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Arctic Monkeys hit their stride
They started the decade aged 14 and ended it with the biggest-selling debut album in British history. And the boys from Sheffield are still moving forward, fast
It is Christmas 2001. Two lads from High Green, Sheffield, receive electric guitars from Santa. They are 15 and 16, and the first thing they learn to play together is Monty Norman's James Bond Theme. Then they learn Oasis chords. They form a band with two other mates from school and, when they're not hanging about the school playing fields drinking cider and cheap wine, they play White Stripes covers and The Ballad of Chasey Lain by the Bloodhound Gang.
Graduating from the older guitarist's dad's garage, they play their first gig, supporting a band called the Sound at a local pub, the Grapes. Their eight-song set comprises three covers and five self-written songs. The drummer recalls that their mates said afterwards: "You're actually quite good!" It is Friday, June 13, 2003, and Arctic Monkeys have just had the first hint that the band might be on to something.
It is Friday, November 13, 2009. Backstage at the 11,000-capacity Liverpool Echo Arena with Arctic Monkeys. Two dressing rooms, tagged Sexy Room 1 and Sexy Room 2. Their rider isn't particularly lavish, but they have been provided with a clothes iron of such beauty that the guitarist Jamie Cook, 24, feels compelled to use it. "I don't even need to iron owt," the chirpy, time-served tiler says as he whips out a shirt.
Along the corridor: a table-tennis room, signposted by the laminated legend "Ground Zero Battle Zone". A catering room, wherein the culinary centrepiece is a mound of rolls filled with fish fingers (hangover food in exelcis — the Monkeys have travelled overnight on their sleek tour bus from London, where they were filming an appearance on Jonathan Ross's chat show; they don't look as if they slept much). To some excitement, a parcel arrives from Tokyo — it contains all the stuff that their party left in their Tokyo hotel rooms: Cook's coat, a dirty sock, gifts from fans, even a Tokyo city guide.
From the Grapes in Sheffield to Budokan in Tokyo: Arctic Monkeys have come a long way, fast. Their first fully available — ie, not limited-edition — single, I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, entered the charts at No 1 in October 2005. Their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, was, at the time, the fastest-selling debut album in British history. It went on to win the Mercury Music Prize. Within 18 months of those feats they'd released a second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare (which was also nominated for the Mercury), and headlined the main stage at Glastonbury. They have, to date, won five Brit Awards.
Do they think that they've made an album — or albums — of the Noughties? Or are they as dismissive of such rankings as the lyrics to the 2007 single Teddy Picker would suggest, "Sorry sunshine it doesn't exist/ It wasn't in the top 100 list".
The singer and guitarist, Alex Turner, 23 — wearing la denim jacket over a Mexican-style knitted cardigan picked up in a second-hand shop in Austin, Texas ("I were looking for a chair"), and loafers — sparks up a Camel. "We've had a lot of this recently in interviews. The first record is usually on the list that's put in front of us," he says of Arctic Monkeys' debut. "I'm happy that people think that."
He gazes off, his mind turning, as it often does, on its own wheels, in marked contrast to the direct conversational zip of his lyrics. He fiddles with his hair, stares at the wall, studies his knees. He thinks it's good that these lists mention the Strokes' Is This It, an album that reminds him of sitting on the 266 bus at home in Sheffield, listening on his Walkman. But he thinks it's bad that Highly Evolved by the Vines — the "Australian Nirvana" and the first band Turner saw live, "seems to have ducked off the list. I love that record. His melodies."
But still, it's pretty good going to write an album that's classed as one of the best of the Noughties, especially considering that he had just turned 14 when the decade started.
"Yeah, I guess so." The frontman, lyricist and chief songwriter considers this. "I'd never thought of it like that."
For all his laconic, wan repose, as he sprawls on a sofa in Sexy Room 1 it is apparent that there are a couple of things Turner would like to clear up. Given how rarely his band grant interviews, it's little wonder misunderstanding has arisen. Throw in the heavy sound of Arctic Monkeys' "difficult" third album, Humbug, and confusion was bound to ensue. Apart from headline shows at the Reading and Leeds festivals (and a Brixton Academy warm-up), they've been away constantly — touring America, Japan and Europe — since the August release of Humbug, which they part-recorded in the Californian desert with their producer Josh Homme, the guitarist and leader of the hard-rocking Queens of the Stone Age. This cold and wet afternoon in the regenerated Liverpool dockside, the opening night of the band's UK tour is a good time to sort things out.
