Chapter I

We’re Arctic Monkeys, this is ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, 

don’t believe the hype.

– Alex Turner

* * *

       He’s already walking across the stage —in his mind that is. Yet his body is still firmly planted in the royal dinning room in the middle of a large hall. The room is filled with people and excitement. To him it’s just blurry faces. It’s Music Awards night, and the winner is about to be unveiled. But even before the unfolding of the oversized note inside the sparkling purple envelope; he looks as though he knows the winner. He moves his hand from one side of his clean shaven face to the other, revealing a chiseled jawline that would make Henry Cavill envious. He’s dressed in all black; head to toe. Wet-slick black hair with a perfectly placed quiff is sucking all the air out of the room. A fresh comb awaits patiently in his pocket. A visibly large fuck-you-I’m-rich medallion dangles around his neck. He looks like he smells of whiskey, Versace, and money, and lots of it. His name is Alex Turner — and he is the frontman superstar of the British rock ‘n’ roll band —Arctic Monkeys.

         It’s February 19th, 2014, and the biggest names in British music have descended upon O2 Arena in South East London for Britain’s biggest music awards ceremony; The Brit Awards. Finally, it’s time. Turner makes no expression as the words “Arctic Monkeys” and “Album of the Year” echo through the hall full of stars wishing their name was being summoned instead. And while everyone around him fails to contain a smile, or their hands from clapping, he is ice cold, emotionless. All eyes fixate on him as he glides through the room’s imaginary runway. Still unfazed by the magnitude of the moment, he leads the rest of the Monkeys’s ensemble all while pointing at imaginary objects in the distance. 

    As he finally reaches the center stage, the rest of the band in tow, he arrives as if planting a flag, claiming his territory. He flares the jacket to make room for an “Elvis-like pose”; one hand on the hip, and the other firmly grasping the microphone as he assures the crowd: “That rock ’n’ roll eh?” Shifting his tongue around his mouth for a second as if clearing whatever food rockstars eat before these sort of things, or perhaps to buy some time to think. “That rock ‘n’ roll, it just won’t go away…”, Turner gloats. 

    He would go on to ramble on about swamps and cyclical natures of the universe in an effort to say something equivalent of: “Rock and roll is better than whatever music you guys make”. One would find it hard to argue otherwise considering AM has take the #1 spot on numerous charts around the world. During his speech, Turner would propose that “Rock ‘n’ roll will never die, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” before telling the organizers to invoice him for the microphone if they need to as he dropped it to the ground. There was no “We” in the speech, only “I’s” as he thanked for the award he received. 

    The band stood close behind and snickered during the entire speech, not to laugh at him, but perhaps signaling: they’re in on the joke. Speaking to Esquire a few months after the awards, Nick O’Malley, the band’s bassist gave his thoughts on what makes a great frontman: “Someone who’s got charisma, I suppose. People always say, ‘I like it when frontmen of bands are really honest and themselves,’ Well, I fucking don’t.” O’Malley continued: “I prefer a character you won’t meet everyday, someone that seems like they’re from another planet. It’s not, ‘What about that fucking weather?’ Do you know what I mean? I want to think you’ve just landed from outer space.”

    Jamie Cook, the band’s guitarist, also agreed: “Alex has evolved from being quite shy, quite kind of quiet. Like, some people have got freaked out by the change,” Cook said. “But I think it’s much better the way he is now.”

    But the next day following “The Speech”, British music press and the tabloids had enough material to have a field day. Pondering if the Arctic Monkeys’ frontman was drunk, high, or “just talking a piss” or all of the above. Of course, the speech was simply too poetic and too brilliant in a dramatic sort of sense for even Turner to come up with on the spot —even if he would like us to believe. From then on, Turner would simply refer to the Brit Awards speech as “That Thing” when pressed to elaborate further his stream of consciousness about the state of rock ‘n’ roll. When one interviewer instigated to the band: “Did the Brits invoice you for the microphone?” “I don’t think so, it didn’t reach me if they did”, Turner said with a smile. 

    Some would agree this is all in the realm of rockstars getting more famous and more confident, but others would argue it was not his finest moment. Especially those who followed Turner from his rise as the shy acne-faced, seemingly modest upstart from Sheffield, in his parents’ garage. The kid who started his career with the line “Don’t believe the hype”, was now seemingly saying: “You better believe it”. As Turner walked away from that night with two new Brit Awards under his arm (now totaling seven*) many wondered if the tremendous success in America has finally changed their biggest home-grown rock star since Oasis or was he simply playing a character like an actor in a film.

