The Arctic Monkeys classic Alex Turner described as “a bit shit”
Love them or loath them, you’ve never been able to escape them, and that’s a mark of how pivotal the Arctic Monkeys have been as a band. When the book opened on their new era with the debut performance of ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’, they sent the music world into bedlam like no other rock ‘n’ roll band could right now, proving the wheels of indie are certainly still in spin.
As Johnny Marr said of Tranquillity Base Hotel + Casino: “I love the new Arctic Monkeys record – it’s very self-aware and feels like another chapter in an ongoing long story.” This sense of evolving chapters has been apparent from the start. When they arrived, they smashed indie into the mainstream like a shot of adrenaline in the heart, and they have never once rested on their laurels ever since.
As the equally ever-evolving Nick Cave would put it: “With each new record, almost inevitably some fans will move on. I can only say that I am truly grateful to have been a part of their journey, and that they have been part of ours. In the end, to challenge our fans is to love them, even if it means losing them.” You could say the same for the Sheffield scallies, who fittingly opened their Humbug account by covering Cave the last time they headlined Reading and Leeds.
This weekend they are set to do just the same and, no doubt, their wavering intent will prove equally impactful— their back catalogue is a journey, and whether they’ve dropped you off or are carrying you to the terminus, they’ll have made their mark along the way, and that is pretty much the pinnacle of art. This has always been the measure of the Monkeys, and their comments from the very start signified this.
When it comes to the life-changing hit that smashed the hinges off things, ‘I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor’, they could’ve declared themselves the new kings and paraded their ensuing legacy before it began. Instead, they said don’t believe the hype, made a declaration that they’d soon change tact, and even bashed their Promethean record-breaker.
When Turner sat down for the band’s first-ever feature interview with The Guardian back in 2005, he went against the swaggering egoist grain of the era and dismissed the prowess of their early outing. “It’s a bit shit,” the singer apologetically told the publication regarding ‘Dancefloor’. “The words are rubbish. I scraped the bottom of the barrel. It could be a big song, like. But I’d hate to be just known for that song because it’s a bit…crap.”
Whether you think it’s merely self-effacing modesty or a premature version of the classic ‘bashing of your biggest hit’ technique that many artists embark upon, it certainly said a lot about Turner and the lads, all the same. As Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin would go on to say: “Alex is superb, isn’t he? They’ve really worked hard at it, and you could tell that straight away. They stood out a mile from everything else that was going on.”
It was evident from the start that in an era where a lot of bands had less crack than a day-old popadom, the Monkeys would be the witty life and soul of the party. This was palpable when ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ managed to prise knackered converse from the sort of indie disco carpet that used to have your shoes sticking like the wrapper to a warm Chewitt. Amid these moments of pock-marked eudaimonia as an energised zeitgeist got swinging, Turner’s own disparaging comments seemed wildly amiss.
Now, his relationship with the track is somewhat mixed. That much is evident from the fact that he might have once dubbed it “a bit shit”, but they have since played it 771 times live, more than any other in their back catalogue (‘Brianstorm’ is second with 616 plays). As the swaggering frontman now says: “When you tell the same joke 600 times, you won’t hear what it is anymore, but then sometimes, like, the 601st time you might see something in it you didn’t before.” There are certainly a lot of fans out there hoping they have the last laugh once more…