First of all, My Propeller, the opening song on Humbug. I first heard it when Arctic Monkeys performed it at the Highline Ballroom in New York in early August. Turner's English girlfriend, the New York-based MTV chat-show hostess Alexa Chung, was in attendance. For much of this year she and Turner have shared an apartment in Brooklyn. Is the move reflected in the new songs he's been writing? "Not in the way that living in Sheffield was reflected in those first album tunes." No,Turner wants to clarify, "personal" Humbug song The Fire and the Thud is not about Chung moving to New York ("if it's true you are going to run away, tell me where, I'll meet you there"). Is it about her generally? "Well, like I say, it's very personal . . ."
Anyway, My Propeller. Perched on a banquette, Chung responded to the song's being broadcast by enthusiastically rotating her head, ponytail swinging. "Coax me out my low and have a spin on my propeller," the song goes, "my propeller won't spin and I can't get it started on my own/ when are you arriving?" Is this an uncharacteristically sexual lyric from the young maestro of kitchen sink/sink estate realism?
"Absolutely not," Turner says, becoming almost animated. "If that was a euphemism, then I wouldn't be saying that my propeller wouldn't spin — 'cos you wouldn't wanna go shouting that out, would you?"
"I can't get a hard-on," pipes up the bass player Nick O'Malley, 24, who's perched on the edge of the sofa next to him.
"Ha-ha, youknowwhatImean?" Turner laughs in agreement. "And even if I'd sorta brung meself to be that ... lubricious," he says, savouring the word, "I'd make it spin, wouldn't I?"
So what is it really about?
"It's more describing a mood more than an organ. A descent. It's about a descent." And no, he won't elaborate further.
At the Highline show in New York, Arctic Monkeys began the set with the at-the-time-unheard Pretty Visitors, a rootling, tootling bit of fairground gothica. It was a challenging way to open the show. P Diddy, the new best mate of the drummer Matt Helders, 23, was at the front, thrashing around dancing, before being wrongfooted by the crooner ambience of Cornerstone. "Yeah, he were in full attack mode," O'Malley chuckles, "then we pulled out a softy." No, Diddy didn't quite get Cornerstone. "He's not alone there," Turner mutters.
All of this underlines something that Homme has said, that after two albums of high-octane indie-rock on their third album Arctic Monkeys were "looking for the weird". Do they agree? Turner pauses for even longer than normal before replying.
"We definitely wanted to go away this time, and take a bit more time with it. In the past we've been opposed to the ideas of producers or whatever," he says. "We were reluctant to let anyone in. But I guess just through doing it a bit longer, through being more confident with it or something . . ."
This confidence led them, at Homme's urging, to take a trip to The Integratron, a so-called "rejuvenation machine" built in the Mojave desert by George Van Tassel, where they recorded "a blueprint" for the album track Secret Door. "It were definitely a strange environment," Turner says. "Not in a bad way, just, 'Why don't you take your shoes off and climb up this little ladder through this hatch . . .' And you can sorta hear everyone's voices from the other side of the room, just the way the sound bounces round. So it was pretty interesting."
Finally, there's a third topic to clear up. The hair. Arctic Monkeys, previously the tidy, trim, unassuming, short-back-and-sides Mod-squad of modern inner-city Britain, now have rock-star manes. Even Helders, sports-casual smart, is growing some kind of fuzzy afro.
"My mum prefers it to when I had a shaved head," Turner says of the flowing follicular explosion that makes him seem even more slight, more elfin. "But she'd like a medium length." This only child's father — like his mother, a teacher (she teaches German, he teaches music) — has always sported a slightly grown-out look. "Me dad's hair was never this length, but it's always been too long for me mum. But it's got to the point now where she's stopped saying to me, 'Are you gonna get it cut?' Now she's like, 'Just use this . . .' "
Conditioner?
