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Arctic Monkeys biography
ARCTIC MONKEYS BIOGRAPHY
Sheffield scamps The Arctic Monkeys are arguably the first British superstars of the internet generation. The teenage band's internet savvy approach - marshalling their fanbase via chat rooms and making Mp3s of their recordings available online for fans to share - propelled them to a No 1 single (I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor) and the biggest selling debut album in UK chart history, (Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not).
Although by no means unique, the Arctic Monkeys success is also a reflection of the changing ways in which fans buy and consume music. With 10m homes in the UK now hooked up for broadband, downloading music is surpassing the popularity of record shops. HMV's 200 stores in Britain slumped in the red last year. In the UK, online music sales have grown fourfold to 26m tracks with Apple's iTunes accounting for about 70 per cent of the traffic.
So while music industry bigwigs sit on their chubby, expense account fed bottoms, bands like the Arctic Monkeys have embraced the web and have seen its full potential. Singer Alex Turner says: "At first we didn't have a label. So we used to make little CDs and put them out. Through that people took it and put it on these filesharing websites." (My space, Bandwagon). "There's nowt you can do about it," says the refreshingly unstarry Turner. "We were just chuffed to bits that other people wanted to hear it." The result was that at the Monkeys gigs, fans sang along to every verse of every song, even though their album was months away from release.
The Arctic Monkeys were formed after singer and guitarist Alex turner met drummer Matthew Helders at Barnsley college in 2002. They later recruited guitarist Jamie Cook and bassist Andy Nicholson. Turner and Cook had received guitars as Christmas presents and made practising an obsession, memorizing hits by the White Stripes and The Vines. The boys shared a love of The Smiths, The Jam, Oasis, System Of A Down and everything from reggae to hip hop. They honed their musicianship and lyricism with witty tales of small-town life where "there's only music so that there's new ringtones," (A Certain Romance).
It was a year before the Monkeys dared venture on to the stage at their first gig, The Grapes in Sheffield. "There were maybe 50 people there. We got nothing from the ticket money. We were very nervous but it were right exciting," remembers Alex. The small crowd went beserk and the band thought they might be on to something. A few gigs later, the band found themselves playing the Sheffield Forum in front of a crowd who knew all the words to songs the band hadn't even released. The reason? The webmaster of the band's official website had made the band's demos available to download. Soon the tracks quickly became available on several peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. With the demos now appearing all over the web, the buzz on the band was spreading. The band came to the attention of Radio 1 and the tabloid press.
In May 2005, the band released their first EP, the limited edition, Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys, featuring the songs Fake Tales of San Francisco and From the Ritz to the Rubble. The band even played the 2005 Reading and Leeds festivals still without a major record released. Their appearance was received by an unusually large crowd for the billing they played and naturally the crowd knew all the songs. October 2005 saw the band sell out the London Astoria, with 2000 fans singing the words to every song. Eventually the grass-roots frenzy surrounding the band lured record company scouts and although the band initially spurned offers, intending to go it alone, they signed to Domino Records in June 2005. The band were attracted by Domino owner Laurence Bell, who ran the label from his flat and only signed bands that he personally liked.
Their first single after signing to Domino, I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor, was released on 17 October 2005 and went straight to No.1 on the UK Singles Chart. Three days later, the band made an appearance on the cover of NME. Their second single, When The Sun Goes Down, a gritty tale of teenage prostitution, ("She don't do major credit cards I don't think she does receipts") followed in January 2006 and went straight to No. 1 again, toppling X Factor star Shayne Ward from the top spot.
The band's debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was released on 23 January 2006. The release was brought forward a week after the label discovered that demand was very high and possibly as a result of the album's leak onto the internet. Ironic really when you consider how the band started.
Whatever People Say I Amcame the fastest selling debut album in chart history, selling 363,735 copies in its first week, smashing the previous record of 306,631 copies held by Hear'Say and their debut, Popstars. The record's first day sales alone, 118,501 copies, made it the fastest selling debut rock album. The band even found success in America with the album selling 34,000 copies in its first week of release, making it the second fastest selling for a debut indie album in America.
Naturally the Sheffield scamps remain relatively unfazed by their success. "I don't think we realise how big we are to be honest.," says Andy Nicholson. "We're just four blokes playing some music together. But every night, there seems to be more and more people out there."
"We'll get to 25 and boom!" says Jamie. "Everyone always sells more records when they shoot themselves don't they?"
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