The band began rehearsing at Yellow Arch Studios in Neepsend, and played their first gig on 13 June 2003 at The Grapes in Sheffield city-centre. After a few performances in 2003, the band began to record demos at 2fly studios in Sheffield. 17 songs were demoed in all and the collection, now known as Beneath the Boardwalk, was burned on to CDs to give away at gigs, which were promptly file-shared amongst fans. The name Beneath the Boardwalk originated when the first batch of demos were sent around. The first sender, wanting to classify the demos, named them after where he received them, the Boardwalk. Slowly, as more demos were spread, they were all classified under this name. This has led to many people falsely believing that Beneath the Boardwalk was an early album, or that the early demos were all released under this heading. The group did not mind the distribution, saying “we never made those demos to make money or anything. We were giving them away free anyway – that was a better way for people to hear them.”, admitting that they did not even know how to get their songs onto the Internet. When asked about the popularity of the band’s MySpace site in an interview with Prefix Magazine, the band said that they were unaware what it was, and that the site had originally been created by their fans.
The band began to grow in popularity across the north of England, receiving attention from BBC Radio and the British tabloid press. A local amateur photographer, Mark Bull, filmed the band’s performances and made the music video “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, releasing it on his website, alongside the contents of Beneath the Boardwalk – a collection of the band’s songs which he named after a local music venue. In May 2005, Arctic Monkeys released their first single, Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys on their own ‘Bang Bang’ label, featuring the songs “Fake Tales of San Francisco” and “From the Ritz to the Rubble”. This release was limited to 500 CDs and 1,000 7” records, but was also available to download from the iTunes Music Store. Soon after, the band played at the Carling Stage of the Reading and Leeds Festivals, reserved for less known or unsigned bands. Their appearance was hyped by much of the music press and the band was watched by an unusually large crowd.
Birth Name: Born: Occupations: Instruments: Associated Acts: Label:
Alexander David Turner 6 January 1986 (age 27) High Green, Sheffield, England Musician, Composer Vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion Arctic Monkeys, The Last Shadow Puppets, Miles Kane, Reverend and The Makers, Queens of the Stone Age, Richard Hawley Domino
Alexander David Turner is the only child of Penny and David Turner, who taught German and music respectively at Sheffield secondary schools. He was raised in High Green, a suburb of Sheffield. He attended Stocksbridge High School in Sheffield (1997–2002) and was later remembered by his English teacher, Steve Baker, as “someone unconventional, a little bit different, with a brightness and a cleverness that would serve him well. He had a very original sense of humour. Alex was never particularly vocal, but you could sense when some pieces of poetry moved him”. Turner spent most of his teenage years listening to rap artists such as Roots Manuva. His attentions later turned to guitar music following the breakthrough of The Strokes and The Libertines. Turner’s parents bought him his first guitar for Christmas 2001. Following sixth form college, where he studied at Barnsley, his parents reluctantly agreed to let him defer university for one year to pursue his musical ambitions. During this time he worked as a barman at the Sheffield venue, The Boardwalk. Turner has since said that, had Arctic Monkeys not become successful, he would have studied English at Manchester University. Turner’s initial songwriting with Arctic Monkeys was based around specific concepts, particularly on their first album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, which is often considered to be a concept album centered around nightlife in the UK. He later progressed to more varied themes, especially noticeable on Humbug and Suck It and See.
Birth Name: Matthew Helders Born: 7 May 1986 (age 27) Sheffield, England Occupations: Musician, DJ Instruments: Drums, vocals, keyboards, turntables Associated Acts: Arctic Monkeys, Mongrel, Diddy Dirty-Money, The Bot tletop Band Label: Domino Helders has said that he ended up playing drums as “that was the only thing left. When we started the band none of us played anything. We just put it together. They all had guitars and I bought a drum kit after a bit”. However, Helders has stated the influence rap music has had on the band, saying “We were rap fans at school more than now...it still influences us in some ways, like for me, it’s the drummin’. The groove element, like foonkeh music”. In addition, Helders cites seeing Queens of the Stone Age as the biggest influence on his development as a drummer, saying “the one thing that changed me most was seeing Queens of the Stone Age live at a festival last year...as soon as they came off I was like ‘Fuck – I need to start hitting harder’.” The most comprehensive backing vocalist of the group, his vocals have been featured on many of the band’s songs. He often sings in response to or in harmony with lead singer Alex Turner, and sings lead vocals on “D Is for Dangerous”, “Brick by Brick”, and “I.D.S.T.”, as well as on parts of “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights but You Were Staring Straight at Me”, “Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?”, and “Teddy Picker”. Also, during two shows of the North American leg of the band’s Humbug Tour, he sang an interpolation of Wham!’s “Last Christmas” during an encore perfor-
Birth Name: Born: Occupations: Instruments: Associated Acts: Label:
Jamie Cook 8 July 1985 (age 27) High Green, Sheffield, England Musician, songwriter Guitar, keyboard, organ Arctic Monkeys Domino
Jamie Cook is originally a next door neighbour of the lead vocalist of Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner. He is the most outspoken member, going on record as saying he “fucking hates the [print] news” and defending the band’s numerous successive records by saying, “I couldn’t see us being like Coldplay, it’d just be fucking boring. You tour your album for three years and play the same fucking gig night after night. It must really be depressing. Some people might enjoy doing that, but we couldn’t.” Despite leaving home, Cook has maintained residence in the Sheffield area along with fellow band member, Helders. He has been described as “the bullishly confident blue-collar lad” of the group. At the start of the band’s career, Cook would join Matt Helders and Andy Nicholson in backing vocals for songs such as “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, but has gradually shied away from singing duties, leaving them to the other 3 members of the group. Cook is also considered to be the “indie music fanatic” of the group. Armed with the likes of musical tastes for bands such as The Smiths, The Strokes, Oasis, and Queens of the Stone Age, Cook supposedly turned the band into what it is today.
