Alex Turner for OOR Magazine (October 2022)
Conducted in August 20th 2022 by Willem Bemboom
Alex in the sun on a terrace. Leather jacket, classic shades, a big head of hair in desperate need of a handful of Brylcreem. He almost looks like a time-traveller, someone from another dimension, unmoved by the sounds of the city in the distance and the swelling lunch crowd around us.
He talks slowly and dragging, as if the battery is almost flat. His pauses in thought are numerous and stretched out, sometimes to determine what he DOES want to say, more often to think about what he does NOT want to say. Apparently he is so used to intelligent or difficult questions, that the easy ones throw him off. What are you listening to? What has changed? What do you think yourself is the most beautiful lyric? Endless silences, you can almost hear the brain cracking. But they are by no means painful. The lesson taken from previous interviews - and in fact the essence of Arctic Monkeys: just let Alex Turner meditate, that's where eventually the best things come from.
The sunglasses meanwhile are being taken on and off every minute. With wide eyes full of wonder Turner turns the casual things lying on the table into a journey of discovery. OOR's old trusted dictaphone for example. 'Reliable stuff', he judges. ‘At worst eats your tape one time, but such a device will not betray you. Two buttons, on, off, record, play. You don't need more options. I want to start working with these things a bit more.”
He weighs the device for a moment, as if he is testing a peach or tomato at the local fruit & veg. A mysterious short laugh follows. Who knows what goes on in that head.
The Car as a record makes an analogous impression, either way in terms of technique and instrumentation.
Right? Texture wise for sure. Old instruments, string arrangements. The ideas are kneaded to songs with human hands. Although this time we also have a Moog.
And the subjects as well seem to come from a different time. Classic Hollywood, faded glory, but also Cold War stuff. In various songs there are spying elements sneaking around.
That’s for sure what I’m doing in the new songs. Think of Gene Hackman in The Conversation, you have to search in circle of people as such.Vague surveillance stuff, listening devices [focuses on the recorder again]. A bit like how this conversation is also being recorded, haha.
Social media seems completely absent, you are far from sketching a contemporary time frame. People talk on the phone together.
Good point. I imagine that phone in Big Ideas like that, on the wall, with a turntable. It is indeed an analog world, there is no apping or anything like that. On the first song on our first record I sing about a phone that is being unlocked [The View From The Afternoon]. You had to press the asterisk key to avoid accidentally turning on your cell phone. We still play that song every night, I’ve now sang it so often that I’m not thinking about those lyrics at all. A few days ago I did have a clear mind and suddenly I realised: gosh, this is not how phones are any more! Back in the days I was more up-to-date with my technological references, on AM there are still text messages and such. That's gone now. I have gone back in time, it seems.
Your previous album took place at the moon. Where - and especially when - is The Car set?
Hm. [long silence] You know what, I really don't have any idea whatsoever. Even for Tranquility Base I now wonder if it all took place at the moon. That sort of thing reveals itself only later, sometimes even a lot later. The music triggers something in me, I build on the atmosphere and the sound, and I just let The Idea run wild - though I refine the lyrics endlessly after they get into shape. But the source? Dunno, that can't be guided or be explained. I did try to steer away a bit more from the sci-fi idiom than on the previous one. Whether it succeeded is question number two. For some reason there’s somehow always science fiction seeping through.
You now refer in several numbers to old movies and showbiz, like the musical Anything Goes, 1930s Broadway, with music by Cole Porter. New fascination?
Hmmm, no. By the way, it is indeed lifted from a movie. Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom begins with the song Anything Goes, from that musical, sung in Chinese. Nice opening, although I’m certainly not the biggest Indiana Jones fan. I suddenly thought about it, so it ended up in that song. That's how it goes with most things. Who knows where it comes from and what it means. It's suddenly there.
Is Sculptures Of Anything Goes a New York song? Apart from the Broadway link you sing about 'city life 09', the period you lived in Brooklyn, and ‘Village coffee mornings, with not long since retired spies’.
As in: written in New York? No, I haven't been to New York in ages. The Village is in there…. I think this is another of those science fiction things. You've been nervously playing around with that empty cassette box for 15 minutes now, and I’m now imagining that it contains City Life 09. I’m fond of the idea there will be a city life cartridge in the future, a simulation that you can board. I’m imagining a full box of those cartridges, from 1929 to 1959 to 1969 to 1979 to 1989 and so on. That’s because I think there should be intervals of ten years to notice a substantial difference in such a huge city. And the 2009 one is missing from that lyric, it's inside the machine because it's used most often. Whether it's also refers to my time in New York… No idea. It's purely a bit of fantasy.
Let’s swap the fantasy for the facts for a little bit: where and when did you start making this record?
Even before the lockdowns, right away after the Tranquility Base tour in South America. In April and May 2019 I wrote the first attempts of new songs, we already recorded some bits in late 2019, but that attempt led to nothing. Only after the lockdowns we came back together again, last summer, in Butley Priory, an old monastery at the coast of Suffolk. No one knew we were there, it was a remote place. It reminded me of our first record, when we went from the madhouse to the countryside for a while as well. We never did that again ever since, until now. Recording a record in England also was a while ago, same counts for a summer album. So there we were again, at the English countryside, as a rrrrock band! [big eyes and a rolling rrrrr] No distractions, like in the city. Extra focus, no prying eyes. All in the same zone. Good morning, you know.
