Arctic Monkeys Sheffield: From High Green to LA - how schoolmates became superstars

Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Nick O'Malley and Matt Helders are preparing for two giant homecoming gigs in the Steel City tomorrow and Saturday.

Hillsborough Park will be packed with thousands of fans as two sell-out crowds welcome the High Green boys home – just down the road from where their rise to world wide fame began.

“There’s not much more humble than High Green, we all lived within one road of each other basically on the same estate. Me and Alex went to school together from primary school, all the way until Barnsley College,” said drummer Matt Helders.

“So when we left secondary school, we went to Stocksbridge, we decided to start a band.

“We were all hanging out with each other anyway, and we had friends that had done it and watched them locally. Like Milburn and stuff like that. It made us feel like we could do it, we thought oh wow, we didn’t realise people just did that.

“It was such a weird idea to us at the time, I felt that bands just turned up on TV and that was it. I didn’t know the history of how they started or what they did, it was just such a foreign concept to me. I just felt like ‘there’s no way people like us could do it’, in a very cheesy cliché way…but, it was like that.

“We just gave it a go over the summer, got some instruments and just put this band together.”

And that was it, that is how the Arctic Monkeys began this journey which has seen them perform around the world, amass millions of fans and live the dream.

“I didn’t even have a drum kit at first, I just got some drumsticks to start with. Just to familiarise myself with what you do with them,” recalled Matt.

“We decided to practice for a year before we even wanted to try and do a gig. Then we did the first gig at The Grapes and that was the start of it.”

For years the venue was one of Sheffield’s standout music venues, naturally due to it being the place that hosted the Arctic Monkeys first ever gig — when the band members were just 16-years-old.

The room used for the now iconic gig was converted into a living area years ago. It remains a favoured haunt by some of the band, from time-to-time, and you may well see a Monkey or two if you happen to be passing by.

“After the first gig, we started recording demos and that’s when we got a taste for what it would be like to play in front of people,” said Matt.

What followed was quite the explosive response to the band, as their demo songs proliferated the social media platform MySpace. The band weren’t signed to a label back then, and were not directly involved in creating the surge in interest, preferring instead to focus on writing, gigging and sharing their demo CDs.

“That were the thing really, it was out of our hands. We didn’t have the genius thought to put ourselves out there. That was our mate Mark, who just knew how to do all of that,” said Matt. “We had no idea that it was even an option. We were just picking the CDs and he was putting them out there and then we noticed the website was getting a lot of action.”

The band became part of that new wave of music stars, including Calvin Harris, You Me At Six, Kate Nash and Lily Allen, who all saw their careers burst into the national spotlight courtesy of the now largely defunct social media platform.

“We noticed that people were knowing the words at gigs and that was a weird thing. I was like, ‘how do these people know these songs?’ And it was because he was putting them online,” remembered Matt.

But even bigger success was on the cards as their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, smashed the records selling over 360,000 copies in its first week and in doing so became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history — it’s since gone 7x platinum.

It didn’t do so badly in the US either, selling 500,000 to become the second best fastest-selling independent record label debut album. Not too shabby at all.

Matt and his bandmates may have a world-wide following, and life has certainly changed beyond comprehension, but they remain true to their roots – as Matt’s involvement in saving iconic Sheffield pub, Fagan’s, demonstrates.

Its future was in doubt following the retirement of landlords Tom and Barbara Boulding after 37 years spent running the establishment.

Dubbed “The Fellowship of Fagans”, rather amusingly by businessman James O’Hara, nine Sheffielders came together to ensure the pub didn’t go the way of other original city establishments, a point that Matt was keen to stress.

“My involvement is just that I felt it was an important place to keep alive, and I think that the people that were already part of the team to take it over will honour it as it was. It’s a pub I go to quite a bit whenever we are in town,” he said.

“Obviously, I didn’t grow up on that side of town. But when I started drinking, it was one of the places we’d always go to, plus it’s the one that Richard Hawley loves.

“It just felt like the right thing to do to be involved in it. For the people involved it doesn’t take much to keep it going, so if you can it’s a really good thing to do.”

Despite the somewhat obsessive interest that goes along with fame, it’s very apparent that there remains a desire from Matt to stay connected to his home. After relocating to Los Angeles, you could be forgiven for thinking that he was done with his hometown, so why bother coming back, a cynic might ask.

But, it’s safe to say it’s not a sentiment shared by Matt, who was even keen to reveal his favourite chippy as testament to his fondness for coming home.

