Arctic Monkeys
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Interview from timesonline.co.uk
Hey, hey it's the Arctic Monkeys
In two years Arctic Monkeys have gone from obscurity to headlining Glastonbury and selling 3.5 million albums – how are these four young men from Sheffield adjusting to life as pop megastars?
Sometimes, even now, Arctic Monkeys are surprised by their own bigness. When their tour bus pulled into Malahide, a few miles outside Dublin, Jamie Cook, the band’s guitarist, looked up from his PlayStation game to see 250 acres of parkland in the grounds of a stately home, ringed by newly erected fences and dotted with tents.
A small army of gardai, vendors, security guards and stage riggers were working away. There were impressive backstage facilities (comfortable dressing rooms, drinking patio, top catering) both for the headline artists and for their personally chosen support acts, the Coral and Supergrass – two older, more experienced bands that the four young schoolmates from Sheffield had been inspired by.
Over two nights, 26,000 Arctic Monkeys fans would fill this space. “F***ing hell,” said Cook. All this industry and organisation, just for them. “That’s a bit weird.” Drummer Matt Helders said his dad, over from Sheffield to see his son perform, was equally bewildered by the spectacle of “all these people, working ’cause of you”. “My dad wanted me to try and kick one of them out or summat,” said Helders with a grin. That was a joke, obviously. No Arctic Monkey would dream of being so impolite, far less of pulling a rock star strop, even if they have sold 3.5 million albums in fewer than two years.
The band were kicking off a run of big summer shows that would take them all over Europe. In April they had put out their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare: the fastest-selling album of the year so far, and the quick-smart follow-up to Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, itself the fastest-selling debut album ever and winner of two Brit Awards and of the 2006 Mercury Music Prize. The second album has now also been nominated for the Mercury Prize – making Arctic Monkeys the first band to be nominated again the year after winning it – and its release was accompanied by sell-out indoor shows in the UK, European dates and an American tour. Now they were stepping up a gear with prestigious headline appearances at the Glastonbury and T In the Park festivals.
At 8.48pm on the Sunday night, the stage lights dimmed and the Malahide crowd roared. Someone dressed in a full Spider-Man costume sauntered in from the wings. The crowd kept roaring. It was Helders (his bandmates, in their broad Yorkshire accents, also call him by his surname). He was followed by 22-year-old Cook (“Cookie”), bass player Nick O’Malley (“Malley”), 22, and lastly, the boyish figure of singer and songwriter Alex Turner (“Al”). Like Helders, he’s 21.
Arctic Monkeys launched with ferocity into The View from the Afternoon. They barely let up for the next 80 minutes. No fancy lights or stage set. Just huge, singalong songs. The crowd lustily accompanied them, even singing some of the band’s signature guitar riffs.
Afterwards, Arctic Monkeys and some family members stood outside their Portakabin dressing rooms, quietly drinking beer. Why had Helders worn the Spider-Man costume? “I dunno,” he shrugged. “It were in me case, ’cause someone got me it for me birthday.”
“Malley was like, ‘Go on, wear it…’” continued Turner. “Then we just hatched a plan. We love owt like that, confusing people.”
Arctic Monkeys are not like other bands. Not just because they have enjoyed unprecedented levels of success in the short time since I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor crashed into the British singles charts at number one in October 2005. And certainly not because, as popular lore has it, they were the first band to benefit from their fans sharing demos of their songs via the internet.
They’re different because, as Alex Turner said, they like confusing people: they chose not to attend the Brit Awards ceremony earlier this year, but filmed two acceptance speeches in which they dressed like the cast of The Wizard of Oz and members of Village People. Appearing on Jonathan Ross’s BBC TV show the other Friday to promote their single, Fluorescent Adolescent, they wore clown costumes, a reference to the video for the single. Yet they still refuse to take up most of the offers of exposure – magazine cover shoots and the like – that come their way.
