Monkeys see, monkeys do!

Alex Turner is a worried man. Since his band embarked on their latest North American tour six weeks ago, the Arctic Monkeys singer has developed an expensive habit, which he fears will get him chucked out of the family home he’s lived in for all of his 18 years, six months and four days.
So what are Mr. & Mrs. Turner going to be confronted with when he gets home to Sheffield? Drink? Drugs? A ‘My Underage Crack Ho Shame’ sexposé in The National Enquirer?
“I can’t stop buying bloody records,” Alex says forlornly. “Me Mum and Dad are always giving me a hard time about the junk I’ve got in my room, so when I arrive back with even more stuff, they’re going to go, ‘That’s it, sling yer' hook!’ ”
What’s been on the shopping list?
“A load of 45s by two singers who were on Atlantic, Barbara Lewis and Esther Phillips; a ‘50s barbershop album, Four Freshmen And Five Trombones, which is good ‘cause I’m on a bit of a melody buzz at the moment, and some stuff by The Walker Brothers, who me mate Miles from Little Flames got me into. Me two favourite songs at the moment are ‘Sheba’, which is by a 50s rock ‘n’ roll band called Johnny & The Hurricanes, and Scott Walker’s version of Jaques Brel’s ‘Jacky’ – them lyrics are pretty smart!
“I also picked up the first two Smiths albums ‘cause the ones I’ve been listening to belong to me driving instructor, and he needs ‘em back. The Johnny & The Hurricanes one I got in Seattle, and the others from this really cool shop in San Francisco, Amoeba Records.”
Whatever about books and covers, you can definitely judge a musician by their vinyl acquisitions. Although their second album – due in early 2007, kids – is unlikely to find the Arctic Monkeys embarking on a jazz odyssey, it’s clear talking to Turner backstage at Dallas’ Granada Theater that a life of indie orthodoxy is not for him. Indeed, while most people who’d sold 1.6 million copies of their debut album would still be patting themselves on the back, Alex recently described the likes of ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ as being “a bit crap.”
“I haven’t writ a tune for a couple of weeks ‘cause we had to rehearse a new bass-player to come out here with, but I’ve 12 or 13 sets of lyrics and riffs that I have very high hopes for. They’d be finished off now if somebody had been fucking organised enough to bring an acoustic guitar with us!”
Gary Lightbody has to have his heart broken into 16 pieces before the creative muse comes upon him – so what inspires Turner to write?
“Being hungover,” he reveals. “You’re there the morning or the afternoon after, feeling, y’know, a bit detached from things and your guard comes down. If not hungover, then immediately after something’s happened. A song’s far better if it’s a gut reaction rather than you calming down and realising that it mightn’t entirely be the other person’s fault.”
Yes, I’ve always felt that being able to see both sides of the argument is a much over-rated quality. Has getting his retaliation in first ever backfired on Alex?
“My ex-bird having people knock on her door looking for gossip was a bit shit ‘cause they wouldn’t have gone looking for her if she wasn’t in the songs. The option that leaves you with is to write about world peace or be sneakier with your references, which is what I’m going to do in future! You can be honest without hurting people.”
That’s a very commonsense point of view, compared to the soap opera world that Pete Doherty’s songwriting often reflects. However, not even Alex Turner’s outfit have escaped the cold winds of controversy over the past few months...
Just when it seemed that the Arctic Monkeys might be immune to the rigours of the music biz, word came through in May that bassist Andy Nicholson was “feeling a bit drained, a bit run-down”. The statement was accompanied by the shock revelation that Nicholson would be staying at home, while Alex, guitarist Jamie Cook and drummer Matthew Helders played arguably the most important gigs of their young career. While the management spin was that he’d be back in the fold for the band’s upcoming European festival dates – which include Oxegen – the vibe from Turner is far less positive.
“It was a bit out of the blue, I suppose. We were in Madrid and he said, ‘I dunno, I’m fed up’. Like owt that comes on suddenly, you start thinking about things that have happened before and whether it hasn’t been brewing.
“How is he? Other people have spoken to him and it sounds like he’s doing alright. We’re going to talk about it when we get home and, y’know, see where everybody’s head’s at.”
Having played a Motörhead-ian 25 gigs in the last six weeks, can he understand why Thom Yorke – and others like him – moan about being in a band?
“When we wrapped up our first tour, which was pretty much a year ago to this day, I came back thinking it was the most exciting thing I’d ever done. I still say it was the best three weeks of my life, ever, ‘cause I’d been out of college a year and done fuck all ‘cept work in a bar.”
What course did he do at Barnsley College – a seat of learning, incidentally, which also includes Pop Idol runner-up Sam Nixon and folk singer Kate Rusby among its musical alma mater?
“It was Music Technology, with an English module in second year and Psychology in third, which I didn’t get to finish. Getting back to the pressures or otherwise of being in a band – some people say, ‘Oh, it’s impossible to have a proper relationship when you’re touring’, but what did you fucking expect?
“I always wonder how many of them are really tortured and how many are putting it on ‘cos it makes them seem more interesting. If you are genuinely of a depressive nature then, yeah, I can see how being on the road would intensify those feelings. You can say to yourself, ‘Right, eight hours sleep and not too much boozing’, but it never happens!”
Talking of which, have the Monkeys been able to circumnavigate America’s strict over-21s drinking law?
“Where there’s a will…”
And a fake ID perhaps.
“I’m not going to say that ‘cause it’ll be in The Sun, but we’re doing okay.”
The Monkeys nearly had to find themselves a second replacement bassist when Nicholson’s deputy, Nick O’Malley of Poptones act The Dodgems, broke his hand in a post-pub tumble.
