revealed he had a notebook full of lyrical ideas waiting to try out. The band started out by practicing in their parents’ garages before graduating to a more appropriate rehearsal space.

“Three nights a week we used to run them out there to practice. We just used to leave them and then pick them up a couple of hours later. If they knew you were there they would just stop so we had to sneak in really quietly so we could sit and listen,” Jill Helders commented on the band’s shyness during those formative days. “They used to play a lot of covers, like ‘The Strokes.’ Half the time though they were playing table tennis.”

Those first practices as a four piece band included learning the covers by The Beatles, The Strokes, The Vines, Jimi Hendrix, The White Stripes, Fatboy Slim, The Undertones, and The Datsuns. Some of which they would perform at their very first gig opening up for The Sound, a south London post-punk band, at The Grapes, a local Sheffield pub, on Friday the 13th of June 2003. As people lined up to get in The Grapes, Jill Helders gave out cup cakes to kids waiting to get in. It was a family affair after all. Most of the crowd consisted of close friends and family. Young Alex Turner initially agreed to the show simply to impress a girl whom he invited just a few days earlier. “Just to get to the end of the night and pull the bird that I fancied that I’d got to come down! But we had practiced so much beforehand, and it was a major deal just to go and play somewhere,” Turner reflected. “I’d never been on a stage in my life before that. I don’t think I opened my eyes for the whole set. But that 25 minutes – wow,” Turner exclaimed. 

Alongside the many covers which were performed at those early local shows, the band also included some originals that undoubtedly sounded indistinguishable from the covers. 

“We didn’t know who they were,” the sound engineer, Brian Ellis, recalled the night’s performance. “They were so young but you could tell they had a couple of elements that other younger bands didn’t have – the singer could sing and the drummer could drum,” Ellis explained. “I’ve seen many bands play The Grapes and two weeks later they’ll be on telly,” he remembers thinking at the time.

 The band collected their 27 pounds from the ticket sales along with their new found confidence to take things much further, and went home to celebrate the win. “I think we should stop playing some of these tunes we have,” Turner told his band in an effort to move on to better material. “We can do better,” he concluded. The band agreed and quickly removed those soundalike songs from the band’s repertoire. Realizing that they needed to separate themselves from peers and even their idols. Songs such as “Curtains Close” and “On the Run from the MI5” were no longer a part of their live set. They were replaced with new songs such as “Scummy” and “A Certain Romance”, which would become the future crowd favorites. 

* * *

    The story of band management of Arctic Monkeys began with friends Ian McAndrew and Colin Lester. McAndrew and Lester were running a record label called Wildstar, it was a joint enterprise with the infamous and now defunct —Telstar Records. McAndrews previously signed a Sheffield music act Sea Fruit, fronted by Geoff Barradale and his co-writer: Alan Smyth. Sea Fruit had very short lived career by having one of their songs; “Looking For Sparks”, sneak into the U.K. music charts. It didn’t stick and the song quickly dropped off into obscurity. Teslar demanded that the band be let go, and McAndrew obliged, but not before he secured the rights back to the band as well as a bit of cash as severance. Barradale was impressed by McAndrew’s fight for “the little guy” and took note. 

A few short years later, Barradale would end up teaming up with McAndrew again, but this time it was to seek out new and exciting young music prospects in the northern UK. At the time, Alan Smyth was recording Judan Suki featuring Turner and Jon McClure. 

“Hey, Alan, do mind if me other band come in for a song or two?” asked Turner with a new found confidence. “Sure mate, don’t see why not,” responded Smyth rather quickly. Smyth phoned his old friend Geoff Barradale without much hesitation to look into Turner’s new band and bankroll the venture. 

After driving up to see the young Arctic Monkeys play at a local Sheffield pub, Colin Lester and Ian McAndrew approached the band. But to their surprise the conversations were one sided. Arctic Monkeys were not very interested. It wasn’t until McAndrew acknowledged that they’ll pay the band to record a few 2-3 song demos once a month with Smyth that they were more receptive. It was all the band wanted to hear.

The band quickly moved to capture their live sound at 2fly studios with Alan Smyth, who also previously worked with Pulp, Richard Hawley, and Reverend and the Makers. Smyth, after seeing Arctic Monkeys play at their second gig ever and was somewhat impressed. He described the show as “chaotic” and “sloppy” with the band playing half covers and half originals. And it was near impossible to make the distinction between the two. 