They’re different too because they don’t like doing interviews. Really don’t like doing interviews. This story has taken the best part of a year to set up. When you do eventually get to stick a tape recorder in front of them, Arctic Monkeys clam up. Sentences begin, then peter out. Turner, so literate and perceptive in his lyrics, is tongue-tied and often inarticulate when questioned directly.
Ask them, for example, what countries they’ve enjoyed touring and the singer rejoins: “I still don’t feel like we’re sorta like… professionals. We haven’t really done that much really.”
Hey, hey it's the Arctic Monkeys
In two years Arctic Monkeys have gone from obscurity to headlining Glastonbury and selling 3.5 million albums – how are these four young men from Sheffield adjusting to life as pop megastars?
Sometimes, even now, Arctic Monkeys are surprised by their own bigness. When their tour bus pulled into Malahide, a few miles outside Dublin, Jamie Cook, the band’s guitarist, looked up from his PlayStation game to see 250 acres of parkland in the grounds of a stately home, ringed by newly erected fences and dotted with tents.
A small army of gardai, vendors, security guards and stage riggers were working away. There were impressive backstage facilities (comfortable dressing rooms, drinking patio, top catering) both for the headline artists and for their personally chosen support acts, the Coral and Supergrass – two older, more experienced bands that the four young schoolmates from Sheffield had been inspired by.
Over two nights, 26,000 Arctic Monkeys fans would fill this space. “F***ing hell,” said Cook. All this industry and organisation, just for them. “That’s a bit weird.” Drummer Matt Helders said his dad, over from Sheffield to see his son perform, was equally bewildered by the spectacle of “all these people, working ’cause of you”. “My dad wanted me to try and kick one of them out or summat,” said Helders with a grin. That was a joke, obviously. No Arctic Monkey would dream of being so impolite, far less of pulling a rock star strop, even if they have sold 3.5 million albums in fewer than two years.
The band were kicking off a run of big summer shows that would take them all over Europe. In April they had put out their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare: the fastest-selling album of the year so far, and the quick-smart follow-up to Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, itself the fastest-selling debut album ever and winner of two Brit Awards and of the 2006 Mercury Music Prize. The second album has now also been nominated for the Mercury Prize – making Arctic Monkeys the first band to be nominated again the year after winning it – and its release was accompanied by sell-out indoor shows in the UK, European dates and an American tour. Now they were stepping up a gear with prestigious headline appearances at the Glastonbury and T In the Park festivals.
At 8.48pm on the Sunday night, the stage lights dimmed and the Malahide crowd roared. Someone dressed in a full Spider-Man costume sauntered in from the wings. The crowd kept roaring. It was Helders (his bandmates, in their broad Yorkshire accents, also call him by his surname). He was followed by 22-year-old Cook (“Cookie”), bass player Nick O’Malley (“Malley”), 22, and lastly, the boyish figure of singer and songwriter Alex Turner (“Al”). Like Helders, he’s 21.
Arctic Monkeys launched with ferocity into The View from the Afternoon. They barely let up for the next 80 minutes. No fancy lights or stage set. Just huge, singalong songs. The crowd lustily accompanied them, even singing some of the band’s signature guitar riffs.
Afterwards, Arctic Monkeys and some family members stood outside their Portakabin dressing rooms, quietly drinking beer. Why had Helders worn the Spider-Man costume? “I dunno,” he shrugged. “It were in me case, ’cause someone got me it for me birthday.”
“Malley was like, ‘Go on, wear it…’” continued Turner. “Then we just hatched a plan. We love owt like that, confusing people.”
Arctic Monkeys are not like other bands. Not just because they have enjoyed unprecedented levels of success in the short time since I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor crashed into the British singles charts at number one in October 2005. And certainly not because, as popular lore has it, they were the first band to benefit from their fans sharing demos of their songs via the internet.
They’re different because, as Alex Turner said, they like confusing people: they chose not to attend the Brit Awards ceremony earlier this year, but filmed two acceptance speeches in which they dressed like the cast of The Wizard of Oz and members of Village People. Appearing on Jonathan Ross’s BBC TV show the other Friday to promote their single, Fluorescent Adolescent, they wore clown costumes, a reference to the video for the single. Yet they still refuse to take up most of the offers of exposure – magazine cover shoots and the like – that come their way.