"Nah, only kidding," Turner says, a little too hastily. Then, recovering quickly, "That's Cookie that says that. He's like, 'Use this, this is what you want'. He's sh1t-hot with product. He's got some inside information," he winks, an apparent reference to the guitarist's girlfriend, a former glamour model who now works as a make-up artist.
The hair, though, has attracted much debate in the blogosphere and music press. What does it mean?
"I'm not sure the hair is a signifier of any kind," Richard Ayoade says when we speak on the phone a few days after Liverpool. The star of TV's The IT Crowd-turneddirector has made three videos with Arctic Monkeys, including the concert video Arctic Monkeys at the Apollo. "It seems like everyone's gone back to the Fifties, where people are berating people for having long hair. I don't know how much analysis the hair bears."
It's obvious, surely? It's a visual representation of Arctic Monkeys' new rock'n'roll attitude. Onstage, it allows them to headbang more effectively. "Ay, we were just discussing that," Cook nods, beer in hand, when I corner him at the aftershow party several hours later.
What was the conclusion? He smiles and shrugs. There wasn't one.
They're a funny bunch, Arctic Monkeys. I spent three months with them in late 2005, during the period when Dancefloor crashed into the charts at No 1 with such a furore that they were featured, much to their bewilderment, on Sky News and in The Economist. I spent a similar period with them in 2007, yet when I meet them in Liverpool it's as if we've never met before.
Their languid indifference and none-more-cool "greeting" could easily be interpreted as rudeness. Turner, the Brooklyn-dwelling half of a "celebrity couple" and studiedly aloof, is himself now suggestive of the local phonies he berated in an early song, Fake Tales from San Francisco, "you're not from New York City you're from Rotherham".
Except he isn't, and they're not. It's just the way they are. As it always was with Arctic Monkeys, put them on the spot with a tape-recorder or a camera and the gears jam up; stop attempting to record their thoughts and likenesses and they revert to being the jokey, tight-knit bunch of mates from school. As demonstrated by the busy aftershow party, these extraordinarily ordinary lads are at their most comfortable with the gang they've known since their early days. Turner may have shipped out but O'Malley, Cook and Helders all still live in Sheffield, with Cook still turning out for his pub Sunday league football team.
Ayoade says we shouldn't be fooled by the poker faces. "They're not miserable, they don't take themselves too seriously." After all, they did dress up as Village People, the cast of The Wizard of Oz and English country gents to accept their three Brit Awards in 2007 and 2008 (to go with the two they won in 2006). "I think it's impossible for someone to be that good if they don't have a sense of humour. No, I can't think of any particular non-follicle-based change."
But there is. That night the packed Liverpool Echo Arena audience sloshes around on a sea of lager as the fans go bananas for early songs such as When the Sun Goes Down and Fluorescent Adolescent, then go to the toilets during the slower new songs. The ever-restless Monkeys — in less than half a decade, four albums, a couple of EPs, a short film, umpteen B-sides — are moving forward, fast, still. Not all of their fans will be able to keep up. One suspects that Turner isn't entirely unhappy about this. Unlike Oasis and Robbie Williams, he isn't aiming for Knebworth.
Arctic Monkeys are touring until March next year. Then, Turner thinks, they'll record another album straight away. Would he consider writing about recessionary Britain, about the prospect of life under a Tory government?
He squirms a little. "I like the idea that someone would do that ... well. It's a tricky one, though, isn't it? 'Cos while our first album certainly is, or was, socially relevant in the sense that it was an observation of what was going on in town, it never — to me at least, writing it then — felt like it'd ever go out of town. So you're almost taking a different approach to do that now, knowing that it . . ." He tails off, discomfited at the thought of talking about his songs reaching a global audience. "Most of 'em songs were written to make me friends laugh. The little punchlines in them were designed for a group of mates."
And then, without him asking for it, those Sheffield mates became the whole country. As if by magic, Turner — according to countless media commentaries — was the spokesman for a generation.
"I suppose," he muses, "they don't say that too much any more."
A pale smile, and something like relief, flickers on his face.
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minnie
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