    Turner would have to go on defending himself for months from accusations of being intoxicated while performing The Speech. “A lot of people thought I was waffling away on drugs, but I wasn’t,” Turner told Rolling Stone. “I just can’t pretend getting an award was something I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid, because it isn’t.” 

    But what did Turner dream of as kid? And what was it about his birthplace of Sheffield that produced this iconic band that would eventually take over the world of rock ‘n’ roll? Was it just happenstance? Or was there a specific environment in Sheffield that helped create what Turner calls: “Chip-shop” brand of rock ‘n’ roll?

* * *

    Alexander David Turner was born in Sheffield, England on January 6, 1986 as an only child to seemingly ordinary parents; Penny and David Turner. His parents were both school teachers at local secondary schools. Penny taught German while David taught physics and music, all of which proved to make a big impact in Alex’s music career.

    Sheffield, a sprawling English city of roughly half a million people, located in South Yorkshire is the third largest district or municipality in the UK. The historical identity of the city is primarily blue collar, making it a true “worker’s town”. It was mostly a metal and steel-producing city up until the late 1980s when Alex Turner was born. During WWII the steel production in the city ramped up when the need for weapons and ammunition was at an all time high, which also consequently made it a priority for German bombers. And as the bombs dropped trying to rip the heart out of the city, it seemed to have the reverse effect, it made the population even more resilient. Although the bombing did have long term negative effect on local economy and the jobs market. The policies of then current political powerhead Margaret Thatcher, known locally as Thatcherism, were partially blamed for the sharp decline of the local steel related jobs.

    During the record unemployment, more and more people turned to pubs, entertainment, and music to relieve their misfortunes, and thus, a music scene thrived. And out of this music scene two prominent Sheffield up-and coming musicians were born: Richard Hawley and Jarvis Cocker. Both from the band Pulp, and both of whom would come to influence Turner’s music career. Affected by the shortage of jobs they were qualified for, Hawley and Cocker put their efforts into writing and performing music around the local pub scene; each with their own string of successes. And while Sheffield had historically turned out several world famous music acts before 2000s such as Joe Cocker (no known blood relation to Jarvis Cocker), Def Leppard, and Pulp; it paled in comparison to some other English cities. Cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and of course; London. All of which had together produced the world’s biggest rock bands to date with the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Police, and many others. Sheffield (which is larger than some of the cities mentioned) was clearly lagging behind in producing world famous acts, but the Sheffield’s music history was about to change drastically.

     While growing up in High Green, a suburb of Sheffield, Alex or “Al” to his closest friends, was constantly exposed to various jazz, swing, and classical music by his parents. David, particularly enjoyed the music of Frank Sinatra and The Carpenters, which he regularly played in the car while driving his son around town. David would often practice for various swing and big band acts and would often leave the music records spinning for everyone to absorb. This exposure to various string and brass instruments made a huge impact on Alex’s musical tastes which became much more evident later in his musical career while working on his side project, The Last Shadow Puppets. 

    “My Dad had a Frank Sinatra cassette that he would play on car journeys”, Turner told AmericanSongwriter. “It was the Nelson Riddle arrangement of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, I remember the part where my Dad would always punch my knee was when Frank says [Imitates Frank’s voice] ‘Run for cover, run and hide,’ I did hear that cassette quite a bit on car journeys actually,” Alex quickly shifted from talking into singing: [sings] “They put coffee in the coffee in Brazil. You date a girl and find out later she smells just like a percolator…” Alex laughed as he finished singing. “Our guitar tech turned me onto a load of that a couple of years ago. Chet Baker does a lot of those tunes.”

    Growing up in a musical household, Turner was given private piano lessons early in his childhood. He showed little interest at the time, but parts of it stuck with him even if only subconsciously. The appeal of the piano at that young age just didn’t seem to resonate with him. However, Turner does credits his parents for his musical involvement, telling NME: “Maybe that is to do with my mum and dad. My mum’s a linguist, she’s a German teacher and my dad’s a music teacher so maybe I get that off him, the musical thing and the desire to create.” Turner continued:  “And my mum’s always been fascinated by language… Maybe I get it from her originally.” 

     Jon McClure, a local celebrity at the time, was a well regarded songwriter and a poet in the Sheffield music circles and is thought to have had a great influence on Arctic Monkeys. McClure, who was 18 at the time, allegedly asked Turner to join his band (14 at the time) on a bus ride in Sheffield on a whim, so the legend goes. The band, Judan Suki (Japanese for “being kicked in the weak spot”) would also feature Matt Helders, a close friend of Turner.