They’re different too because they don’t like doing interviews. Really don’t like doing interviews. This story has taken the best part of a year to set up. When you do eventually get to stick a tape recorder in front of them, Arctic Monkeys clam up. Sentences begin, then peter out. Turner, so literate and perceptive in his lyrics, is tongue-tied and often inarticulate when questioned directly.
Ask them, for example, what countries they’ve enjoyed touring and the singer rejoins: “I still don’t feel like we’re sorta like… professionals. We haven’t really done that much really.”
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Diamond Star
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^cont...
Meanwhile, every time that Turner – writer of brilliant pop vignettes about (on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not) nights out and nights in and flirting and taxi rides, and (on Favourite Worst Nightmare) strippers and romance and ageing women and nutters he met on tour in Tokyo – gets dubbed “spokesman for a generation”, or compared to Morrissey/Paul Weller/Jarvis Cocker, he withdraws a little further. He doesn’t write songs to impress the world. They didn’t form a band to conquer it. Ask the frontman to describe what, to him, is success, and after a long pause all he can come up with is: “Don’t know really. Just want to make more records.”
On the other hand, contrary to belief, Arctic Monkeys are not sullen, truculent youths. They’re funny and welcoming. It’s about doing things their way, in a manner they feel comfortable with.
I followed them around for a couple of months in the autumn of 2005, as they progressed from small club shows in the UK to bigger gigs supporting Franz Ferdinand in Europe. And then I did it again as they consolidated their position as Britain’s biggest and most exciting young band.
As well as Malahide, we went to T in the Park in Perthshire, the International Arena in Cardiff, Stadtpark in Hamburg and Glastonbury in Somerset. At the latter, Arctic Monkeys headlined on the main Pyramid Stage on the first day of the most famous rock festival in the world. Perhaps 100,000 people watched them.
As he talked to the crowd between songs, Turner’s was a strangely old-fashioned stage-banter, as if he was a northern club compere rather than the coolest kid in indie: “This is t’riffic”; “We’re all thrilled to be here”; “We hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves.” Plus, thanks to stage nerves, the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” countless times (much to his later mortification). Only briefly did Turner let something approaching swagger enter the frame. “And I heard that we didn’t have enough tunes to headline,” he muttered into his microphone.
None of the band had been to Glastonbury before; they hung around for most of the weekend, partying. At 4am, I saw Turner trudging through the mud to the distant Lost Vagueness area, a field with its own ballroom. He was dressed as a dinosaur, his face poking out from under the headpiece; Lily Allen had given him the costume (she cut about backstage dressed as a mushroom). At 6.30am I saw him coming back. Still dressed as a dinosaur.
He’d bumped into Chris McClure, one of the gang of close-knit Sheffield mates who are still a big part of the band’s day-to-day lives. Chris is the cover star of Whatever People Say I Am… and the brother of John McClure, the frontman of Reverend and the Makers. It was John who first encouraged 16-year-old Alex to form a band; the two have just got a flat together in Sheffield. “All us mates were there. We had a right good time,” said Turner later.
Arctic Monkeys themselves are a tight bunch, friends and equals even though Turner writes most of the songs. But he’s uncomfortable talking about the writing process when Helders, Cook and O’Malley are around. He doesn’t mind dressing up in public as the Scarecrow or a dinosaur, but he doesn’t want to sound like a knob.
After Glastonbury, Arctic Monkeys had driven on their tour bus to concert engagements in Sweden and Norway. Four days after leaving Somerset, they were in Germany. Alex Turner and I sat down to talk on the lip of the open-air stage at Hamburg’s Stadtpark. On his own, he’s still hesitant, but more forthcoming. When he struggles for words or is trying to convey something, he mimes playing a guitar. As if that’s the position in which he feels most comfortable.
You seem to take your music very seriously, I said to him.
“Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.”
