Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
This band has no press
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Maybe youre about to read this and find out about a band called Arctic Monkeys. Or maybe you already know more about them than 1,000 words could ever convey. Maybe you downloaded their songs months before record companies cared and maybe you were grabbed by the sudden urge to drive for half a day just to see them play. Maybe you picked up one of the demos they handed out at early gigs, memorised every word and bellowed them back at them during their next gig. Maybe you were one of the kids whos taken up surfing across Monkeys crowds as a full-time hobby. And maybe youve also ended up with a permanent monitor-related injury because of it.
Because unless your definition of success rests on how many private yachts you can afford, Arctic Monkeys were already massive way before they inked a deal with Domino in June 2005. People obsessing over the songs? Sold-out gigs full of stage-diving nutcases? Hardcore fans pressed up against venue windows, just hoping to catch a glimpse? Such checkpoints have all been ticked.
Whats happened has been proper hysterical, grins lead singer/guitarist Alex Turner, acknowledging the hurricane of hero worship his band have been swept up by in the last few months. If I say phenomenon it sounds like Im right up my own arse, but wed be daft to act like we didnt realise how incredible the last years been. When it all started we were like fucking hell, whats going off here?
Of course, it was guitars that started it all: two of them, given to Alex and Jamie Cook as Xmas presents just three years ago. The pair began practising furiously some might say competitively - before Andy Nicholson (bass) and Matt Helders (drums) joined the throng.
The boys may share a love of The Smiths, The Clash and The Jam (and sure, Jamie may boast a healthy passion for Oasis, System Of A Down and Queens Of The Stone Age) but in no way were The Monkeys ready to simply regurgitate the well-trodden Brit-rock path. Rather, they spent their school days listening to Roots Manuva, Braintax and other stuff on [UK hip hop label] Low-Life, not to mention Lyricist Lounge compilations and Rawkus Records cuts like Pharaoh Monch. Another unique influence was Mancunian poet John Cooper Clarke, who Alex is a huge recent fan of.
Hes this dead skinny guy with big mad hair, red tinted glasses and drainpipe jeans, a proper character, raves Alex. Everyone tells us weve got a shit band name but he was like Thats great! Theres no trees in the arctic! How would it survive? He painted this picture instantly, a real creative mind!
Hence the razor-sharp lyricism that fuels songs like A Certain Romance, a witty observation of small-town life where theres only music so that theres new ringtones and where going out could sometimes mean having a pool cue wrapped around your head. Elsewhere, there were grim tales of girls whod ended up on the streets (She dont do major credit cards, I doubt she does receipts Sun Goes Down) and glorious swipes at the rocknroll clones that arose on the back of the great garage rock boom of 2002 (Yeah Id like to tell you all my problems/Youre not from New York City, youre from Rotherham Fake Tales Of San Francisco).
This was life in satellite-town England, as cutting and observant as anything youd hear from Mike Skinner. But it wasnt always like that.
Lyrics were a dark patch, admits Alex. Nobody wanted to admit they wrote them so we kept trying other singers so theyd do it for us. But I'd secretly been writing since school and I enjoyed it. I just never told anyone because I didnt want to have piss took out of me!
Even with their poetic obstacles overcome, it was a year before the Monkeys dared venture onto a stage. Why? It had to be perfect. And by the time they played their first gig at The Grapes in Sheffield, it was. People went berserk and the band walked offstage thinking they might just be onto something. A few gigs later and they found themselves playing Sheffield Forum, in front of a crowd who knew words that Alex hadnt learnt properly yet. They couldnt understand it, but there was a reason their fan base had been swelling: the demos theyd been handing out for nowt at gigs in true DIY punka style.
I used to work in a bar at venues and it really annoyed me when bands would say Weve got CDs for sale at the back, three pound each, says Alex. Youd think Fuck off, who do you think you are? We had this one time where people were literally running up to the stage clambering for these demos, a right frenzy, and we were thinking Fucking hell this is cool.
With demos doing the rounds, across the web and at gigs, bizarre things started happening. Bizarre things like turning up for gigs in Wakefield to be greeted by hardcore Monkeys fans whod driven from places as far away as Aberdeen. And when the band played the Boardwalk at the start of this year they were greeted with the entire crowd singing the lyri
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