Turner and McClure hit it off quickly bonding over their love of The Jam, Oasis, The Beatles, and the poet John Cooper Clarke. However, Turner and Helders would not stick around too long in McClure’s band. 

“He’s an only child, so I suppose in a lot of ways he listens to what I tell him. I’ll give him a moral stance on something,” McClure explained in 2007. “Or if he doesn’t understand [summat], I’ll explain it to him. Like I’ll tell him what histrionics means.” [histrionics meaning: dramatics, theatrical]

During those early times, rumors began to spread that McClure was writing a lot of Arctic Monkeys songs, which McClure quickly called out as “bullshit”. Of course people wanted to find a more logical explanation than a 16 year-old boy writing songs in his parents’ garage which would in turn become UK’s #1 hits. Those early songs Turner wrote truly seemed beyond the maturity of an ordinary, shy teenager, but Turner has proven time and time again that he’s anything but ordinary.  

    McClure told Irish Times about the offers he received just being around Turner: “A load of A&Rs descended on Sheffield and started throwing money around. I got offered £200,000, which is a lot of money when you’re on the dole. He [A&R agent] were basically saying, ‘Make me an Arctic Monkeys record,’ McClure said. “I could’ve done it. But I didn’t want to make music that sounds like theirs.”

McClure and Turner would later collaborate on several Reverend and the Makers’ songs as well as an Arctic Monkeys’ track “Old Yellow Bricks”, and would continue to be colleagues and good friends and even flatmates during Turner’s very brief college days.

Turner’s musical confidence grew exponentially after a string of gigs he did for McClure’s band which included seven gigs in York and Liverpool over the summer of 2003. Turner confessing McClure’s influence early on, telling NME: “John [McClure] is a very confident character, he’s such a frontman, and I reckon I got a lot of it from him. Not cockiness, just confidence.”

There were a couple of bands around where we grew up that were playing Strokes covers and stuff, and we used to go and watch them in the pub. We were still hanging around in a park, drinking cider or whatever, and we were sort of like, “F*** it, we could play the local pub.

Let’s buy guitars and a drum kit and we’ll see if we can’t get something going.” It was a while before we all played the same song at the same time. 

– Alex Turner speaking to GQ Magazine

    The story of the Arctic Monkeys’ origin is one of fate. Jamie Cook, the band’s guitar player, was living next door to Turner when they were both young teenagers. Matt Helders, the band’s drummer, lived on the same street and attended the same primary school as Turner and were good friends by the age of seven. Alongside their future bassist, Andy Nicholson, the boys’ friendship grew as the three attended Stocksbridge High School in Sheffield together. But even before any plans to form a band, Matt Helder and Alex Turner already hit it off musically as they performed Oasis’s “Morning Glory” at their final assembly in primary school at age eleven. 

    Andy Nicholson, the band’s original bassist, was the only member not living in High    Green at the time (living in the nearby Hillsborough).

    Turner telling the story to Pitchfork: “In the U.K., you go from primary school to secondary school at age eleven. And when we left primary school, all the kids would form groups and do a performance, like the girls would do a dance to the Spice Girls, or whatever.” Turner said. “So me and Matt and some of our friends put on Morning Glory —we ‘played’ some tennis rackets and pretended to be Oasis. Matt was Liam Gallagher, he had the bucket hat on. I was the bass player,” Turner laughed. “We were just standing there, doing what Oasis did onstage… which was not a great deal. I don’t think we got as good a reaction as the Spice Girls.” 

    Turner reflected on those early days noting he’s still very much into Oasis: “We still listen to ‘Morning Glory’ in our dressing room sometimes, and also ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’– the really long one with the f***ing helicopter sound. It’s so cocky but it’s boss,” Turner exclaimed. “It’s funny to hear Noel talk about that tune now, about how the first time they played it to the radio booker, the guy’s like, ‘Do you think it’s a bit long?’ And he was like, ‘What are you talking about? It’s not long enough!’ Classic Noel,” Turner told Pitchfork Magazine.

    After high school, Turner and Helders still uncertain about their future enrolled in Barnsley College, a further education institution. There they would go on to briefly study music among other interests such as psychology and media. Helders would later thank Barnsley College in a public statement for preparing him for his career as a drummer. “I turned 16 in May, left school, had the summer off and went to Barnsley College in September. I only went because everyone else did, so when I got there I cheated my way onto the music course by learning one song on piano.