“The easiest thing with regards to visas would’ve been to have got an American in,” Alex reflects. “We thought about Keith from We Are Scientists for a bit, but I’m not sure how him doing backing-vocals on ‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco’ would’ve worked!
“Anyway, we phoned Nick up from Lisbon and before I’d got to explain the situation, he said, ‘Guess what? (Dodgems roadie) Gessie pushed me off a wall and I’ve broke me hand. Hang on…you weren’t going to ask me to…oh shit, I don’t know if I can’. We had a couple of big TV interviews we had to do, so we were sat there answering questions and texting ‘Can you hold a pick?’ to him at the same time. He obviously went and got a guitar out and sent back a ‘Think so!’ Nick’s perfect ‘cause he lives just two streets away from me, and we’ve played together before.”
The word so far is that it's worked a treat.
If I were Andy Nicholson, I’d be putting some serious thought into what I’m going to say at that band meeting. For all of their quintessential Englishness – you’d have to be from Albion to write a song like ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ – the Monkeys are indeed going down a storm in the States, with Liv Tyler, Michael Stipe, Matt Dillon and, ahem, Courtney Love among their burgeoning celebrity fan club.
“David Bowie came backstage in New York, which was more exciting for our manager, Geoff, than it was for us,” says Turner, who would’ve been 18 months old when Bowie played Slane Castle. “I’d love to have gone, ‘Oh, I really like your such-and-such album’ but I don’t know his stuff. If he’d brought Scott Walker with him though, I’d have been shitting meself!”
Not for the first time today I wonder if by entering into a Faustian pact with the Devil I can steal Turner’s youth. Being lukewarmly received didn’t stop the still-Thin White Duke bigging the Monkeys up on his website. Another person to go public with his love of the band – “They’ve proved to me that youth culture’s alive” – is Noel Gallagher.
“We played with Oasis in Canada the last time we were here, and had a right good laugh with them afterwards. They didn’t sit us down and give us a lesson in ‘How To Be A Rock Band’, but there’s stuff we’re doing now that they were doing 12 years ago, which was interesting to talk about. We gigged with them again in Japan, and then Noel came to see us at Brixton.”
Where, if the tabloids are to be believed, the Monkeys trounced Gallagher Sr. in a tequila-slamming contest.
“I wasn’t there, but he did go drinking at the after-show with Andy – and Andy likes his tequila!” he laughs. “What’s impressive – or miraculous even – about Oasis is that after eight albums and two thousand fucking shows, they still care.”
Record buying isn’t the only obsession that Turner’s developed on this tour.
“I’ve been doing this thing every day where I take a Polaroid of the view as reflected back from the mirrors at the front of the tour bus. The others think I’m a right anorak, but some of ‘em are pretty arty!”
Expect the embossed-leather coffee-table book in time for Christmas. Taking photos is one thing, but is Alex enamoured enough of America to move there?
“I’ve loved it since the first time I came over with me Nanan (grandma) in 1995 and stayed in San Francisco for two days and LA for a week,” he reminisces. “Of all the cities, the one I could see myself living in for a while is New York ‘cause there’s just so much stuff going on there. What’d put me off is that everybody else seems to do it.”
Back on the other side of the Atlantic, the Monkeys’ profile has gone from high (EastEnders and Hollyoaks mentions) to stratospheric (Peter Crouch boogieing to ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ at Posh ‘n’ Becks’ party, and then purloining the “Dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984” line for his England goal celebration).
“That thing in EastEnders was particularly ridiculous,” Alex says, referring to the scene in which Little Mo finds Dr. Cousins singing along to the Monkeys in his surgery. “I’ve only seen the Hollyoaks one, which wasn’t great acting-wise, on the ‘net. It was really specific in that Matt Helders and Jamie Cook were mentioned by name. Peter Crouch doing the robot dance is alright, though I wish it had been a Sheffield Wednesday player!”
I wasn’t going to mention the war, but 75% of Arctic Monkeys must have been extremely pissed off last month when Sheffield United got promoted to the Premiership.
“I imagine Andy, who’s a Blades fan, was delighted, but it was a black day for the rest of us,” Andy sighs. “The first Wednesday game I was at, we beat Liverpool 3-1, which shows how far we’ve plummeted since. We managed to avoid the drop from the Championship, so there’s hope for next season.”
A quartet of very surreal moments was completed when Britain’s Prime Minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, told New Woman that the Arctic Monkeys on his iPod “really wakes you up in the morning.”
“It’s less mad because we’re away, but me mum’s been cutting out and videoing loads of stuff, so I’ll probably go through ‘em in 10 years or summat.”
One clipping that might retrospectively irk him is an interview with The Feeling, in which singer Dan Gillespie snipes: “I very much doubt that the Arctic Monkeys play on their records.”
“(Sharp intake of breath and muttered insult). I’m not going to bother responding to that, ‘cept to say that there are a lot of people who’ve seen us live who’ll disagree with him.”
What do you expect from a man who, sans irony, admits to liking Supertramp and wears a lime green jacket with purple piping? The Monkeys’ Domino labelmates Franz Ferdinand were delighted last year when Snoop Dogg announced that he wanted to work with them. Given their own penchant for hip-hop – Mos Def’s “The Funk Might Fracture Your Nose” clarion call is currently gaffa taped to Helders’ kickdrum – is Turner looking for his own gangsta to collaborate with?
“I really want to do a remix of ‘Red Light…’ off us old ‘un, the problem being finding the time,” Alex proffers. “A collaboration would be good too, but only if it’s right and not for the sake of it. All our efforts at the moment, though, are going into finishing this tour, doing the festival and getting down to recording in September. Collaborations are fun and that, but it’s yer’ album’s you’ll be judged on in 10 or 15 years time.”