The Arctic Monkeys song inspired by Stanley Kubrick and a drug-induced conversation
Nearly a decade has passed since Alex Turner, the suave centrepiece of Sheffield indie group Arctic Monkeys, made his controversial acceptance speech at the Brit Awards. With a slick haircut that would have made a Grease-era John Travolta blush green, the singer swanned up to the mic and professed: “Yeah, that rock ‘n’ roll, it seems like it’s faded away sometimes, but it will never die. And there’s nothing you can do about it”.
At the end of the rather ostentatious address, Turner muttered, “Invoice me for the microphone if you need to,” before mic-dropping. Naturally, in the days that followed, much of a debate was made about the arrogant speech, with many suggesting the band was wired on cocaine, a drug known for its surefire injection of loquacious conceit.
Alas, two years later, the frontman discredited such claims, instead offering that he was unenthused by the awards ceremony and, contrary to appearances, despises being the centre of attention. “A lot of people thought I was waffling away on drugs, but I wasn’t,” he told Rolling Stone. “I just can’t pretend getting an award was something I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid because it isn’t.”
Whether or not Turner and his bandmates were a little pepped up for the Brits is not for me to say. However, with some rather naive fans suggesting, in online fora, that Arctic Monkeys are and have been a sober act, I feel compelled to direct your attention to the rock and roll history books and a little case study from the band’s 2018 album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
In November 2018, Turner appeared on Radio X to talk host John Kennedy through the Arctic Monkeys’ divisive Moon-bound record, track by track. “‘One Point Perspective’ is the next song on the new album by Arctic Monkeys,” Kennedy said, landing on the second track.
“More arresting imagery: ‘Dancing in my underpants/I’m gonna run for government’,” he quoted. “It’s great when you come up with this stuff, and when you do, do you… is this idle conversation that you’re having in your mind, and you just quickly write it down? Or does it happen when you’re at the instrument playing the instrument?”
“Yeah,” Turner replied. “It’s maybe that it differs in the different instances. I think in this one, it was informed perhaps by conversations I may have heard or been involved with where we’re sort of under the influence of some narcotic draught or another and fragments of these things are appearing in the lyrics on this tune”.
He added: “But I think that only takes you part of the way there, then you do come back to the… It nearly ends up having like a mind of its own, I suppose, and you’re just there to facilitate it or take it where it’s trying to go”.
Continuing, Turner noted the cinematic inspiration behind the song’s title. “And then, the title of it, of course, being taken from a technique that we’ve seen in cinema, specifically in the films of Stanley Kubrick. ‘One Point Perspective’ is something that is a composition of a shot where all the lines in the image seem to be pointing towards the centre point, and perhaps the subject is often in the centre, and in his films, he often used it to create this… there’s something ominous about it, inherently; certainly in his films”.
Turner added: “You get it in other places as well, like Wes Anderson uses it a lot in a very different way. But I think I’m thinking about the Kubrick one-point perspective when I decided to call my song it. And there’s this sensation that, you know, it’s unsettling.”
Listen to Arctic Monkeys’ ‘One Point Perspective’ below.
