I Bet This Looks Good on Your Coffee Table - new photo book by Arctic Monkeys original bassist Andy Nicholson
The unmistakable wiry thrum of I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor powered the Arctic Monkeys anthem that catapulted four Sheffield lads from sticky-floored pubs to global fame.
Holding down that groove was Andy Nicholson - the band’s original bassist and a founding heartbeat of their raw, restless energy, writes Graham Walker.
Within months, they were Britain’s biggest band. Within weeks of that success, Andy was gone.
In June 2006, at the height of their meteoric rise, he was no longer part of the band.
Andy has since described the experience as “heartbreaking,” while frontman Alex Turner later reflected they were too young to handle it properly.
Now, almost two decades later, Andy is finally looking back — not in anger, but through the lens of a camera.
I Bet This Looks Good on Your Coffee Table, his new photo book, is a celebration of how it felt to be part of the Arctic Monkeys’ meteoric rise when their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, exploded onto the scene.
It’s launched this weekend with an exhibition at Yorkshire Artspace, in Brown Street, Sheffield, on November 22 and 23, 10am to 5pm.
The exhibition features not just photos but also memorabilia, including the bass he used to recorded the iconic first album.
I Bet This Looks Good on Your Coffee Table can also be bought online at iamandynicholson.com.
The 175-page hardback is both a time capsule and, as Andy puts it, “a cathartic act of closure.”
His photos, taken between 2005 and 2007, offers unfettered access to life inside one of Britain’s most explosive musical stories — from cramped dressing rooms and recording sessions to the Saturday Night Live debut and the quiet moments between the chaos.
Raised in Sheffield after an early childhood in California, he remains an affable, well-connected mainstay of the city’s creative scene.
Since leaving the Monkeys, he’s collaborated with names like Jon McClure and Lowkey in Mongrel, led projects such as Goldteeth and The Book Club, and forged a new path as a DJ, producer and designer under his AndyGun moniker.
“This isn’t about how I left,” he says. “It’s about what it was like to be there — the boredom, the laughter, the firsts. It’s a celebration.”
He explains: “I Bet This Looks Good On Your Coffee Table is photos taken from 2005 to 2007 from my time with the Arctic Monkeys, not right at the beginning, but from when we started touring.
“I found a folder full of photos and I thought, let me see what I can do with this. So I put a book together over 10 years, to keep revisiting and re editing.
“People saw the band, what we were doing, and the how many hundreds of 1000s of records were sold with the first album, the meteor taking off and flying through the sky. But this is what it was like standing on the meteor. This is from the inside out.
“I feel now was the best time to do this, because I wanted to get it out in time for the album turning 20 years old, which feels like a beautiful celebration.”
He says it also took time to come to terms with the memories of his departure from the band.
“When I first found the photos, I was not mentally in the right place to be editing them,” he says. “I think that's why I parked it and kept coming back to it, until I could deal with the memories. Now it's it's really positive looking back and it's a celebration of that time I had, where I've come from and where I've been.
“I've not really thought about a written biography. I feel like I've still got quite a few chapters to live before I write that. So maybe one day, that'd be great. But for now, I'll just do it with the photos.”
His passion for photography began at an early age. He said: “My uncle , Paul Ibberson, was a photographer for The Star newspaper when I was growing up, so me and my brother grew up around cameras. My brother's a professional photographer. I always still carry a camera everywhere I go, whether that's filming, or taking photos. I document life, like I always have. Everyone's got a camera in their pocket, but back then they didn't. ”
Of his time in the Arctic Monkeys he recalls: “It was just four friends playing music that we'd written together, trying to perform them the best we could, still learning our instruments throughout the whole process.
“My time came to an end in mid 2007, when I had some family issues I had to take care of, so we got a friend of ours to fill in, to do the American tour.
“He did that and when they came back they decided to keep him, which was a big blow at 19 years old, not really knowing what you were going to do then, because you thought you'd got a future planned out. So it took time to regroup after that.”
So did he jump or was he pushed?
“It was very much pushed,” he says. “But I felt it wasn't done with a smile on the face. It was a hard decision for everyone to make. And at 19-years-old, making those big decisions when you're selling hundreds of 1000s of records, it went from a band to a business. I feel like that was the thing that made it hard for everyone.
“But now everyone's fine, good friends again. I'm still in touch with everybody. We send texts over Christmas and see each other when we can.
“I haven't played with them since. I did my last gig with them in 2007, in Lisbon. There's not been any talk of it, but I'm always open to going back and playing one or two songs with them every now and then - they know where I am if they need me.”
Fans are in for real treat with the exhibition to launch his book set to hit all the right notes, as he’s taking memorabilia with him - including his trusty bass guitar that he played on that first album.
“I bought that bass just before we recorded the first Arctic Monkeys album, so it’s part of the exhibition. I used it on the first album, and everything that I played on after that to this day. It's, not my only bass, but it's the one that I always go back to.
“It’s a Fender Precision that I bought from a music shop called Sound Control here in Sheffield - not far from the exhibition here at Yorkshire Artspace. I paid about £1,200 for it. Now it’s priceless. I wouldn’t part with it.”
He literally chiselled his first name on the front of it - not while he was in Arctic Monkeys, but in more recent times.
“I’m a fan of Paul Simonon, the bass player in The Clash, who put his name on his guitar, do I did the same - with a hammer and a chisel,” he laughed.
“The exhibition also features mine and Alex's first guitars. There's a few plaques, awards and pictures of us sat in dressing rooms and the things that we did when we were on tour, really.
“There’s even a bit of colouring in for kids to do, if people want to bring children along - they can stick their work on the wall, so that can become part of the exhibition.
“I'll be here all the time, if people want to speak to me, or get things signed. And of course the book will be on sale.”
He says of his bass playing and contribution to Artic Monkeys: “The way that all the bass lines came about where either Alex would write the bass line or say, ‘what do you want to play around what I'm playing’? And that became the sound and the energy, the punkiness that we managed to put into that first album, I think, it really embodied the energy that everyone was feeling at the gigs as well, which really worked both ways.
“If I'd still been in the band, would they have sounded any different? I'm not sure. I feel like Arctic Monkeys is a train that's moving forward and always progressing and never trying to do the same thing twice. So I don't know whether we would have done the same things that they've done now or not, but I definitely think it would have moved forward and progressed.”
He adds: “The future for me is this book right now, really putting a lot of energy into this and trying to make sure it comes across in the right way, promoting that and playing bass on other things. I’m doing a lot of photography and a show with Johnny Nelson, the ex professional boxer, world title holder, called That Boxing Show With Johnny Nelson. So I'm keeping myself busy. I've got children, so I'm a working dad.”