Birth Name: Born: Occupations: Instruments: Associated Acts: Label:
Nicholas O’Malley 5 July 1985 (age 27) Sheffield, England Musician Bass guitar, backing vocals Arctic Monkeys, The Dodgems Domino
O’Malley was drafted in as a temporary replacement for bassist Andy Nicholson when the latter announced he would not make the band’s North America tour in May 2006. O’Malley says that he learned the whole of the band’s debut album in two days of intensive play where he “pretty much didn’t even leave the house.” His first recordings with the band were their non-album single “Leave Before the Lights Come On”, in which he played bass guitar. His first appearance with the band came on 25 May, when the band played a secret gig at the “Old Blue Last” pub in east London. The 120 capacity venue was seen as an opportunity for O’Malley to have a test run before the band’s first North American gig in Vancouver on 27 May and festival dates in front of fifteen to twenty thousand people. Nick broke his hand following some drunken antics with his former Dodgems bandmates only a week after agreeing to fill in for Nicholson - “As we were walking home from the pub, our roadie (Adam Guest) grabbed him (O’Malley) and pulled him over our neighbour’s wall. It’s quite high and he landed on his right hand” Dodgems singer Phillip Goodwin was quoted as saying on the music website Angry Ape. However, despite being his plectrum-hand he was still able to play the bass and joined the band in the successful tour. Although O’Malley was only expected to continue until Nicholson had fully recovered, Nicholson’s departure from the band saw the announcement that O’Malley will become a full member of the band.
Birth Name: Occupations: Instruments: Associated Acts: Year left:
Glyn Jones Musician, songwriter, designer Vocals, rhythm guitar Arctic Monkeys 2002
Glyn met current lead singer Alex, former member And,y and Matt at Stocksbridge High School. A school photo shows him with Alex in 2002. Later they all became friends with Alex’s neighbour Jamie Cook after playing football in the street together. But it wasn’t until the last day of school in May 2003 that Glyn and Alex began to pen lyrics together and the original Arctic Monkeys were formed. Glyn recalls, “I remember our last GCSE was science and Alex and I went back to his house. We were bored so we started writing a song about a geek in our year. Alex had got a guitar for Christmas but we felt a bit stupid playing it so we would write rubbish that didn’t mean anything and just mess about.” But then he left the band in 2002 because he “did not have the dedication to take it any further... to me we were just a gang of kids messing around because we were bored.” But Alex could see something, Glyn said as he remember Alex saying, “Imagine if we had a band called the Arctic Monkeys and people came to see us play,” but Glyn Jones honestly didn’t think it would go anywhere. Glyn Jones is now a marketing and design assistant in Sheffield.
Birth Name: Occupations: Instruments: Associated Acts: Year left:
Andy Nicholson Musician, DJ Bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, drums Arctic Monkeys, Reverend and The Makers, Mongrel 2006
Nicholson played bass guitar, and was seen as “the band wit, reliably swift with a self-deprecating quip”. Nicholson emphasised that the band are just normal people, saying “We don’t look like superstars...I think people look at us and think, ‘They’re just normal people making good music. I’m sure I could do it.’ Anyone can do it. We’re living proof of that.” The band announced in May 2006 that Nicholson would miss the band’s forthcoming North America tour as he was suffering from “fatigue following an intensive period of touring”, and would be temporarily replaced by Nick O’Malley of The Dodgems while Nicholson recovered. However, on 20 June 2006, it was announced that he was no longer part of the band, with Alex Turner later stating “we sorta found ourselves in a situation where we wanted to move forward”. Nicholson is now in Mongrel which consists of himself, Jon McClure of Reverend and the Makers, Babyshambles bassist Drew McConnell and Matt Helders from Arctic Monkeys, as well as London rapper Lowkey from the Poisonous Poets. They released their first album, Better Than Heavy on 7 March 2009. He was also in the band Lords of Flatbush, but left to concentrate on Mongrel. The position was handed over to his brother Rob Nicholson of Sheffield band Dead World Leaders, with Sheffield based singer Steve Edwards and Louis Carnall formerly of Milburn. Nicholson has now joined the band The Book Club, with Joe Carnall. On 23 December, Jon McClure of Reverend and the Makers announced via his Twitter and the official website that Nicholson would be made an official member of the group.
