The Last Shadow Puppet
“It’s like watching footage of an explosion in reverse. It’s like John Lennon meets… Paul.”
– Alex Turner talking to NME about The Last Shadow Puppets origins
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Alex Turner’s childlike playfulness can go from zero to a hundred within the same interview. Transitioning from seemingly cute and charming to what some have called full blown arrogance or nuisance depending on his company and how much he respects the interviewer. Some would say he’s at his worst when he’s being attached to the hip by faithful and eternal musical companion —Miles Kane.
Their connection at times bordering between brotherly love and full-on bromance. Conversations are abruptly paused while the two stare into each other’s eyes. Synchronizing their breathing and their thoughts process in order to complete each other’s sentences. Long parts of the interview seem to get away from the interviewer as the two “long-lost brothers” aim to move from interview to an acapella duet performance of a random Beatles song. [double check how they met] Turner and Kane first met through mutual friends in the local music scene. While the two admit bonding on their first shared tour.
“We supported Arctic Monkeys a couple of years ago and the connection was mind-blowing, wasn’t it?” Kane said in their first joint interview to NME. “Yeah! It was always us four (Arctic Monkeys) and them three (The Rascals) going out together. A sachet of delight! (both laugh) It wasn’t for another couple of years until Miles and I…” Turner paused waiting for Kane to interject. “Got on the path of the tunes,” Kane took over the sentence.
It’s a normal occurrence while interviewing the two rockstars together. “Yeah, I remember speaking to you one Saturday afternoon on the phone. I was in town and it was raining and we were discussing ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do something’,” Turner explained. Kane’s face lit up with excitement as they resisted their origins. “But before that we’d joked about doing it. We’d joke that on the cover we’d be in white polo necks, with a cigarette burning on the piano and that joke has gone into real life!” Kane replied enthusiastically. It received a visual applause from Turner’s face.
While unofficially it is thought that Turner is the brains behind the songwriting operation, officially the duo share the songwriting credit equally. “He struts around the room and I sit down with the pad, we say we’re Guy (Chambers) and Robbie (Williams)!” Kane exclaims. “But it’s different every time! We say ‘Who’s going to Robbie this time?’!” Turner quickly interjects. “We have to take it in turns! We can’t both be Robbie,” Kane concludes the thought.
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“Some lyrics are declarations of love or hate written in blood or carved in a bus stop, in need of little or no melodic illumination,” Turner said, discussing his new songwriting process. “Some, I believe, are there almost entirely to facilitate it. If I ever thought about it at all I’m sure I used to think the melody was the vessel that carried the lyrics but more recently it has occurred to me that the opposite is often true,” Turner concluded with a seriousness in his eyes. As Turner explains his songwriting process it’s difficult to know if he’s quoting a famous philosopher or one of his own songs. Miles Kane on the other hand is more straight forward character.
Miles Kane was born on March 17th 1986 (just a couple months after Turner), in Merseyside county, North West England. Like Turner, Kane was an only child. It’s a possible explanation for the two’s often visible display of brotherly love. Kane learned to play the saxophone before learning the guitar. He eventually joined The Little Flames, an indie rock band from Hoylake, England, when he turned 18. The band quickly signed to Deltasonic, a Manchester based record label, and went on tour with Arctic Monkeys as a support band. Turner was a big fan of Kane‘s band and was often seen wearing the band’s T-shirt live on tour. Arctic Monkeys eventually even covered The Little Flames‘ song “Put Your Dukes Up John” for a b-side release of “Leave Before the Lights Come On”. The Little Flames split up before their LP was to come out. Kane instantly formed a new band, The Rascals, taking some of the old band members but this time with him as the lead singer.
Kane’s new band immediately got back on the road opening up for Arctic Monkeys once again. It is rumored that Miles Kane was the first candidate to replace Andy Nicholson as the band’s new bassist, but his newly tasted love for being in front of the microphone commanding the audience influenced his decision greatly. It was further rumored that Kane might join Arctic Monkeys full time as a 5th member. “I really wanted to be a frontman at that time. I hadn’t been a frontman. I had a hard-on for that,” Kane confirmed to Q Magazine.
During their time touring together, Kane and Turner hit it off immediately. They started writing songs backstage before and after shows while also finishing each others thoughts and sentences. They seemed to share the same love for big orchestral arraignments and Scott Walker song themes. They quickly agreed to co-front the new band they titled “The Last Shadow Puppets”.
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“I was listening to the Kinks’ Face to Face a lot, though we’d already written the first record before I started to appreciate Ray Davies’ storytelling,” Turner told Pitchfork. “For me, as far as lyricists, it goes from Ray Davies to Nick Cave to Method Man. Rappers have to put so many words into one song, so keeping that interesting is just a really cool fucking craft. I stepped out of rap for a while, and it’s only in the last year that I’ve gotten into Lil Wayne and Drake, who are amazing,” Turner reflected. “There’s a lot of that on the Monkeys’ jukebox at the moment. Around this time is also when I started spending a lot of time with Miles Kane, who I made the Last Shadow Puppets album with, and we got into Scott Walker’s Scott 4, which really blew my mind. That’s when I started to want to sing,” Turner explained.