During those early recording sessions in September of 2003, Jamie Cook was working as a tiler and his sessions had to be done very late in the evenings. “Thought they definitely had something special going on. I told Alex off for singing in an American voice at that first session,” Smyth noted in an interview.

Geoff Barradale was a especially hands on manager as he drove the band around venues all around the UK to help spread their demos and acquire local fan support in his beat up old Saab.

Smyth recalled those early demo recording sessions as “good”, but noted that another local band that was very similar in sound, Milburn. Milburn were much better musicians and were writing very similar songs at the time. The comparison is obvious and can be heard on Milburn’s debut album Well Well Well. Instrumentally and thematically the two bands would be mostly indistinguishable when analyzed from a far. Both four-piece Sheffield guitar bands singing about the local nightlife. It was also rumored that Milburn’s drummer, Joe Green, taught Helders how to play the drums. However, what made all the difference according to Smyth was hearing Turner’s voice and lyrics coming through the speakers in the studio. Even at a young age of 17, Turner was light years ahead of his peers. This distinction is what would catapult Arctic Monkeys up the charts just a few short years later, leaving all their peers in the dust. 

The two bands toured together extensively in the early years, as Milburn invited Arctic Monkeys to open up for them on their UK runs. After several difficult years of gigging around the country, Milburn’s frontman, Joe Carnall, admitted the two frontmen were getting sick of going nowhere with their respective bands. With Turner confessing that he considered quitting to do an English degree due to the lack of success of being on the road. 

Back in the studio, Smyth noted that the band were very nervous and excitable. Speeding up every song with each take, requiring him to introduce the band to a metronome. Smyth would make the band begin playing with a metronome then turn it off after the second chorus and allowing the band to speed up if they wanted. They often did. The band aimed to have the demos follow the sounds and aesthetics of The Strokes and The White Stripes. Simple recordings with heavy compression, distorted guitars and vocals. Smyth obliged, making the band sound exciting and very raw. 

After several sessions were done, McAndrew noted in an email to the band that the drum recordings were “a bit squiffy”, as to say they sounded like they were played by a drunk person. The band framed this email and gave it back to McAndrew as a gift after a string of successes. It was all well it seemed as the back of the frame contained a hand written note from Turner assuring it was a harmless prank and not a severance gift. “They’ve literally never let me forget it,” McAndrew noted. “They framed it and gave it to me as a present when they first sold out Cambridge Corn Exchange. It was very funny and awfully embarrassing all in one go.”

Arctic Monkeys rushed to release an EP to give something to the fans. They released a limited pressing of “Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys” on 30 May 2005. The EP consisting of just two songs; the fan favorite “Fake Tales of San Francisco” and newly written song: “From the Ritz to the Rubble”. The band were throwing around ideas to change their band name to Bang Bang after voicing displeasure with their current name for it’s “immaturity” and lack of a “punk rock edge”. Ultimately however, they agreed that it was too late to change course. They instead named their fictitious label: Bang Bang Recordings on which to release their first EP.

The highly demanded debut EP was limited to only 1500 CDs and 1500 vinyl records, making it a rare and pricy find especially today.

* * *

The media had portrayed Arctic Monkeys’ rise from their first practice at Yellow Arch Studios in Neepsend, a converted old Victorian factory, as an overnight sensation, but the truth is a bit less sexy. The group toured extensively, hauling their own gear, riding on bumpy roads in a small van around U.K. before being hailed as rock ‘n‘ roll’s saviors. 

“You have to find ways to trick yourself into focusing and staying with it. I don’t really get the ‘I wrote the whole song on the back of a cigarette packet in 20 minutes’ sort of thing,” Turner told Vulture Magazine. “Some of my early songs were written quickly, but not that quickly. Hearing your lyrics in context helps you commit to them, I remember when we were kids, I’d get into the rehearsal room and I’d be playing so loud that it gave me confidence to just let it all out. And then only later, I was like, What did I just say?” Turner explained. “When you’re forced into it by playing together with the band, it’ll lead you down the path.”

During the first several tours, Arctic Monkeys were giving away free demo CDs at their gigs, but the word spread slowly. Things changed when Mark Bull, a friend of the band and an early photographer going by the nickname “The Sheriff”, received a copy of all the demos at The Boardwalk, a local venue where Turner worked. Bull fittingly labeled the demos “Beneath the Boardwalk”. Another important event occurred during this time; the rise of Myspace. 

