Q&A: Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys
Ah, 2006. Osama bin Laden was settling into his million-dollar compound, Lindsay Lohan was still a star, and the idea that a young band could gain a massive following by posting their “mp3s” on the Internet was novel. The media and music industry latched on to Sheffield, England’s Arctic Monkeys as the key group of the new networking. Their debut,
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, became the fastest-selling British debut of all time. Although their Oasis-style American invasion never happened, they remain superstars in England. Front man Alex Turner’s romantic-pop side project (2007’s
the Last Shadow Puppets) and a left-field third album recorded with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme (2009’s
Humbug) allowed the band to make peace with their ultra-hyped debut. Their new
Suck It and See is a welcome return to sharp, shimmering Britpop that originally placed them as reluctant heroes. Here Turner discusses his career, fame, and moving to New York City.
Marc Spitz: It’s been five years since your New York City debut?
Alex Turner: That’s right. We came over and did a Mercury Lounge show and then added a Bowery Ballroom show.
Because of the frenzied interest. I was one of the journalists there with his arms folded, waiting to see . . .
. . . If it was all it was cracked up to be?
Yes, but I can’t imagine being on your end of that.
It was a weird time. I remember being really excited about going to New York, and it didn’t disappoint. From that very first time I’ve always had a thing for that city.
And then you moved here.
My girlfriend [former MTV presenter Alexa Chung] was offered a job here a couple of years ago, which gave us the impetus to go. I wrote most of the songs for the new album here.
Did you find yourself writing at home or picking up ideas while walking around?
I usually sit around with the guitar in reach and grab it when I get an idea. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, and sometimes it lasts all day. I think New York is a good place to write in general because it’s a grid. It’s organized. You know where you are on the map. That centers you and your imagination is perhaps freer to roam.
I think that’s one of the unsung reasons why so many people can create here, the math.
Obviously there’s chaos if you want it, too.
Any chaos you find in New York can’t compare to England, where the Arctic Monkeys are so much bigger. I don’t think Americans can appreciate how famous you are in the U.K.
It’s quite different. I love playing big festivals and I love that we made a record that got that response from anybody—I’m sort of proud of that first record now.
You weren’t proud of it?
Those were the first 13 songs I ever wrote. I’m bound to be critical of them. I went back and listened to it for the first time in five years.
You hadn’t heard it since 2006?
Not in its entirety, just the odd song here and there.
You made a record with Josh Homme that felt self-consciously different than the sound of the first two.
That record is as important, if not more so, on our journey of getting to where we are right now.
The new album [Suck It and See] has elements of the last record but comes back to the first two as well. People are writing about this record as your return to form, and in only five years. It used to take bands 15 years to do that.
But it feels very natural that we would put out this much music. I don’t know—maybe we’ll talk a longer while off after this record.
Five years ago, you were also the “MySpace band.” That’s what the press embraced as well, how you got huge through file sharing and social networking. Which is now, of course, just second nature to every band, big and small.
That’s sort of a misconception. All we did is kind of write songs and play shows, and hand out a couple of discs. Other people spread them around. We never orchestrated any of that. I’m still not that savvy.
It's definitely taking some warming up. I guess I don't mind the poppy tempos so much, but I wish he had let Alex actually write lyrics for his songs... (Blaming James Ford, unjustly, perhaps.)
I would have been really surprised if he didn't write the songs himself!
I'm jealous. And can't wait to hear the Monkeys version of Piledriver.
