What it was really like at the first Arctic Monkeys gig - from someone who was actually there
What was it actually like to be around a band when their popularity is soaring? Rob Nicholson lifts the lid...
Pedalo Photography’s Rob Nicholson may be known for his keen snapper’s eye and sharp visuals these days.
However, he also has a sibling connection to Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys and shared some memories of being there from the band’s first gig to hitting number one in the charts.
During a recent visit to Pedalo in Neepsend, Rob spoke about how it really was growing up around the Arctic Monkeys as the band blew up and what it was like to be tagging along with bassist brother Andy and the rest of the crowd.
“It was great. I kind of always have like a pre-2003 and then a post-2003 life of when it all kind of started,” Rob says. “You obviously don’t expect what’s going to happen to actually happen.”
The tale of how the band got their first ever gig definitely has ‘A Certain Romance’ to it and it was all thanks to a favour from a mate.
“That first gig, they were supporting my friend's band,” Rob explained. “The guitarist's brother was drumming for this other band and I think I said to my mate ‘My brother needs a gig. Can they get on with you?’ He's like ‘yeah’, and then they did the gig.”
Despite the gig taking place at The Grapes on Trippet Lane over two decades ago, it is often a story retold with great candour by many. But in reality, many of those stories are just that, a fictional fabrication.
“When we were at that Grapes gig, we weren’t going ‘remember this because they’re gonna be huge’. We were just there to support.
“Now half of Sheffield say they were at that gig,” Rob says with a laugh. “But in actual fact there were like 40-people there, about 20 of them were hairdressers.”
Legend says they were paid twenty-seven pounds for a number of covers, but in the age of stretching a story, you have to wonder how much was actually true.
What the quartet did play were the White Stripes’ ‘Hotel Yorba’, the Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’, and songs by Fatboy Slim, The Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix – as well as some of their own material like Ravey Ravey Ravey Club and Curtains Closed.
Rob remembers the event well. “I was just there to support my brother,” he says. “I guess when it started to really blow up, I’d been to see a few of the early gigs, but I had my own group of mates and I’d hang around with them. It wasn’t until maybe like six-months or so when I came to another gig.
“I was like ‘when did this happen?’ This is mad, this is crazy.”
It was around this time that things were beginning to gather pace as more people became aware of them.
Rob remembers some of the places and people the band were meetingt at the time.
“I went on a few things with them, we all went down to London when they were interviewed by Zane Lowe,” he said. “Just to sort of tag along and experience it.”
His adventures with the Arctic Monkeys in the early days saw Rob going up and down the country with the band, Leeds and Reading Festival visits and the likes where he would end up sleeping on the band’s hotel room floor.
Rob said: “At that time, when you’re in your early 20s, you’re just like ‘this is fun’. You’re not really paying attention to it.
“It wasn’t really until Leeds Festival, the second one, that you noticed it. When they were playing in the NME tent and there was like six or seven thousand people trying to get into a tent that holds four thousand. It was wild.
“We were all just sat behind the stage, and this mini-bus turned up with security guards. Our Andy said to Tim, who was the tour manager, ‘who are they for?’ and Tim says ‘for you’.”
Talk moved on to the impact of MySpace on this burgeoning rock band’s career and whether it was true that the one-time social media platform was responsible for catapulting this band into the national and then global consensus.
“MySpace gets the credit for it but it was really a guy called Mark, Mark Bull,” Rob remembers. “He was a photographer then. He still does videos for them now.
“Mark was taking photos of gigs and had this website. His nickname was ‘The Sheriff’ and he had a website called, ‘I Love the Sheriff’, and he would just upload demos that people would give him.”
Much of the attention the Arctic Monkeys got in the early days came from Mark Bull’s website. “I don’t really remember MySpace being as influential as people say,’ Rob says.
In the mid 2000s, the social media platform was huge, lauded by the media as being pivotal in launching the careers of artists like the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen to name but a few.
In reality though, the growth of the iconic Sheffield band was much more organic and not actually a result of MySpace.
“It’s almost like a revisionist sort of history really,” Rob adds. “I always sort of felt bad for Mark because everyone says they were discovered on MySpace. From what I remember, it was always Mark’s kind of thing.
“It was Mark that uploaded the demos and photographed the gigs. He’s been with them for years, going around the world with them. He still lives in the city now.”
When the band received their first number one, for hit ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, Rob recalls a visit to the local pub to listen tot he charts.
He said: “It just went mad. It is a bit of a blur, I didn’t really go to too many out of town gigs. But, I remember the day that ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ came out and we all went to The Packhorse Inn at High Green to listen to the charts. And that was absolutely mental.
“We were all there, all friends and family were there and they’re going through the charts. Then the DJ says, ‘So this week’s number one is it going to be...’ and then they played a bit of ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ followed by a bit of SugaBabes hit single ‘Push the Button’.
“I vividly remember them saying this week’s number two, and then ‘Push the Button’ started. Everyone was just hugging each other, people are crying… it was crazy.
“Like such a good feeling and then they did it again for when ‘When the Sun Goes Down’ came out. After finding out they’d got another number one they went straight to The Leadmill to do a gig and play it.”
Following the release of their debut album, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’, the Arctic Monkeys’ popularity rose ever higher.
On release, it became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history, selling over 360,000 copies in its first week, and to this day remains the fastest-selling debut album by a band in the country. Not too bad at all.
As for the rest of the story? Well, that’s gone down in Sheffield folklore...
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