Myspace, a fast rising online social media phenomenon, was launched in August of 2003. It took the internet by storm. Mark Bull made the demos available on the online service which helped spread the band’s music faster and further than it could from gigging alone. Soon after it was uploaded, it spread like wildfire. Both in the local scene and to the far parts of the country. Turner and company started to notice as large crowds began singing the words at gigs right back to them, a major success indicator for any band. The demo tapes eventually caught the attention of BBC radio, particularly Zane Lowe, a famous DJ. Bull produced a music video for “Fake Tales of San Francisco” shortly after and published it on the internet. With the full attention of BBC Radio and NME magazine on band’s every move, Arctic Monkeys were propelled to the next level.

* * *

Arctic Monkeys were finally validated as the “next big thing” when they headlined a sold out show at the Leadmill, an establish Sheffield music venue with a rich history, in 2005. Selling out Leadmill made them the first unsigned band without an album release to do so. (It was later repeated when The Sherlocks, another local Sheffield act, did it more than a decade later.)

“I remember an early gig that Amy Winehouse attended above the Garage in London – lots of A&R men were there,” McAndrew said. A&R men from all around the country were in a great hurry to sign the band. Suddenly record labels McAndrew couldn’t get on the phone were calling non-stop to ink a deal. The change of roles was fascinating. A meeting was set with EMI, a true British music powerhouse with Tony Wadsworth at it’s helm, at a Nottingham Chinese restaurant with a large EMI team present. The band decided not to show up as to say they aren’t interested in money or fame. McAndrew and Geoff seemed to be put off by the hard sell from the EMI team. “It didn’t feel right inking the band to a long term major label which they felt my stifle the band’s growth,” McAndrew concluded. Following their gut feeling they instead phoned the Domino Records boss, Laurence Bell, and asked if he were interested in signing the band instead. Bell was very easy to work with and a deal was signed in a few hours after a meeting at his Wildlife office. The band quickly agreed and signed the papers.

Signing with Domino made Arctic Monkeys break another record: the first independent artist in history to score six consecutive No.1 albums in the UK. Alex Turner’s respect for Domino Records is evident by the signing of all his side projects to the label including The Last Shadow Puppets and his solo EP, a soundtrack for the film Submarine.

* * *

The initial responsibility to produce the highly anticipated debut album was given to James Ford and Mike Crossey. That responsibility was quickly taken away from them however after they failed to produce anything the label or the band deemed “good enough”. The management contacted Jim Abbiss to take over. The band credits James Ford for helping shape one song in particular; Perhaps Vampires is a bit strong. Ford is also credited with recording electric piano on Riot Van. Why the sessions were taken away from Ford and Crossey on the debut is not fully understood as all parties involved have not said much on the issue. 

The label wasn’t worried about the free demos floating around, but was worried about waiting too long to release an album. With the production responsibilities shifted to Jim Abbiss the band moved quickly to record the album. It was decided that the songs will not be re-written and will remain almost identical to the demos, which expedited the production process. The main difference being a slicker production, some vocal changes, along with some better arraignments and slower tempos.

The setup used by Jim Abbiss at The Chapel Studio in Lincolnshire was very simple and “old school” according to Abbiss. The entire band was in one room, with the guitar amps in booths, the bass amp down the corridor. Turner, Cook, and Nicholson gathered around the Helders’ drums with headphones tightly around their ears while following Matt’s every move, feeding on this energy. Most of the songs were recorded instrumentally while Turner recorded his vocals afterwards. Some vocals were done live on Turner’s insistence. The aim was to capture the band’s live performance as much as possible, with variances in tempo, keeping some mistakes for a human feel. The album was tracked in the period of only 15 days. One song per day, with a couple days left for setup and teardown. Abbiss’ main responsibilities seem to include reminding the band to play slower so the words could be better understood. 

* * *

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, title was picked by Turner after seeing a film on television, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, a 60s British drama film based on a book by the same name. “We need a photo of a drunk lad after a wild night!” Cook suggested excitedly to the rest of the band. “Chris McClure, we should ask Chris McClure,” Nicholson repeated quickly volunteering their friend, who was 19 at the time. Chris happily obliged to do it for a measly £750. Looking back Chris probably thinks he could have gotten more, but he would have done it for nothing. 

A meeting was setup by the band photographer at 2 pm at a local bar in Liverpool [double check] to discuss the photoshoot. Chris received hundreds of pounds to go out drinking and come back at midnight to the same location. Chris overshot it and came back at 2am, and was guided downstairs of the venue to get his photo taken. Drunk, tired, and disoriented, he sat down behind a table and lit a cigarette. The photographer moved in quickly to capture the moment. The band fell in love with the photos immediately as they matched perfectly what the songs were about. 