“I would say Two Steps on Sharrow Vale Road, my dad used to go there in his twenties. Obviously we lived in High Green, so we didn’t go that much but I lived in Sharrow Vale before I moved to L.A. and I could just walk down, so the Two Steps is the one for me,” he said.

“Now if you’re in High Green, we always used to go to the Circle Friery which was just good because it was there.”

Asked what his take was, as well as his own experiences when it comes to dealing with all of the attention that comes their way, Matt said: “It’s true, I think I probably noticed it more a bit early on. It sort of never really bothered me that much because I was having fun. I kind of knew what we were doing was good…in the nicest possible way, I appreciated what we’ve got and don’t take it for granted.

“I feel like I’m doing enough by trying to stay grounded and not losing our minds.”

To some it may seem more than a little altruistic to be making such comments when some of the band live in the likes of Paris or Los Angeles, but what is clearly evident from Matt’s response is that it doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you’ve gone to, perceived or otherwise, just so long as you can recognise that nothing is certain or fixed.

“A lot of that is down to the fact that we did know each other before it all, we’ve got a lot more in common than this band. There’s more for us to talk about than what the gig was like or what the record was like,” he said.

“We can quite easily switch off and just hang around with each other. Plus we’ve got mutual friends so we can talk about them and experience that.

“It’s just that not everything is about the band, so I think that helps.”

With all the noise and hubris that comes with notions of fame, the band has a close group of people around them. , “There’s a real sense of being in it together, and that’s quite important with all of that,” he added.

“You’d feel quite lonely if you were dealing with that on your own. I always think about people who are just singers without a band around them. That must be quite difficult.

“I tend to get snapped more than any of us, but at least I’ve got ‘us’ as well. And we’re always like, ‘yeah, this is mad’, everything that’s happened to us. We kind of like acknowledge it.”

Superstardom can trick some into thinking that the world owes them something, be that deity-like fawning or some other ridiculous notion. But wherever they are the Arctic Monkeys retain a firm footing and humility, despite the assumptions that may follow the roving lens of the paparazzi — sure they’ve become insanely successful (and deservedly so) but at heart they’re still just a few lads from Sheffield who are enjoying making music and mocking each other the same way they always have.

Since the release of their breakthrough debut album the Arctic Monkeys have released six more albums, including the massive album AM, which was released to rapturous fanfare in 2013.Just last year the band released the critically acclaimed 2022 album, The Car. Stylistically it was very much a follow up to 2018s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, an album which while well received was also seen as a divisive release.

It was however a missed opportunity to opt for the Yorkshire portmanteau T’Car but it’s certainly a seductive ol’ affair with Alex Turner flexing his ever-growing vocal range and ever more subversive yet insightful lyrical expansion.

The album cover was adorned with a photo taken by none other than drummer Matt.

“Humbug definitely set us up to do that, and that was just via the nature of going somewhere different and working with someone new,” said Matt.

Following a brief hiatus for the frontman, Alex Turner, who toured and recorded a side-project as a duo with Miles Kane called the Last Shadow Puppets. The Arctic Monkeys reconvened for the creation of Humbug, recording half of the album in California with Josh Homme, he of Queens of the Stone Age, in 2008, before finishing up the album in New York with longtime collaborator the producer James Ford in 2009.

“Having that experience sort of changed my life, it introduced me to the notion of wanting to live in America. It was a significant record for personal reasons as well, musically it was obviously a little bit of a departure,” said Matt.

It was a point that was recently expressed by another Sheffield band, Reverend and the Makers’ Jon McClure, who said: “Musically there’s a very big risk for bands who’ve been around a long time to get incredibly predictable.”

A view that is evidently shared by the Arctic Monkeys and showcased in their continuously changing of direction, it also resonated with Matt who said that the experience of creating that album had a profound effect.

“It made us think, “oh yeah, we can do that and people will come along with us if they want to and they won’t if they don’t. The first two albums are still there and people can still enjoy those.”

“Honestly, I’d want that from a band as well”, he said, while discussing the evolution in artistic output. “Certain bands do it well, but how long can they do that for before you move onto something new as a listener?”

It’s no secret that Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino and The Car deviated from the likes of Favourite Worst Nightmare and AM. In some cases to the dismay of previous hardcore fans of the band.

“It has never felt like a forced intention for us, it was just sort of natural that we’d want to try something new. It depends on what inspires you at the time,” said Matt.

He expanded: “It’s not by design necessarily… it’s just more of a willingness to see what else there is. For me it feels like a natural evolution.”

The latest album is described by NME as being the band’s story so far, showcasing relentless innovation and unbreakable teamwork.