Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (LP)

The new discovery from Sheffield is called "The Arctic Monkeys". In England, the motherland of all trends and hypes, the youngsters manage to fill concert halls with up to 1000 people without having released a single and have a huge internet community behind them. With the help of a few mp3s, a fanbase has grown organically around this band and a hysteria has developed that was even too fast for the NME. A good example of a possible positive effect of file sharing. When the major companies were scrambling for the band, a currently popular indie label came into play: Domino Records, home of Franz Ferdinand, The Kills, Sons and Daughters, among others, signed the band and is planning to release the first single "i bet you look good on the dancefloor" on October 21, 2005, followed by the debut album in early 2006. Maybe you're reading this and hearing about a band called Arctic Monkeys for the first time. But maybe you already know more about the band than 1001 descriptions could ever tell you. Maybe you downloaded their songs months before the labels got curious and suddenly felt the irresistible urge to drive half a day just to hear them live. Maybe you got your hands on a demo at one of their first gigs, memorized every word and sang along at the top of your voice at the next concert. Maybe you're one of those fans who have made a hobby of collecting every snippet of information available on the internet. And maybe you've contracted a permanent visual defect from screen overdose. Unless you take the number of yachts someone can afford as the sole criterion for success, Arctic Monkeys were extremely successful long before they signed with Domino. Were there people who were completely blown away by the songs? Hardcore fans who pressed their noses against the window of the backstage area just to catch a glimpse of the Monkeys? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes. "What's happened is simply crazy," says lead singer and guitarist Alex Turner with a grin about the hero cult that has swept over the band in recent months. "When I use the word phenomenon now, of course it sounds completely stupid, but we'd be completely wrong if we pretended that the last year hasn't been absolutely incredible. When it all started, we wondered what on earth was going on all of a sudden." Of course, it had all started with guitars, two of them to be precise. Just three years ago, Alex and Jamie Cook had each been given a guitar for Christmas. They started practicing like mad, perhaps even with some competition between brothers, and then Andy Nicholson (bass) and Matt Helders (drums) joined them.The boys are naturally into The Smiths, The Clash and The Jam (and Jamie also has a pronounced weakness for Oasis, System Of A Down and Queens Of The Stone Age), but the Monkeys certainly didn't want to go down the well-trodden Brit Rock route. In their school days they listened to Roots Manuva, Braintax and other bands from the British label Low-Life, and above all Lyricist Lounge compilations and CDs from Rawkus Records, e.g. Pharaoh Monch. A strong influence also comes from the fact that Alex has recently taken a real liking to Manchester-born poet John Cooper Clarke. "He's such a super skinny guy with totally messy hair, red tinted glasses and tight jeans. A real original!" Alex enthuses. "Everyone told us that our band name sounds like shit, but he immediately said 'That's great! There are no trees in the Arctic, how could monkeys survive there? And then he drew it straight away. He's a creative genius!" This inspiration feeds the caustically sharp lyrics, such as in "A Certain Romance", an ironic description of a small town "where the sole purpose of music is to provide new ringtones" and where you can get a pool cue draped around your head when you go out. Otherwise, there are dark stories about girls who have ended up on the street ("She don't do major credit cards, I doubt she does receipts" from "Sun Goes Down") and great all-round attacks on rock'n'roll clones, which were swept to the top in 2002 with the hype surrounding garage rock ("Yeah I'd like to tell you all my problems/You're not from New York City, you're from Rotherham" from "Fake Tales Of San Francisco"). Such was life in one of England's dormitory towns, described as precisely and incisively as if they were lyrics by Mike Skinner. But there are other notes too. "The lyrics were a real problem for us," admits Alex. "No one wanted to admit to writing the lyrics, so we tried to get other singers to write them. But after school, I had always secretly written and enjoyed it. But I didn't want to tell anyone so that no one could make fun of me!" Even after the problem with the lyrics was solved, it was another year before the Monkeys dared to go on stage. Why? Because it had to be perfect. When they played their first gig at The Grapes in Sheffield, it was. The crowd went crazy and the band returned to the backstage area with the feeling that they were in for a treat. A few gigs later, they found themselves back at the Sheffield Forum with an audience singing along to lyrics that Alex himself hadn't quite memorized yet. They could hardly believe it, but there was a reason why they had more fans by now, namely the demos they had handed out at the gigs as real do-it-yourself freaks. "I used to work at the drinks counter at a concert hall and it always annoyed me when the bands said 'You can buy CDs from us at the back, they cost three pounds'," says Alex. "Then you think: 'Who do you bums think you are?' Once, people ran up to the stage like mad at our gig and wanted demos at all costs. We thought to ourselves: 'Shit, that's really cool!" After the demos made the rounds and were circulating on the internet and at concerts, strange things happened. Strange things like meeting fans at a gig in Wakefield who had come all the way from Aberdeen or further afield. When the band played at the Boardwalk earlier this year, the entire audience sang along to "When The Sun Goes Down" - a song that hadn't even been released yet (the band has only released one single at the moment). Alex: "I had to stop playing, I was completely stunned! The whole thing got totally out of hand. Some people ended up crowd surfing on monitors. In Manchester, one guy flew over the crowd and hit his cheek on the edge of the stage. Another came flying in and rolled perfectly onto the stage, a perfect acrobatic landing. But the best thing is when everyone just goes crazy." Within a few months, the Monkeys' reputation had spread like wildfire, so quickly that the music industry couldn't keep up. "Before all the hysteria started, the labels were saying, 'You're not bad, but this one's not that great yet, and here's what you should change about the other song...' We just ignored that. And when it really took off, we didn't even care. In London, the kids were totally focused on the band and the label people were at the back, totally focused on the kids." Of course, musicians who have never thought about a great strategy answer questions about future plans with a shrug of the shoulders. "People are totally interested in the songs even before we've finished them. You can see it in their eyes and nobody can take that away from you. I guess we can come out even bigger. Instead of hundreds singing along to the lyrics, it could be thousands. I just wonder if it will feel any different." Maybe he - like you - will know that soon.