The group put Chris on the front and back cover of the album, making him an instant celebrity in the U.K. music circles. Shortly after the release, Chris was followed and called by countless reporters from major newspapers just to get an interview. The Daily Star offered him £10,000 to let a photographer follow him on a night out. He refused, “staying loyal to his mates”, he said.

Scott Jones was in charge of artwork design, with Alex Wolkowicz in charge of photography. The end result was an instant classic. The album cover wasn’t without controversy however. A Scotland health official claiming the photo “reinforces the idea that smoking is OK.” Not everyone agreed with that hot take. “You can see from the image smoking is not doing him the world of good,” Johnny Bradshaw, the band’s product manager, responded in defense.

* * *

The debut album had to be finished in time for their world tour covering U.K., rest of Europe, North American, Japan, and Australia. The tour was scheduled to start on April 13th of 2006 in Nottingham UK and ending August 13th in Osaka, Japan. They would come back to Europe to play several festivals with the last being a main stage performance at Reading and Leeds in the last week of August of 2006.

But all of this extensive touring wasn’t easy and fun for everyone. Andy Nicholson decided not to continue onto the North American leg of the tour. Citing exhaustion from traveling, living in hotels, and general home sickness from being away from UK, friends, and family. Nicholson broke the news to the band and the management on tour in Spain that he needed a break. During that week of tour, the band’s roadie, John Ashton stepped in and played bass. Due to Ashton’s heavy involvement in live shows through out the band’s career, he’s been touted as Arctic Monkeys‘ fifth band member by some fans. 

Nick O’Malley was eventually brought in, by the request of the band, as the official replacement for the North American tour. O’Malley played his first gig which served as a warmup gig in the 120 capacity Old Blue Last pub in east London on May 25. 

Arctic Monkeys released a statement which read: “Owing to fatigue following an intensive period of touring, Andy Nicholson shall be taking a rest and will not be accompanying Arctic Monkeys on their forthcoming tour of North America. Nick O’Malley shall be standing in for Andy on the tour which begins in Vancouver on May 27th. We all wish Andy a speedy recovery.”

During the first Nick O’Malley’s gig, Turner introduced him as a “friend of the band.” Turner continued: “We’re going to play our new single for you now. It’s straight out of the hit factory. This is our summer hit, watch out for it,” immediately going into “Leave before the lights come on”. It was one of the most fun sets The Monkeys played as they continued to play even after curfew. They had to be forced off the stage eventually by the venue’s staff. It’s unclear if they knew that Nicholson’s “rest” was to be a permanent one. 

After a long world tour, the band decided they just could not see going back to the way things were before O’Malley. They made a decision to keep their new bassist in the band permanently as he was already contributing to the new songs the band were writing in between sound checks.

There has been no backlash for this change, and no animosity or bad blood between the old and new monkeys. “I went up to Al’s house a couple of days ago [who was back from LA for Christmas]. We built a snowman and his Dad took a photo. It’s always good to see him. He’s not Alex Turner to me, he’s just Al’. My mate I went to school with,” Nicholson explained.

This scenario did not unfold like it did with some other world famous bands. Bands such as Metallica and Oasis where changing band members is a cataclysmic event followed by a drawn out public war in the press, sometimes spilling into the streets. If the band and their former bassist is to be believed then Nicholson holds no ill feelings towards his separation from The Monkeys and their huge success that followed. Nicholson did not appear on stage as the band collected their Mercury Prize for best album he had played bass on in 2006. The band appearing as a three piece rather than four, without mentioning their visibly absent bassist or addressing the rumors he was ousted shortly before the awards.

* * *

Turner is dressed in a simple navy T-shirt and brown corduroy pants, wearing simple black sneakers and sporting a casual short haircut. No fancy jewelry or glasses on display, he appears to be your average every day english teenager with pimples to show. But it’s not an average day for Turner. Arctic Monkeys are recording their first breakthrough single as a live music video for MTV. The band insisted the first video be a live recording weary of Music Video producers and their agendas to make things larger than life. Influenced by The Strokes to keep it natural and raw. The video was shot using three Ikegami 3-tube color television cameras from the 1980s to give it a more aged effect, something The Strokes did just a couple years earlier. 

Turner appeared holding his white fender Stratocaster guitar up so high it almost hits his chin. Looking awfully similar to the way Albert Hammond Jr., of The Strokes, who wore the exact same model guitar few years earlier on MTV. (Turner eventually donated his white fender Stratocaster to be sold on eBay to raise money for Oxfam’s Haiti earthquake emergency response appeal.)

