With June 13th marking not just the day after Donald Trump created his most meme-able photo opportunity yet with the “other” Kim, but also the fifteen year anniversary of Arctic Monkeys’ first live gig, let us take pause to consider what prompted it. Being that Alex Turner is a classic man and one of the last bastions of male heteronormativeness, it can come as no surprise that the entire motive behind even finagling their first live performance at Sheffield’s The Grapes pub was impressing a girl. As Turner would phrase it several years later to The Telegraph, he “just [wanted] to get to the end of the night and pull the bird that I fancied that I’d got to come down.” Though it might be difficult to imagine a time when Turner had to convince a bird to do anything (see: most recent bra tossing footage), in 2003, he was just another scrappy, pasty bartender (Turner worked at The Boardwalk, a music venue that would also play host to early Arctic Monkeys shows).
He was, additionally, an unabashed fanboy, primarily of “guitar bands” like The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Vines and The Libertines (ah, all so telling of such a distinct era in early 00s music). That being said, the set was laden with covers indicative of the time, including Fatboy Slim’s “Rockafeller Skank,” The White Stripes’ “Black Math” and “Hotel Yorba” and, for the sake of being a good Brit, The Beatles’ “I’m Only Sleeping.”
And, thinking of The Beatles and that early period of the birth of what some argue is a boy band genesis and others maintain is the source of indie/garage rock, it’s strange to think that, in comparison to other generations of music enthusiasts, ours is one that has the bootlegs at the ready, no need to wait thirty to forty years for someone to suddenly unearth a gem in their untapped archives (thanks Apple!). Considering how well Arctic Monkeys played for a virgin performance, it’s quite likely Turner did end up “pulling the bird.” Take that to mean what you will. With Turner wistfully admitting, “We had practiced so much beforehand, and it was a major deal just to go and play somewhere,” it appears that his gratitude for just having a place to attempt impressing a girl has paid off in full. What’s more, shortly after the time of the performance, Turner was reluctantly starting to admit that he might actually have to apply to university after, in his only child privilege, getting his parents to surrender to letting him defer for a year. It’s somewhat similar to Sacha Baron Cohen vowing to give it all up–a.k.a. his Ali G shtick–before getting a call from the powers that be. Jesus, where’s my fucking bone from the universe when I threaten it?
His galvanization to succeed for the sake of showing off his artistic talent to a woman also harkens back to what is a bygone age, one in which men actually left their room filled with the light of the glowing blue screen transmitting their video games (an entity and non-act that will never be as romantic as Lana Del Rey painted it). The quintessentially nonplussed sound engineer of the now folkloric show, Brian Ellis, looked back on the gig in a 2010 interview to remark, “They were so young but you could tell they had a couple of elements that other younger bands didn’t have–the singer could sing and the drummer could drum.” Not a huge vote of confidence for what it takes to stand out in modern “indie music,” but alas, the public must take what they can get when crumbs of quality are tossed their way. Luckily, Arctic Monkeys merits a four out of five in the present more than they ever did circa their debut. In any case, it all just goes to show that anything worth doing is worth doing for love–or at least lust. So to the girl out there that Alex Turner wanted to impress, whoever you are, thank you.