Has he always been a serious-minded person? “I don’t know. I’ve always liked making tunes. From the age of 16, 17, after I got me guitar, if I had a spare minute that’s what I’d feel comfortable doing. Ever since I started doing words with the band – ever since I got into it actually meaning something – I’ve felt like it’s just a good thing to do. I were writing a bit last night, when I got in. Had the guitar out. It’s a way you can sneak out how you feel.”
Turner is the only child of a German teacher mother and a music teacher father. Yet for all his parents’ erudition, their son doesn’t want to be seen to be too much of a clever-clogs, or arrogant. As he pointed out, he’s only young and has a lot to learn. So when people compare him to Alan Bennett, it’s almost an embarrassment. “Yeah. People go, ‘Oh, you’d be into him.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I probably would – but gies a chance!’” He agreed to the suggestion that he got his interest in language and his attention to musical detail directly from his folks. But even that admission came over as something like a revelation to him.
“I only realised that not long back,” he said. “Me mum, not only is she like a linguist or whatever, but she’s always fascinated by words that mean summat. She’s a big one for underlining things in books. For me birthday she gave me this book with all little things that she’d written down out of books. She’s good like that. I’ll be like, ‘What does this word mean?’, and she can tell me.”
Would he like to go to university? “There’s a thought. Dunno. Maybe. I’d love to proper know about summat. I struggle wi’ reading a bit sometimes. I’ve got a couple of books in my bag but I haven’t looked at them for ages. At the moment it seems like there’s no time to do owt. I haven’t even really writ [sic] a tune for a couple of weeks. Wi’ Glastonbury and all that, it’s just a bit…” Turner sighed. “It seems like there’s always something else.”
We talked about Fluorescent Adolescent. The writing of it is co-credited to Johanna Bennett, his ex-girlfriend (he’s currently single). Bennett is the girl he’s pining for in 505, a song written on a train from Philadelphia and Favourite Worst Nightmare’s most affecting moment. Fluorescent Adolescent is the evocative story of an older woman who “used to get it in your fishnets, now you only get it in your nightdress”. Its roots lie in a Mediterranean holiday he and Bennett took. They were reminiscing about characters they knew at school. “It started off as a joke,” he recalled. “Then it were like, ‘Here’s another verse.’ We were having a laugh.” When I suggested that his co-crediting her was very generous – she’ll receive considerable songwriting royalties over the years – he replied, “Some of the lines were hers. I couldn’t have not credited her. It’s just right, really.”
Fluorescent Adolescent’s subject matter is typical of the broader frame of reference on Favourite Worst Nightmare. Did Turner want to move on from the nights-out-in-Sheffield realism of the first album?
“Definitely,” he nodded. “It’s almost like you’re zooming out a bit. Which is kind of natural, really. Even if I’d still been in Sheffield and that first album had been dead small, I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it again. I think we achieved that in them 12, 13 songs; it almost were a bit conceptual. Is that the right word? It were a day, a weekend. There’d be no point in doing that again. Even though perhaps you still do a lot of them similar things in different arenas, you have a different slant on it now. It’s a bit more like… skewed.”
Next stop, after a hefty overnight drive, Belgium. And then… Another week, another country, another festival, another headline slot, this time at T in the Park. As the sun went down on one more ecstatically received mega-gig, life was good for Arctic Monkeys. They stood at the side of the stage to watch the Coral. They had palled about backstage with a very drunk Lily Allen. Jamie Cook proudly showed off his new motorbike-style jacket, an unsolicited gift from Barbour. He couldn’t believe his luck. The band were enjoying themselves immensely. Which is not, if truth be told, the impression you get from many hard-working, multi-million-selling rock bands.
Later that night, the band commandeered the artists’ bar for a karaoke party to celebrate Cook and O’Malley’s birthdays. They were in hysterics as members of the Coral massacred Presley and Sinatra songs. Alex Turner was sitting outside on a bench in the gloom, legs entwined with comely Channel 4 Popworld presenter Alexa Chung.