The first single “I bet you look good on the dancefloor” came out October 17th  2005 in the UK, and hit #1 on the Singles chart by October 23rd. The song was a massive hit out of the gates. (The Vines would later record their own version of this single in 2011.) The artwork for the Single release depicting a working class girl portrayed by Jessie May Cuffe 16, who was not a professional model at the time was done by the Juno, a design company, the band had hired. The artwork showing a sign prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors is displayed as a nod to the album themes, and the underage smoking and drinking that goes on in every city in the western world.

The band were so productive in 2005 that there were many songs leftover that wouldn’t fit on the album. The B-side instrumental track Chun-Li’s Spinning Bird Kick was, to the band’s surprise, nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in the 2007 Grammy Awards. Resulting in the band being praised for having better B-sides then other band’s A-sides. Turner himself admitted that was always part of the goal and was to be continued through out the band’s discography.

The second single, “When The Sun Goes down”, previously titled “Scummy” or “Scummy man”, came out accompanied by a music video directed by Paul Fraser. The music video first appeared on MTV2 on 21 December 2005. It starred Lauren Socha and Stephen Graham while the music  video also contained footage from a longer film; Scummy Man. The artwork for the single showcases the area that inspired the song, the Neepsend district of Sheffield where the band also rehearsed. It also depicts Bruce Works, formally Bruce File & Steel Works established in 1852, which is a nice nod to the rich industrial steel history of Sheffield as well as another symbol of the South Yorkshire working class. 

The third single, “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, was released as a radio single only, as it was already featured on Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys EP.

However the official third single was actually “Leave before the lights come on”, released on August 14th 2006. The song that was written by Turner after the debut album but before starting the work on their sophomore album. Turner described the song as the last song he wrote that fits the Whatever people say… thematically and musically. They later tried to fit it in into their sophomore album but eventually decided against it as it just didn’t feel right. The song entered the UK Singles Chart at number four on 20 August 2006, becoming the first Arctic Monkeys single not to top the chart in the UK. It was accompanied by a music video release on August 3rd 2006, directed and filmed by John Hardwick in Sheffield. 

* * *

Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not came out on January 23rd 2006, just a few short weeks after Turner turned 20 years old. It’s often this fact that’s included when analyzing the massively popular debut. While most teenagers couldn’t remember what happened over the weekend, Turner was creatively capturing those same events into hit songs. 

According to Damian Peachey of Amazon.com, Arctic Monkeys was the top search term on Amazon.co.uk over the weekend of it’s release, eclipsing the term “iPod”, an extremely popular music device made by Apple at the time. Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not was outselling the second best selling album, Richard Ashcroft’s Keys to the World, by 4 to 1. It took the reigns as the fastest selling album in the UK history from Oasis and their Definitely Maybe LP released in 1994 by pushing 363,735 copies in a week.

The fastest selling debut album record would be eventually broken a year later by an X factor winner, Leona Lewis, by 12 thousand copies. Leona Lewis’ record also got broken when Susan Boyle, another reality TV star sold 410,000 copies in 2009. Proving that you essentially needed to be a TV star to break this record. And it’s true that Arctic Monkeys still hold the fastest selling debut album by a rock band, if that sort of record was being kept, which it is not. 

But Arctic Monkeys’ rise to stardom wasn’t without criticism. Among their vocal critics, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, another British rock’s household name, was caught saying “The fact that poor Arctic Monkeys are getting so much attention is purely based on the fact that the mainstream music business is such a bunch of fucking retards as far as I’m concerned.” While Turner took the high road and remained mute on the criticism, Helders took another route, saying in an interview that one time he put on Radiohead while driving and almost fell asleep behind the wheel. In the end perhaps it’s Arctic Monkeys who got the last laugh as they won the prestigious Mercury Prize for their debut album in 2006 over Thom Yorke’s solo album Eraser.

Another criticism came from the former Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder. Wilder described the state of the music industry in an open letter to Side-Line magazine, using Arctic Monkeys as an example in his criticism of the use of dynamic range compression in modern recording techniques. He labeling the single “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”, “a bombardment of the most unsubtle, one-dimensional noise”.

In another publicized feud, this time The Kooks lead singer, Luke Pritchard, claiming Alex Turner tried to plug out cables from Luke’s pedal board at a live show. “We have had a weird relationship with the Arctics since we first met,” Pritchard explained. “I had to kick Alex in the face after he tried to pull the leads out of my guitar pedals while we were on stage,” he said. “I tried to patch things up with Alex recently but he just turned his back and walked away. I suppose they are quite arrogant.” Luke told The Daily Mirror. 