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The band finished recording their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire in September 2005 with Jim Abbiss producing. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the fastest selling debut album in UK chart history, selling 363,735 copies in the first week. This smashed the previous record of 306,631 copies held by Popstars by Hear’Say, and sold more copies on its first day alone – 118,501 – than the rest of the Top 20 albums combined. The cover sleeve of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, showing Chris McClure, a friend of the band smoking a cigarette, was criticised by the head of the NHS in Scotland for “reinforcing the idea that smoking is OK”. The image on the CD itself is a shot of an ashtray full of cigarettes. The band’s product manager denied the accusation, and suggested the opposite – “You can see from the image smoking is not doing him the world of good.” The record was released a month later in the US and entered at No. 24 on the Billboard album chart after it sold 34,000 units in its first week, making it the second fastest selling for a debut indie rock album in America. However, US sales for the first year did not match those of the first week in the UK for the album. US critics were more reserved about the band than their UK counterparts, and appeared unwilling to be drawn into the possibility of “yet another example of the UK’s press over-hyping new bands”. However, the band’s June 2006 tour of North America received critical acclaim at each stop – the hype surrounding them “proven to exist for good reason”. Meanwhile, the UK’s NME magazine declared the band’s debut album the “5th greatest British album of all time”. They also equalled the record of The Strokes and Oasis at the 2006 NME Awards, winning three fan-voted awards for Best British Band, Best New Band and Best Track for “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”. Arctic Monkeys wasted no time in recording new material, and released a five-track EP on 24 April 2006, titled Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?. Due to its length, the EP was ineligible to chart as a UK single or album. Furthermore, the record’s graphic language has resulted in significantly less radio airplay than previous records, although this was not a reported concern according to an insider – “since they made their name on the Internet... they don’t care if they don’t get radio play”. The release of the EP Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? just three months after their record-breaking debut album has been criticised by some, who have seen it as “money-grabbing” and “cashing in on their success”. The band countered that they regularly release new music not to make money, but to avoid the “boredom” of “spending three years touring on one album”.
The band’s second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, was released on 23 April 2007, a week after the release of accompanying single “Brianstorm”. Like its predecessor, Favourite Worst Nightmare also went straight to No. 1 in the album charts. Turner described the songs as “very different from last time”, adding that the sound of some tracks are “a bit full-on – a bit like “From the Ritz to the Rubble”, “The View from the Afternoon”, that sort of thing.” A secret gig played at Sheffield’s Leadmill on 10 February 2007, debuted seven new songs (six from Favourite Worst Nightmare and one other). Early reviews of the release were positive, and described it as “very, very fast and very, very loud.” Meanwhile, the band continued to pick up awards from around the world, namely the ‘Best New Artist in the United States’ at the PLUG Independent Music Awards, the “Album of the Year” awards in Japan, Ireland and the US, awards for “Best Album” and “Best Music DVD” at the 2007 NME Awards. They ended the year by clinching the “Best British Band” and “Best British Album” at the 2008 BRIT Awards. For the second year in a row, the band were nominated for the annual Mercury Prize, although they failed to match their feat of 2006 after the award went to Klaxons’ Myths of the Near Future. On 29 April 2007, the day Favourite Worst Nightmare charted at No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart, all 12 tracks from the album charted in the Top 200 of the UK Singles Chart. On 27 April 2007 they had a total of 18 tracks in the Top 200. “Fluorescent Adolescent” and “505” charted in the Top 75, at No. 60 and No. 74 respectively. The band later released “Fluorescent Adolescent” as a single, and it charted at No. 5, after debuting the song live on The Jonathan Ross Show. The third single from Favourite Worst Nightmare, “Teddy Picker”, was released on 3 December 2007. It charted at No. 20 and remained only one week in the top 40 staying in this position, making it the lowest charting single for the band so far. Prior to this release the band released an extremely limited number of 250 vinyl under the pseudonym The Death Ramps containing two of the b-sides from the “Teddy Picker” single.