Back in Cardiff, Arctic Monkeys had used their soundcheck to practise their “surprise” song for Glastonbury: a cover of Diamonds Are Forever, a nod to Dame Shirley Bassey, who was also on the festival bill. Later in the evening they would get drunk with their good mates from that day’s support bands, Reverend and the Makers and the Rascals (Turner has co-authored an entire album’s worth of new material with the Rascals’ Miles Kane; they plan to record it during a “holiday” in northern France next month). But, pre-show, they were pensive. Success is still bewildering, and often an embarrassment.
“It’s a bit weird sometimes,” said Cook. “I came in here this morning and asked if they had any proper cups instead of polystyrene ones for a cup of tea. And the women said, ‘I’ll send a runner out to get some!’ I was like, ‘Nah, it’s all right, we’ll use polystyrene ones.’”
Turner: “Or you get someone holding a door for you.”
Helders: “Carrying your bags!”
I asked them what they missed of their lives “before”. They took a while to reply. But eventually: “Sunday league football,” said Cook. “I don’t get a game now because I’m away all the time.”
“Family and friends,” said Matt Helders. “But no more than if you went to university or summat.”
“Being two years younger,” said O’Malley.
“I don’t know really,” said Turner, his eyes wide, his bottom lip pensively pushed out. “I don’t think there’s much I miss.”
Meanwhile, every time that Turner – writer of brilliant pop vignettes about (on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not) nights out and nights in and flirting and taxi rides, and (on Favourite Worst Nightmare) strippers and romance and ageing women and nutters he met on tour in Tokyo – gets dubbed “spokesman for a generation”, or compared to Morrissey/Paul Weller/Jarvis Cocker, he withdraws a little further. He doesn’t write songs to impress the world. They didn’t form a band to conquer it. Ask the frontman to describe what, to him, is success, and after a long pause all he can come up with is: “Don’t know really. Just want to make more records.”
On the other hand, contrary to belief, Arctic Monkeys are not sullen, truculent youths. They’re funny and welcoming. It’s about doing things their way, in a manner they feel comfortable with.
I followed them around for a couple of months in the autumn of 2005, as they progressed from small club shows in the UK to bigger gigs supporting Franz Ferdinand in Europe. And then I did it again as they consolidated their position as Britain’s biggest and most exciting young band.
As well as Malahide, we went to T in the Park in Perthshire, the International Arena in Cardiff, Stadtpark in Hamburg and Glastonbury in Somerset. At the latter, Arctic Monkeys headlined on the main Pyramid Stage on the first day of the most famous rock festival in the world. Perhaps 100,000 people watched them.
As he talked to the crowd between songs, Turner’s was a strangely old-fashioned stage-banter, as if he was a northern club compere rather than the coolest kid in indie: “This is t’riffic”; “We’re all thrilled to be here”; “We hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves.” Plus, thanks to stage nerves, the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” countless times (much to his later mortification). Only briefly did Turner let something approaching swagger enter the frame. “And I heard that we didn’t have enough tunes to headline,” he muttered into his microphone.
None of the band had been to Glastonbury before; they hung around for most of the weekend, partying. At 4am, I saw Turner trudging through the mud to the distant Lost Vagueness area, a field with its own ballroom. He was dressed as a dinosaur, his face poking out from under the headpiece; Lily Allen had given him the costume (she cut about backstage dressed as a mushroom). At 6.30am I saw him coming back. Still dressed as a dinosaur.
He’d bumped into Chris McClure, one of the gang of close-knit Sheffield mates who are still a big part of the band’s day-to-day lives. Chris is the cover star of Whatever People Say I Am… and the brother of John McClure, the frontman of Reverend and the Makers. It was John who first encouraged 16-year-old Alex to form a band; the two have just got a flat together in Sheffield. “All us mates were there. We had a right good time,” said Turner later.
Arctic Monkeys themselves are a tight bunch, friends and equals even though Turner writes most of the songs. But he’s uncomfortable talking about the writing process when Helders, Cook and O’Malley are around. He doesn’t mind dressing up in public as the Scarecrow or a dinosaur, but he doesn’t want to sound like a knob.