The fans quickly picked sides accusing Pritchard of making up stories for attention. “No, it didn’t happen. I guarantee you I didn’t get booted in the face by anyone in the Kooks, they’d know about it if I had,” Turner fired back. 

Pritchard would later walk back some of the comments by saying “That was complete bulls**t. It happened when we first met in 2005 when the Arctic Monkeys guys came to one of our gigs. Alex Turner was at the front, I’d never met him,” he explained. “He was pulling out my guitar cable, and I gave him a boot to the face – nothing hard or anything like that, just to tell him to f**k off. I met him afterwards and we were laughing about it. It wasn’t like we had a fight. Someone asked me for a funny story and I told them that and they turned it into the fact that we had a punch-up – crazy,” Pritchard explained. 

The Kooks would eventually cover Arctic Monkeys’ Despair in Departure lounge and go on to praise Turner for his brilliant songwriting. Perhaps to bury the hatched between the two bands. The two groups have never shared a stage together. 

 The story between two bands is interesting, their album debuts came out on the exact same day on January 23rd 2006. A major label response to being snubbed by Arctic Monkeys, as Virgin Records released The Kooks debut to overlap with the highly anticipated Arctic Monkeys album. The plan seemed to have back fired at the time as all the British media and music fans were laser focused on Whatever People Say I am. The Kooks debut selling just 19,098 in the opening week. (Although it has since sold over 2 million copies worldwide and was certified 5× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry matching that of Arctic Monkeys’ debut numbers.) 

Pritchard took the high road at the time, and even thanking Arctic Monkeys for “shielding” them from early press criticism. “God bless the Arctic Monkeys because if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have been so shielded. We were so overshadowed by the success [of] it because [Arctic Monkeys’ album] it was so monster and we crept in behind everybody’s back,” Pritchard said with a smile. 

In another glimpse into Turner’s competitiveness, he complained to Brat, an Irish Magazine in 2005: “I think if we’re next year’s Kaiser Chiefs, we’ll quit,” he sneered. ”I don’t like being associated with them. I don’t think they had the same following as us last year. I suppose they’ve sold a lot of records, but I don’t like them. They’re a bit annoying,” Turner continued. “On gig posters people have put – ‘Arctic Monkeys here on this date, just think the Kaiser Chiefs and you’re nearly there’. That’s just thick isn’t it? It winds me up,” he said looking a little more annoyed this time. “I like to think I walk the tightrope between Mike Skinner and Jarvis Cocker,” Turner concluded confidently.

By the end of 2005, NME magazine had named Alex Turner the “Coolest Man on The Planet”, knocking both Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, of The Libertines, from their shared #1 spot. (Second place went to Liam Gallagher of Oasis, and third spot to Kanye West.) 

It would all seem too much for any regular 19-year-old to keep his wits about him. Yet Turner remained unfazed even with his face plastered on every music newspaper and magazine across the country.

* * *

After the release of their debut album, Arctic Monkeys announced an EP release to support the third single band planned, The View from the Afternoon.

The EP Who The Fuck are Arctic Monkeys came out on 24 April 2006, and featured three previously unheard tracks. Turner now addressing the fans and media directly in the title track. A new ballad was released, Despair in the Departure lounge, a love song about missing his lover while on tour, most likely Johanna Bennett, front-woman of the English rock band Totalizer, who he dated at the time. The length of the EP made it not eligible for charts as it was too cheap for an album and too long for a single. The EP received mostly mixed reviews as critics found Turner’s new attack through the EP’s title track at the same people who made him famous out of character and somewhat false or manufactured.

The album artwork was a photo taken by Timm Cleasby who performed various duties in the band’s early days before they were signed. Cleasby was primarily the band’s tour manager, merchandise guy, and show security during the early hectic days. At one of the early shows in the UK as the 200 young fans gathered in a small venue to mosh and crowd surf, Cleasby stood in front of young Turner so he wouldn’t keep getting hit in his mouth by the microphone as the kids kept accidentally pushing the microphone stand as they moshed. He also witnessed the infamous “footprints on the ceiling” (from the kids crowdsurfing one after another) to confirm the story to the press, which the press absolutely ate up. Usually left out of the story is the fact that the ceilings were unusually short in that venue, but that would not keep the Monkeymania hype train running at full speed.

Sheffield