After a brief hiatus during which Alex Turner toured and recorded with his side project The Last Shadow Puppets, the band recorded a total of 24 songs; 12 in the Rancho De La Luna recording sessions with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age in early autumn, 2008, and 12 in the New York sessions with James Ford in spring, 2009, following their January tour of New Zealand and Australia. During this tour, lead single “Crying Lightning”, along with Humbug songs “Pretty Visitors”, “Dangerous Animals”, and “Potion Approaching” (then known as “Go-Kart”), was debuted live. It was later revealed by Matt Helders in a video diary that the album would consist of 14 tracks and that Alex Turner would stay in New York to oversee the mixing of the material. However, the final tracklisting, revealed on 1 June 2009, listed only 10. In a preview article on ClashMusic.com, writer Simon Harper claimed that the band had “completely defied any expectations or presumptions to explore the depths they can reach when stepping foot outside their accepted styles”, and that “Turner is his usual eloquent self, but has definitely graduated into an incomparable writer whose themes twist and turn through stories and allegories so potent and profound it actually leaves one breathless”. Humbug was released on 19 August 2009, and, like both of its predecessors, the album went straight to No. 1. As announced on the Arctic Monkeys website the first single was “Crying Lightning”, released on 6 July, digitally through iTunes and also received its first radio premiere on the same day. On 12 July 2009, the single “Crying Lightning” debuted at number 12 in the UK Singles Chart and number 1 on the UK Indie Chart. The second single, “Cornerstone”, was released on 16 November 2009 to much critical acclaim, but failed to replicate the same success that every prior Arctic Monkeys single had, reaching a peak at position 94 on the UK singles chart. It was announced in February 2010 that the 3rd and final single to be taken from Humbug would be “My Propeller”, released on 22 March, shortly before a one off UK show at the Royal Albert Hall in support on the Teenage Cancer Trust on 27 March.
The album was recorded in Sound City Studios in Los Angeles in 2010 and 2011. On 4 March 2011 they premièred on their website a new track called “Brick by Brick” with lead vocals by Matt Helders. Helders explained that this is not a single, just a tease of what is coming and that is definitely going to be in the fourth album. On 10 March 2011 the band revealed the album is to be called Suck It and See and was released on 6 June 2011. Their fourth album’s first single, titled “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” was released as a digital download on 11 April, and on Vinyl with “Brick by Brick” on 16 April for Record Store Day. On 17 April, it went to No. 28 in the UK Singles Chart. A version of the single with 2 B-sides was released on 7 and 10 inch vinyl on 30 May. The band allowed fans to listen to the entire album on their website before deciding about whether to purchase it or not. Suck It and See was then released on 6 June 2011, and went straight to No. 1 in the album charts. In doing so, Arctic Monkeys became only the second band in history to debut four albums in a row at the top of the charts. The band announced “The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala” as the second single to be taken from Suck It and See. Most of the stock was burned because of the London riots. A limited edition 7” Vinyl of the single was then released over the band’s website on 14 August. The song only managed to chart in the top 200 in the UK, however reaching higher in Belgium at No. 25. In September 2011 the band released a music video for the song “Suck It and See” featuring drummer Matt Helders, and announced they would be releasing it as a single on 31 October 2011. In July 2011, the band released a live EP over iTunes with 6 live recordings from the iTunes Festival in London.
Submarine is the debut EP by Arctic Monkeys lead singer, Alex Turner. It was released on 18 March 2011 in the United Kingdom. The EP consists of six original songs by Alex Turner from the film Submarine and is released by Domino. Submarine, the debut film from Richard Ayoade, was based on the novel by Joe Dunthorne. Original songs were written and performed by Turner. In his first effort as a solo artist, Turner changed his habitual rock style and delivers five different acoustic songs.
First of My Kind is an EP by the English indie rock musician Miles Kane. It was released on 21 April 2012 as a Limited Edition Record Store Day Vinyl, then as a digital download the next day, both in the United Kingdom. The title song peaked at number 65 on the UK Singles Chart. The song premiered on BBC Radio 1 as Zane Lowe’s ‘Hottest Record In The World’ on 14 March 2012. Alex Turner from Arctic Monkeys is the co-writer of the song lyrics for this EP.
...Like Clockwork is the sixth studio album by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age, released on June 3, 2013 on Matador Records in the UK and on June 4 2013 in the United States. Alex Turner is co-writer of Kalopsia and featured vocalist.
Late Night Tales: Matt Helders is a DJ mix album, mixed by Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys), released as part of Late Night Tales / Another Late Night DJ series. This album released on October 27, 2008. Late Night Tales: Matt Helders consists of 20 track lists and have the total length of 69:25 minutes.
Mongrel are a group formed in 2008, by former Arctic Monkeys bassist Andy Nicholson. Alongside Nicholson in the band are Jon McClure and Joe Moskow, both of Reverend and the Makers, Babyshambles bassist Drew McConnell and Matt Helders from Arctic Monkeys as well as London rapper Lowkey from the Poisonous Poets. Better Than Heavy is the debut album from supergroup Mongrel. It was released on 7 March 2009.