We will come back at that ‘rock band’ part for a bit later. What did a day in Suffolk look like for the rest?
Oh, every morning we got trumpeted out of our beds with a reveille. And a while after a bell was ringing: go to work, lazy bastards! Thereafter a Powerpoint presentation with schedules and tactics. No, just joking, it was the opposite. Very calm and relaxed, everything in our own tempo. These days I find it essential to take the time. That’s because every project has to search and find its own way. As a maker you also have to let a piece of work go its own way. During the summer of 2019 I read a book about movie editing, In The Blink Of An Eye by Walter Murch. Although movie editing is not my discipline, I did get interesting things out of it anyway, there are parallels with how I put together a record these days. Editing usually involves cutting out bad bits. The question that immediately arises: what is a bad bit? Are there bad bits at all? This Sir Murch calls the process of editing the discovery of a path through all the available material. The more you shot, the more possible paths there are. And because I had quite a lot of ideas, more than ever actually, which all wanted to exist, it was extra important to especially follow the feeling. Sometimes I got a direction in mind, and then the piece itself drags you in the opposite direction anyway. It has other ideas. It lives, it is an entity. Let it go. That’s how it went now as well.
You keep on avoiding the meaning of your lyrics. Is the writing of it not a conscious process then?
Hmmm, that always comes last anyway. I am endlessly adjusting and rewriting. When we were working on the music in Suffolk, I hardly sang on top of it. I do believe that at this moment in time I write down what I am experiencing more directly. I'm a bit more open, more honest, apparently inspired by four guys who are just standing together in a room making music.
What do you consider your favourite find on The Car?
Oh… I forgot to bring my cheat sheet. I’ve got a folder with notes, which I planned on bringing with me. But it also feels a little know-it-all and self-conscious to start giving a lecture from my own notes here. My best line… I wouldn’t know! I simply don’t know all the lyrics by heart yet. [long pause] I think ‘Big Ideas’ as a whole is a very accomplished song.
Ah, with the ‘hysterical scenes’ that are reminiscent of a band just breaking through. ‘We had ‘em out of their seats, waving their arms and stomping their feet’ – that’s where the echo of Monkeymania is audible.
Or just The Beatles. ‘Clap your hands and stomp your feet’, is what Lennon sometimes shouted from the stage…
Hm, yeah. No. Here I imagine sort of more like a movie producer giving someone a call. Or something like that.
Big Ideas is full of melancholy – and that counts for more songs in general.
It’s not just in the words, you know. Yes, so that’s how it works for me: the words arise from the feeling the music evokes. The melody supplies the words and ideally they complement each other. In that way, the things it makes you say are indeed not conscious. It purely revolves around what the music allows you to say.
“Over and out, it’s been a thrill”, you sing on Big Ideas. Hello You, Jet Skis On The Moat and Perfect Sense also contain “goodbyes” and “goodnights”. Are you saying goodbye to something?
Yeah, I think that’s fair. That all has to do with where I arrived in life at the moment. I’m 36, the band exists for about twenty years, including the whole run-up. So I’ve been in the band for more than half of my life. You leave things behind, while the clock keeps ticking. People, places, your younger self. Time. Though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you get new things in return. But it’s human nature to sometimes look back on what has been, what’s behind you. Though I’m pretty good at leaving things behind.
Like loud guitar music for example.
The rrrrrrrrock band you just mentioned is not the same as the one from 2006 anymore.
Haha, not on the record, no! But on stage we just keep on rocking, that all co-exists. But you know what’s the funny thing? We could very well still have made a loud guitar record after all. If the music had asked for it, I think I would have obediently followed. When we finished touring in 2019, everything pointed in that direction. Much louder than Tranquility Hotel, in any case. But that started to shift towards a different direction and that’s why we took a break from it at the time. I was afraid I would start forcing things. And sometimes you just have to accept the fact you can’t go back to the riffs from ten years ago. At the end of the tour I knew what kind of songs I wanted to do, with the lights of the stage still in my eyes and the thundering roars of the audience in my ears. Big, loud guitars should have been part of that. That’s what I’m gonna do! I even put on my motorcycle boots to get a hold of that mood. But that didn’t feel right in the end, as said. You’re not that person anymore, your music wants to go in a different direction. Then I can only follow that.
Put the Arctic Monkeys who were recording at the English countryside in 2006 next to the band working at Suffolk last summer. Not to see what has changed, but what hasn’t changed?
Well, everything has changed. [2 minutes of silence while you can almost hear a movie playing in his head] … except for the countryside and England, haha! I did find it more fun this time though. Maybe because right now we finally know what we’re doing. Yes, that has remained the same. The only reason we now can not make a loud guitar record in all peace and comfort, is because we’re still Arctic Monkeys. Everyone has grown up, the essence of the band has grown with us. The faces are a bit more round, the boys call their children instead of their parents, but the feeling remains the same. Life itself happened – and not in an unpleasant way. It’s all good, everything. Yes, it’s fine.