    And I did Photography and Media Studies,” Helders told Loud and Quiet. “It was that summer that I started playing drums. I’d never played until then. I had some money that my grandparents had given me when I was born – a thousand pound from a children’s bond – so I went to the Cayman Islands for four weeks, because my brother lived there, and then bought a drum kit when I got back, which was all my money gone. Turns out it was a good investment,” Helders exclaimed.

During the formation of the band, the first three members all picked guitars to play, leaving Helders no choice but to join as the drummer. “It was the only choice because the others had already got their guitars”, Helders explained. “If I wanted to be in the band it was drums only. So I used to keep them in Alex’s garage, and we practiced there. It meant that I could only practice whenever we all practiced. It was a slow start. I just didn’t want to be left out.”

     After just a few months of practicing together the band had 8 songs to perform; four originals and four covers. The covers were ‘Harmonic Generator’ by The Datsuns, ‘Hotel Yorba’ by the White Stripes, an acoustic version of ‘I’m Only Sleeping’, and ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones.

    “Where we grew up there were these other kids that had a band, and they used to play in one of the pubs, and we started hanging around with them. We’d go and watch them and drink cider and be stupid and chase after girls,” Turner told Pitchfork. “Then, sitting around chatting on a Friday night, we were like, ‘We should form a band,’ – just desperately looking for something to do, I suppose,” Turner explained. “None of us could play anything. But we got guitars and a drum kit and put it together one summer in me mum and dad’s garage. It was just based on this idea of seeing these other kids whose only ambition was to play a show in the pub.”

     But during the early 2000s it wasn’t all about The Strokes and The Vines in the music world, another genre had started to emerge in US and Europe —nu-metal. It was the forging of two genres: rap & rock. The bands such as Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Deftones were taking the front covers on many magazines. Limp Bizkit’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water went #1 in the UK in October of 2000. Other nu-metal bands followed with high chart numbers in 2001 & 2002. 

Even though the young Arctic Monkeys started playing rock covers and playing with hip-hop beats on the side, they never ventured into the nu-metal territory. Many kids in Europe, especially the ones interested into Skateboarding, BMX, and basketball, as Helders and Turner were, ended up being interested in this new musical genre combing rap & rock elements. 

“There was a danger there, for me, of getting into Limp Bizkit. All the kids that were into rap got into that, especially as I was into skateboarding. I don’t know how I narrowly escaped that but I got into The Strokes, The Hives and The Vines instead. I could be in a very different band right now,” Helders told Loud and Quiet magazine.

    Being friends with the local garage and indie bands: The Dodgems, and Milburn, perhaps had the most immediate effect and influence on Arctic Monkeys. Seeing their friends achieve a medium level of success in the UK opened their eyes that bands don’t just play in front of large crowds on TV. It can happen for them if they give it a real go —and it paid off big time. “Musically, it was a transitional time from being at school listening to rap (Eminem and Dr Dre) to getting into guitars,” Helders explained.

When it comes to influence, Turner is especially susceptible to being dragged into a new artistic direction. Something that would become evident through out his career. Luckily no one around him was giving him Limp Bizkit CDs. 

* * *

    During his high school years, Turner was largely influenced by artists such as Roots Manuva, Wu-Tang Clan, Cypress Hill, and Dr. Dre way before he even thought of asking for a guitar. “I just got me guitar when I was 15, but there wasn’t a lot of guitar music in my world then,” Turner told Pitchfork. “I’m sure there were great bands at the time, but they just didn’t make it to our little village 20 minutes outside Sheffield. Back then, we were into hip-hop in a big way —we would wear caps and s***, and our trousers definitely fit a lot less snug than they do now,” Turner laughed. 

“Matt used to shave my head in his kitchen, but he’d leave two stripes on, and then the gap in between those stripes came down and went through me eyebrow. That’s the weirdest haircut I’ve ever had,” Turner said with a smile. Often playing around with making hip hop beats using his father’s Cubase —a popular music recording system on which Turner enjoyed the process of constructing beats and simple songs. The admiration for hip-hop and rap is reoccurring theme in Turner’s musical journey. Turner admitted to writing down lyrics and sketching song ideas in his notebook in school way before he was willing to admit it and way before Arctic Monkeys formed.

His high school english teacher introduced him to the poetry of John Cooper Clarke, a local poet, who made a big impact lyrically on Turner’s songwriting. “I was listening to this British rapper called Roots Manuva, along with OutKast, Eminem, Wu-Tang, and all that. But I think the reason why I connected with Roots Manuva’s ‘Run Come Save Me’ was probably because he was talking about quite mundane things with a bit of a stoned slant,” Turner told Pitchfork about his musical upbringing. “Also, at that age, I wanted to have my own thing that other people might not have heard about.”  