After Glastonbury, Arctic Monkeys had driven on their tour bus to concert engagements in Sweden and Norway. Four days after leaving Somerset, they were in Germany. Alex Turner and I sat down to talk on the lip of the open-air stage at Hamburg’s Stadtpark. On his own, he’s still hesitant, but more forthcoming. When he struggles for words or is trying to convey something, he mimes playing a guitar. As if that’s the position in which he feels most comfortable.
You seem to take your music very seriously, I said to him.
“Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.”
Has he always been a serious-minded person? “I don’t know. I’ve always liked making tunes. From the age of 16, 17, after I got me guitar, if I had a spare minute that’s what I’d feel comfortable doing. Ever since I started doing words with the band – ever since I got into it actually meaning something – I’ve felt like it’s just a good thing to do. I were writing a bit last night, when I got in. Had the guitar out. It’s a way you can sneak out how you feel.”
Turner is the only child of a German teacher mother and a music teacher father. Yet for all his parents’ erudition, their son doesn’t want to be seen to be too much of a clever-clogs, or arrogant. As he pointed out, he’s only young and has a lot to learn. So when people compare him to Alan Bennett, it’s almost an embarrassment. “Yeah. People go, ‘Oh, you’d be into him.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I probably would – but gies a chance!’” He agreed to the suggestion that he got his interest in language and his attention to musical detail directly from his folks. But even that admission came over as something like a revelation to him.
“I only realised that not long back,” he said. “Me mum, not only is she like a linguist or whatever, but she’s always fascinated by words that mean summat. She’s a big one for underlining things in books. For me birthday she gave me this book with all little things that she’d written down out of books. She’s good like that. I’ll be like, ‘What does this word mean?’, and she can tell me.”
Would he like to go to university? “There’s a thought. Dunno. Maybe. I’d love to proper know about summat. I struggle wi’ reading a bit sometimes. I’ve got a couple of books in my bag but I haven’t looked at them for ages. At the moment it seems like there’s no time to do owt. I haven’t even really writ [sic] a tune for a couple of weeks. Wi’ Glastonbury and all that, it’s just a bit…” Turner sighed. “It seems like there’s always something else.”
We talked about Fluorescent Adolescent. The writing of it is co-credited to Johanna Bennett, his ex-girlfriend (he’s currently single). Bennett is the girl he’s pining for in 505, a song written on a train from Philadelphia and Favourite Worst Nightmare’s most affecting moment. Fluorescent Adolescent is the evocative story of an older woman who “used to get it in your fishnets, now you only get it in your nightdress”. Its roots lie in a Mediterranean holiday he and Bennett took. They were reminiscing about characters they knew at school. “It started off as a joke,” he recalled. “Then it were like, ‘Here’s another verse.’ We were having a laugh.” When I suggested that his co-crediting her was very generous – she’ll receive considerable songwriting royalties over the years – he replied, “Some of the lines were hers. I couldn’t have not credited her. It’s just right, really.”
Fluorescent Adolescent’s subject matter is typical of the broader frame of reference on Favourite Worst Nightmare. Did Turner want to move on from the nights-out-in-Sheffield realism of the first album?
“Definitely,” he nodded. “It’s almost like you’re zooming out a bit. Which is kind of natural, really. Even if I’d still been in Sheffield and that first album had been dead small, I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing it again. I think we achieved that in them 12, 13 songs; it almost were a bit conceptual. Is that the right word? It were a day, a weekend. There’d be no point in doing that again. Even though perhaps you still do a lot of them similar things in different arenas, you have a different slant on it now. It’s a bit more like… skewed.”
Next stop, after a hefty overnight drive, Belgium. And then… Another week, another country, another festival, another headline slot, this time at T in the Park. As the sun went down on one more ecstatically received mega-gig, life was good for Arctic Monkeys. They stood at the side of the stage to watch the Coral. They had palled about backstage with a very drunk Lily Allen. Jamie Cook proudly showed off his new motorbike-style jacket, an unsolicited gift from Barbour. He couldn’t believe his luck. The band were enjoying themselves immensely. Which is not, if truth be told, the impression you get from many hard-working, multi-million-selling rock bands.
