Arctic Monkeys: Alex Turner's first concert and the Sheffield gig he most regrets missing

The Arctic Monkeys famously played their first gig at Sheffield's The Grapes pub in 2003.

The lads from High Green were just 16 when they took to the stage upstairs in front of a handful of people - or a crowd of thousands, if you believe everyone who says they were there - beginning their whirlwind rise to worldwide fame.

But what was the first gig they attended, who helped inspire their unique sound and what gig do they most regret missing out on seeing?

Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner told Entertainment Weekly how he, Matt Helders and Nick O'Malley, the band's bassist, got the train to Manchester with another friend to see the Vines in October 2002.

It was his first gig, he explained, and the day remains etched in his memory, including watching the opening acts, the Bandits and Nada Surf.

"That was really the start," he told Entertainment Weekly. "We were going to shows whenever we could after that. We'd just started playing together that summer, in me parents' garage.

"We'd be trying to play 'Get Free' by the Vines. And the Datsuns — they had a song called 'Harmonic Generator,' and we used to do a cover of that.

"I'm sad that I missed [seeing] the Strokes in Sheffield for Is This It, though. I was a little bit late to the party there."

The first records Alex Turner bought

The Strokes played at The Leadmill in Sheffield on August 23, 2001, before appearing at the Reading Festival that weekend, in the month their debut studio album was released to huge acclaim in the UK.

Turner also described how the first album he bought was Be Here Now, by Oasis, while the first single he purchased was Torn, by Natalie Imbruglia, which was released in 1997.