Interview with Alex from a Norwegian paper.
He's Englands biggest rock star. He's drunk. And it's just past 10 AM.
- Ehh.. it was... how do I put this.. I don't know how to compare it, beacuse.. it's... well, different.
Alex Turner is the lead singer of Arctic Monkeys, Britain's most selling pop group of the last few years. After recordsales of his last two albums, Turner has now made another album, his third in three years. This time under the name The Last Shadow Puppets with his friend Miles Kane from the Rascals. The Age Of The Understatement, a great record that sounds completely different from Arctic Monkeys' funky indierock.
The night before, Turner and The Last Shadow Puppets performed with a huge string orchestra for the first time. He obviously celebrated it quite a lot, because when Dagsavisen [who is doing the interview] calls the morning after, there's a.. ehm... refreshed Turner sitting in the other line and mumbling almost unaudible answers to hopefull questions. Like how it was to play live with a full orchestra compared to playing live with Arctic Monkeys. The quote at the beginning was pretty much all we could catch from the answer. In addition to:
- It was great! Did you see it on TV?
No, Alex. It hasn't been aired yet. It was recorded for a famous show that's been aired every Friday on BBC for 15 years, and today's Thursday, we think, and senses that this interview can be a trial for both parts.
But Turner has certainly deserved a party, the record that comes out on Monday, Age Of The Understatement, is both impressive and almost shockingly different. It sounds like the music of an early James Bond-movie, and feels like sitting in a timemachine back to a kind of pre-rock-era.
- we listened a lot to records from that era: Scott Walker, early David Bowie: It was there it came from. The dramatic about it was so far away from we had done before, explains Alex Turner, here in a strongly edited summary of the conversation, with long pauses, follow-up questions and mumbling removed to make it easier for the reader.
The hope for this interview fades quickly, but we sense a bit og light in the darkness when we ask who is on the cover of the album - a black & white swingin' sixties kind of pin-up girl.
- It's Gill! She's from a book, Five Girls by Sam Hoskins! It just... like... seemed right! It was like.. we want a girl on the cover! And she looked like one of the characters from the songs. I liked that! Turner says, lively now. He talks with that known, drunken variation in volume, from quiet whispering to yelling in the same sentence.
- It was my friend - BARRY! - who had the book and showed it to me. And I was JUST LIKE WOW! He brought the book to a schrmfdsg mumblemumble.
Turner is out again. The entire way he's been interested in the name Erik [Bernt Erik Pedersen is the name of the journalist]. Almost in the middle of a sentence Turner asks:
- Are you flat?
- Ehm, excuse me?
- Are you flat, Erik?
After a brief pause, I understand that Turner is thinking about Flat Eric, the hit with Mr. Oizo a decade ago, the one with the video where an old yellow doll nods to the rythm of a technotrack.
- Flat Eric, right! Haha. Good one. No, I'm threedimentional, we answer. Turner keeps rambling on about Flat Eric, and we both agree it's quite a song, until Dagsavisen notes that it is actually Turner who's the doll - The Last Shadow Puppets.
- Yeah, you're right about that actually. How ironic, he says. And explains, after a question on the choice of name, that another friend of theirs were making shadow puppets, and that he, well something we didn't understand, that Turner thought was funny.
- We were going to call ourselves Turner and Kane, but it seemed too serious, and we agree that Turner and Kane sounds like a detective TV show.
At least he manages to say that The Last Shadow Puppets are going to tour this fall.
- In October, with full orchestra! It'll be great!
When are Arctic Monkeys coming back?
Probably next year. But on rollerskates. Yeah. We'll be back on rollerskates. Definately.
Well, this is good. Now that everything has fallen apart we might just talk about what we really wanted to talk about, but that's probably a bit to obscene for a bigger, Norwegian audience, and that is quite a long story. But now that everything has fallen to pieces anyway: Arctic Monkeys accepting speech at the Brit Awards this winter. A big moment in rock.
Much of the award show was made like a lot of selfappreciating around the talent school Brit School in London, that in the past few years have brought out Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Adele, The Kooks and more. It's far away from Arctic Monkeys both geograficly and socially - they come from Sheffield, are unsnobby, and Alex Turner has been marked as one of the centurys best portrayer of unhip british everydaylife, all on an accent "so thick it could cut steel" as Tony Wilson said. Far away from London's showbiz that Turner is known for keeping away from.
They have ditched the Brits before, but this time they showed up and accepted the award for best album. Dressed in foxhuntingcostumes, with horn and everything, pretty refreshing. Alex Turner took the mike, and with a false overclass accent he started greeting "all his friends from the Brit School" - just in front of the stage there was a whole bunsch of Brits-students who the entire night screamed loud every time the words "The Brit School" were mentioned. "Ah, the Brits School. We all went to the Brits School. We had some wonderful years there. Look over there, there's McKenzie, he's glowing tonight.", Turner said. It was a brilliant moment of subtil sosial satire around class and British elitethinking. Turner drove it so far that one of his bandmates had to take the mike and say that they weren't making fun of anyone (er, we're not taking t'piss!).
- It was a great speech you held at the Brit Awards, we say.
- Thankyou very much, glad you liked it.
- But why were you wearing those clothes?
- Er.. I don't know.. It was something we had wanted to do for a long time, and it seemed like a fitting event to put the idea out to life.
- Were you making fun of the whole thing?
- No, I don't think so, not really. We were grateful. Very grateful.
- What do you think about the Brits School?
- What I think? Well, I... no, I don't want to answer that, Turner says laughing. Because despite all the mess there is something disarming about Turner that makes us laugh with him, and that makes Turner get away with being drunk and disgusting on TV and drunk and stupid on the phone.
And when the lady from the record company breaks in on the line with "alright, you've got time for one last question", Dagsavisen answers:
- No, it's fine. It's probably enough now.
they work well together