Later that night, the band commandeered the artists’ bar for a karaoke party to celebrate Cook and O’Malley’s birthdays. They were in hysterics as members of the Coral massacred Presley and Sinatra songs. Alex Turner was sitting outside on a bench in the gloom, legs entwined with comely Channel 4 Popworld presenter Alexa Chung.
Back in Cardiff, Arctic Monkeys had used their soundcheck to practise their “surprise” song for Glastonbury: a cover of Diamonds Are Forever, a nod to Dame Shirley Bassey, who was also on the festival bill. Later in the evening they would get drunk with their good mates from that day’s support bands, Reverend and the Makers and the Rascals (Turner has co-authored an entire album’s worth of new material with the Rascals’ Miles Kane; they plan to record it during a “holiday” in northern France next month). But, pre-show, they were pensive. Success is still bewildering, and often an embarrassment.
“It’s a bit weird sometimes,” said Cook. “I came in here this morning and asked if they had any proper cups instead of polystyrene ones for a cup of tea. And the women said, ‘I’ll send a runner out to get some!’ I was like, ‘Nah, it’s all right, we’ll use polystyrene ones.’”
Turner: “Or you get someone holding a door for you.”
Helders: “Carrying your bags!”
I asked them what they missed of their lives “before”. They took a while to reply. But eventually: “Sunday league football,” said Cook. “I don’t get a game now because I’m away all the time.”
“Family and friends,” said Matt Helders. “But no more than if you went to university or summat.”
“Being two years younger,” said O’Malley.
“I don’t know really,” said Turner, his eyes wide, his bottom lip pensively pushed out. “I don’t think there’s much I miss.”
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That's so annoying! But just go, you'll have the best time, I promise
Some news
...Alex is bringing out an album, apart from the others, together with Miles Kane of the Rascals, really excited about that....
...doesn't mean there isn't going to be a 3th Monkeys album, though.
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Dohertysgirl
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I saw them in Roskilde and it was really good! It was about the only day it didn't rain, and they had a wonderful energy which made everybody incapable of standing still. Their new album is good, though the last one got me earlier than this one. Can't listen to it to work though, they claim it's too noisy..
Yes, Miles Kane playes lead guitar on 505, because Jamie can't play to save his life...
The only things that are known of this Turner/Kane project is that it is recorded as we speak in France, that James Ford will do the drumming, and that both Alex and Miles do vocals.
Also it will feature strings, and Miles said the songs are rather 'sad'.
But then again, they both shy away from talking to much about their music.
My guess is this will quite different from Monkey stuff, probably the stuff that alex couldn't get away with with Jamie, Matt and Nick...
The only things that are known of this Turner/Kane project is that it is recorded as we speak in France, that James Ford will do the drumming, and that both Alex and Miles do vocals.
Also it will feature strings, and Miles said the songs are rather 'sad'.
But then again, they both shy away from talking to much about their music.
My guess is this will quite different from Monkey stuff, probably the stuff that alex couldn't get away with with Jamie, Matt and Nick...
Yes, Miles Kane playes lead guitar on 505, because Jamie can't play to save his life...
Yeah, I too think it's going to sound quite different.. But I bet it'll be greatThe only things that are known of this Turner/Kane project is that it is recorded as we speak in France, that James Ford will do the drumming, and that both Alex and Miles do vocals.
Also it will feature strings, and Miles said the songs are rather 'sad'.
But then again, they both shy away from talking to much about their music.
My guess is this will quite different from Monkey stuff, probably the stuff that alex couldn't get away with with Jamie, Matt and Nick...
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DriversHigh
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im looking for a specific song/performance. the youtube video i saw of the performance had the boys dressed as clowns playing the song on a british variety show? i hope someone knows what im talking about
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