Turner moved away from singing about nights in Sheffield and adopted a more cinematic view of love, lust, and heartbreak. Equally influenced by Scott Walker and the soundtracks to the movies such as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly by Ennio Morricone, Turner and Kane moved to France to capture their new exciting vision.
“I’ve had the phase where I enjoyed being part of a ‘well-oiled machine’ and I’m currently subscribing to the notion that the most unpredictable or unlikely moments are probably the most entertaining. This is also a reflection of an approach to songwriting. I think it’s the predictability in a lot of modern pop that prevents it from making us feel anything,” Turner told Telegraph.
Alexa Chung, born in 1983, was working as a TV presenter when she met Turner in London, England. The two quickly hit it off and moved in together into a flat in London in 2007. Chung equally as accomplished and widely known in England as both a TV presenter and fashion icon got a job offer from MTV in New York. It was too good to pass up. The famous couple first settled in Williamsburg, a trendy hipster part of Brooklyn, NY. (Chung later moved to East Village, buying a small 190 square foot apartment after the couple broke up in 2011.)
Album Cover taken from one of iconic photos from the 1962 by the Prix Nadar award winning British photographer, Sam Haskins, who died just a year after the album was released in Australia. Chung was a long time fan of the photography book, Five Girls, containing these images used by The Last Shadow Puppets. Chung is thought to have been responsible for suggesting they use one of the photos from the book for their album art. The model on the cover was a South African art student, by the name of Gill, who was not a professional model at the time.
“One final parallel I’d like to draw between songwriting and being on stage is they both sometimes feel like a series of intermittent interpretations and impersonations of various artists I admire. Interpretations and impersonations that are hopefully colliding aggressively and rapidly enough with one another that the origins of the inspiration is largely obscured and from it comes something original,” Turner told Telegraph.
“This all happens deep down inside and is something that has developed incrementally over time. It’s not as thought out as this analysis might suggest. I’m not rehearsing in front of the mirror with the hairbrush before a gig or anything, although that’s not a conclusion I’d be opposed to you drawing,” Turner continued. “In fact I quite like the idea that the performance suggests there’s just been a De Niro in Raging Bull style self-pep talk backstage before I emerge, where I gaze deep into my light bulb bordered reflection and speak profound words of encouragement to myself,” Turner said in the same interview.
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In the studio, Kane and Turner are dressed in all black. Wearing their Chelsea boots, turtlenecks, mop tops, vintage guitars, looking every bit Lennon & McCartney while singing in complete unison. Their voices are at times overlapping indistinguishably. They are swapping chairs as they swap the rare 60s iconic burgundy red Martin GT-75 hollowbody Electric and the Gibson Acoustic guitars in between songs. Without paying very close attention you might miss all of this, as their appearance is nearly identical by this point.
The Last Shadow Puppets recorded several live acoustic performances of their singles at the Avatar Studios (Studio A) in New York City in March of 2008 shortly after their debut album was released.
To capture the album, The Shadow puppets moved into a 60s era secluded and private hotel & studio in France, known as The Black Box Studios, where they recorded the majority of the material. The 250 square meter converted barn studio is neatly located in the French countryside of the Anjou region, near the Loire Valley, an hour and a half by train from Paris. Several songs were additionally recorded in London at RAK studios, a 70s era recording studio compound located in central London near Regent’s Park. The orchestra score was composed by the Canadian composer, Owen Pallett, and recorded by the London Metropolitan Orchestra at the historic British Grove Studios, owned by Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler.
“It’s was in the north of France somewhere, about an hour from Nantes. It was just us, James Ford who produced and played drums and an engineer, we didn’t get out much or see anyone,” Kane explains the recording process. “We rode a bicycle one Saturday afternoon right at the end of it and properly got freaked out. We rode a bike like a mile,” Turner continued making sure the conversation never turns too serious. “We had our tops off as well!” Kane jokes, causing them both to laugh in unison. “I wasn’t going to say that,” Turner says with a more serious expression.
Those two weeks spent in the French countryside studio are shrouded in mystery as both Kane & Turner keep their personal cards close to their vests. The assumption that all the songs on the album were about one girl, was shot down by Kane in an interview. “It isn’t just one person, though, the girl on the album,” Kane objected to Telegraph. “More an amalgamation of several female characters from different situations we’ve been in with girls over the years,” Kane explained.
The band’s producer, James Ford, admitted to Telegraph that those two weeks in the studio were frequently interrupted by endless and crazy phone calls from girls and “weird things going on”. Like much of the Turner’s private life, you are left fill in the blanks and ponder what might have been going on in the lives of two young British rock starts during the pinnacle of their world wide fame & success.