Notably, it’s this interest in early hip-hop that gave his lyrics an edge. A vivid story teller with a sort of bravado that made him sound much older and more mature than his age would suggest. Staying away from cliches and cheesy declarative love songs is what separated him from his peers. 

    Aside from his interest in hip-hop music, Turner was infatuated by then new bands touring the UK for the first time. Bands such as: The Strokes, The Vines, The Hives, and The White Stripes. It was friend of the band, Nick O’Malley, (who played in the local band The Dodgems), who gave Turner a copy of The Strokes’ Is This It breakthrough debut that made a profound influence on the Turner. 

    “I remember I used to play that first album [Is This It] in college all the time, when our band was first starting. Loads of people were into them, so loads of bands coming out sounded like them,” Turner told NME magazine. “I remember consciously trying not to sound like The Strokes, deliberately taking bits out of songs that sounded too much like them, but I still loved that album.”

    A less flattering story perhaps is one of him cutting his jeans to be more like The Strokes. “As much as they probably hate hearing this as well, they were the band that encouraged me to rip the knees of my jeans and write on them in marker pen. I wrote on them in red ink: ‘I’ve got soul and I’m Superbad!” Turner said.

* * *

Two particular events stand out as the most influential in Alex Turner’s music pursuits. First one occurred in 2002 when Turner travels from his home town of High Green, Sheffield to Manchester with Helders and O’Malley to see The Vines perform all the way from Sydney, Australia. Turner was particularly impressed by the way The Vines’ singer, Craig Nicholls, moved on stage; all erratic and violent with appearance of being spaced out and stoned. (The Vines’ singer, Craig Nicholls, would later be diagnosed with Asperger’s, a high functioning for of autism.)

    The second music altering event occurred on December 5th of 2003, when Helders, Nicholson, and Turner took the bus to London to watch The Strokes perform a memorably explosive and vivid set on their Room on Fire tour at the Alexandra Palace. This time, Turner observed a much more stoic performance from a rock band and particularly of the lead singer —Julian Casablancas. That night, Casablancas, a calm-cool-and-collected son of a business mogul, seduced the crowd with barely moving an inch on stage. 

    These two seemingly perfect cosmic events in particular gave Turner the confidence that rock bands can be successful in the current music landscape and to further commit to his grandiose ambitions. “We were staying in a hotel in Golders Green that didn’t have running water but it only cost us, like, £30! We met Pete Doherty in the crowd that day. It was a little adventure for us, and it was an amazing gig, ” Turner confirmed with excitement.

We want to do things our way, and people think it’s arrogance, so it’s inevitable some people will get tired of us. That’s why, we sing, ‘Bring on the backlash!

– Alex Turner 

    Turner deferred going to university in Manchester to study English and got a part time job as a bartender at the Boardwalk, a local bar venue in Sheffield. It was there where he saw John Cooper Clarke open up for The Fall, a post-punk band from Greater Manchester area. This particular performance of Clarke is what changed Turner’s lyric writing style. Turner turned into a more vivid and funny storyteller, almost borrowing elements from Clarke while giving his own first person accounts of the nightlife he witnessed all around Sheffield.

    Jamie Cook penned the name Arctic Monkeys, and the group took it never seriously considering an alternative, perhaps they didn’t expect much from the band to begin with. All these years Cook never explained how and by which process he arrived at this bizarre name. Simply adding more mystery to an already mysterious band. “I’ve no idea where it came from. It was Jamie’s fault, he came up with it and he’s never even told us why. If he even knows, he’s keeping it a secret from me,” Turner told Q Magazine in 2011.”There might have been other ideas for offshoots at the time, but the Monkeys was the first one. It sound like a first band name, doesn’t it? It’s so bad that the tribute bands don’t sound worse. I saw there’s an Aertex [a British clothing co.] Monkeys, that’s pretty clever,” Turner laughed.

    “He’s got a terrific sense of humor and delivery,” Turner admired about the poet. “I used to pull pints in a bar in town where he’d come in to play. He’d come on stage and do his thing, with his carrier bag full of scraps of paper, really loose and disorganized – I could hear he was totally commanding the crowd,” Turner concluded. 

    It was Clarke who liked the band’s name a lot, the first person Turner recalls reacting positively to their band name since they settled for it. “Johnny was the first person I’d ever met who really liked the name. And if he thought it was a good name, then we were definitely going to keep it,” Turner confirmed. It was a beginning of a mutual admiration between the two poets that would continue through out their careers.