“In the first song we wrote together, we were swapping the vocal every line, and we’d have probably taken it as far as singing alternate words if the producer had let us,” Kane laughed in Telegraph interview.
The first single, “The Age of the Understatement”, came out 14 April 2008 in the UK on Domino Records containing two covers; “Wondrous Place” and “In The Heat Of The Morning” originally made famous by prominent British singers, Billy Fury and David Bowie respectively. David Bowie himself commented on the cover, calling it a “delight” and “lovely”. A nodding head of approval for Turner & Kane’s take on the song.
On June 28th 2008 The Last Shadow Puppets performed a surprise gig at Glastonbury. The Duo ran into Jack White who was performing with The Raconteurs earlier that day and asked him to join them when they met him back stage. White using Miles’ ipod to listen to the song, “Wondrous Place”, backstage and learned the few bars of music, or so the rumor goes.
“So the album is a third of tunes we did completely together. Then a third of his ones which we finished off together and then a third that were mine which we finished off,” Turner told NME.
The music video for their first single, “The Age of The Understatement”, was shot in Moscow, Russia by the award winning director, Romain Gavras. “I want it to be grand!” Kane got excited. “Tanks! I want tanks, and James Bond!” Turner exclaimed half jokingly as the two exchanged ideas back and forth for the music video. The music video does indeed take heavy influences from James Bond, featuring the band riding on Russian tanks and alongside heavy Russian infantry presence. They band would go on to win Best Cinematography at the UK Music Video Awards for the video.
The second single, “Standing Next To Me”, was released on July 7th, 2008 accompanied by 3 B-side songs not included on the debut album. Music video was shot in London by director Richard Ayoade, the same director who was responsible for capturing Arctic Monkeys live show for the Live at Apollo DVD a year earlier. The duo looking like a stylish fusion of The Beatles and The Everly Brothers stood with a guitar and a tambourine and sang intently while a group of mod style girls danced in rainbow colored leggings.
The b-sides of “Hang The Cyst”, “Gas Dance”, and “Sequels” every bit as good as some of the songs on the LP were omitted from the LP inclusion even though the debut runs just 35 minute in length. A move some thought was uncommon for artists at the time. Turner always had a taste for short and concise albums as to not bore the listeners with too much repetitive material, none of Turner’s albums ever reach an hour in length.
The third single, “My Mistakes Were Made for You”, perhaps the band’s biggest hit, was released on October 20th 2008 alongside some notable covers and acoustic version of the album songs. “My Little Red Book”, a song made popular by Manfred Mann, an English rock band from London, who recorded the song for the 1965 film “What’s New Pussycat?”.
The second cover is “Paris Summer”, recorded live at New Theatre Oxford, a song originally made popular by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood in the early 70s. Both Turner and Kane professed great love and admiration for 60s and 70s era music, especially those by Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood. Alison Mosshart, the singer from The Kills, sang on “Paris Summer” as a guest which was recorded live at The Olympia in Paris.
“When you’re on your own (as a frontman), the momentum is kind of your responsibility. When there’s two of you, especially if you can get to that place where there is an unspoken understanding, then you generate potentially even more momentum,” Turner told Telegraph.
The music video for “My Mistakes Were Made for You” was also directed by Richard Ayoade. It borrows heavily from, “Toby Dammit”, a segment from the film “Spirits of the Dead”.The film segment was directed by the famed filmmaker, Federico Fellini. (The music for the film is done by Giovanni “Nino” Rota who was later cited as influence by Turner for the his work on “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”.)
The video was shot at Pinewood studios and features Turner’s girlfriend at the time, Alexa Chung, in the car that appears to have crashed moments earlier. Pinewood studios, the historic film and TV studio, located in located in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, is famous for producing James Bond’s Dr. No in 1962, among many James Bond movies as well as Tim Burton’s Batman.
Turner choosing to work with Ayoade at the iconic studio shows his love, knowledge, and deep appreciation for the 60s era British film making, it also reaffirms the re-occurring theme of James Bond themed music through out his career. The video for the single would end up winning The Best video award at the 2009 NME awards bringing another round of awards to the large list of accomplishments to their resume.
“I’m glad we got to talk more after the show last week. I felt during our meeting in the afternoon I’d sort of sat myself too far away from my internal cue cards and few sentences made it to the finish line. I’m not always that way, there is the occasional Danish phoner where I’m on fire, I assure you,” Turner said in an apology to the telegraph reporter.
“I’m still figuring out what ‘The Shadow Puppets’ is to be truthful. It could just be another pit stop on my drift towards superfluity, however it’s one I couldn’t resist. A couple of years ago Miles and I were working on what were intended to be songs for his next record. During a moment of vocal harmony experimentation I was invited to imagine what the second record from the two of us might sound like. This middle 8 (as we say in showbiz) seemed to have a strong relationship with the feel and sound of songs from ‘Age of the understatement’ but with a scintillation and vivacity that hadn’t really been invited to the party in 2007,” Turner told Telegraph.