Why did you have more fun now than back then? Did that 20 year old kid that recorded ‘Whatever People Say I Am…’ not know what he was doing?
Not what happened to him, no. It was a great time, but oh dear, so much stress! Now I’m completely relaxed in everything I do. Looking back at 2006, everything was so… tight! My guitar was hanging just below my chin, the strap was almost pinched around my back. That example alone. I let the guitar nicely hang nowadays. And sometimes I even leave it in its stand. The schedules are looser, the people are looser, the music is looser. Less heavy, not as frenetic and whaaaargh! It’s fitting better in its own skin. Just like ourselves. The jacket is hanging loosely unbuttoned. I’m sitting behind a grand piano in the corner. And still it feels like Arctic Monkeys, because we’re still walking the same path, however strange the path winds. The same timeline and the same principles. The path, following the music, is the constant factor. 15 years ago we followed our instinct as young lads and The Record is what resulted from it. Now we’re still doing that, and this time that record is The Car.
Oh yeah, The Car. What kind of car is it?
Does it stand for anything?
No, it’s standing on a roof. The cover photo was taken by Matthew Helders, our drummer. When I saw that photo a few years ago, I immediately knew it had the potential to be an album cover for the band. There’s not just spies and goodbyes in the lyrics, if you listen closely you can hear a few cars. And after [raises voice] Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino the temptation to call something ‘The Car’ is simply too big. It is what it is.
Yep. And that car on the cover in particular.
Where was the photo taken?
If I’m not mistaken, in Los Angeles.
Ah, Los Angeles. There you’re nothing without a car. What kind do you drive?
I don’t own a car. I’m back in London now and it’s just not practical there. No car…
Where did you used to go on holidays as a kid?
Oh, eh, Eastbourne, on the south shore. With my grandparents on the Dotto Train, one of those tourist carts along the beach. But how did we suddenly end up here?
I wondered about this when I heard The Car, the song. Nicely melancholic, you sing about past holidays, falling asleep at the back seat.
But that doesn’t take place in Eastbourne [rolls his eyes]. But where does it take place, I can hear you think… In a parallel universe full of espionage and science fiction, haha!
Sounds exciting. Have you ever tried writing a script yourself?
No. The kind of stories I tell are mostly… based on the music and the melodical ideas, as I already explained. Those bring forth the story. If I wouldn’t have that, I would struggle. I would like to learn this though, sometime, one day. But I’m not working on it now, it’s a whole different skill to the one I’ve currently got on board. Never say never, we’ll see. But definitely not tomorrow [thinks for a bit, laughs]. Tomorrow’s Pukkelpop. There’s no time for drafting scripts. Although it is a world I would like to roam about, one I’d like to explore. At the Priory I had an old 16mm camera with me, one that fits in the palm of your hand and you have to crank up yourself. Still not even close to Hollywood. But ah well, that’s a hobby.
What music are you listening to yourself at the moment?
[two minutes of silence] I used to be able to always draw a straight line from what I was listening to right to the new record, that’s different now, I think. No more adding this, this, this and this and you’ve got the new Monkeys. It’s not as clear what those things are this time, not even for me.
If you could go to Record Palace at the opposite of Paradiso with 50 euros right now, what would you pick from there?
Oh wow, that place is amazing! I actually should stop by there later. We’ve been so busy fine-tuning the show, this morning I only took a walk in the park for a bit… Lovely morning.
But at the moment you’re listening to…
Oh man… After finishing the record, nothing for a while, for a few months. Now it’s starting up again a bit. Headphones on… listening to things. What do I want to share here right now?
I’ll just write down Nookie by Limp Bizkit.
Oh no. Is that a threat? Alright, in that case do… Nat King Cole! The song ‘Where Did Everybody Go’. Why? That’s why.
At There’d Better Be A Mirrorball you actually sound a bit like Nat King Cole. Coincidence?
Ha, that’s nice! Eh, yes, coincidence. On the other hand: what’s a coincidence?
You sing a lot in falsetto, you croon, sometimes you’re channelling Bowie. Are you still looking for your voice or are you finally coming close?
Always in search of! You look for a manner of singing that guides the music the easiest way. A way that’s in tune with the feeling you wanna convey. That’s the hardest part… no, that’s what you’re aiming for, that connection.
With what you can’t really grasp. And can’t understand. Or can’t express into words. How you as a normal little person can become part of that wonder, the music. There’s a technical component to it, by practicing a lot I can reach a higher pitch or hold a note better. Those are means. The purpose is something bigger though. There’s this great song on Sinatra at the Sands, 'Don’t Worry About Me', that he introduces as one of the best songs ever. In one part of a verse he sings a step-up note, bigger and bigger, that fills all gaps in the notes just to get to the next step. It’s off, but because of that it’s actually perfectly right. It stands out. That’s why I call magic. That’s what it’s about. Getting completely lost in that feeling and getting to a place where everything is right. Even when it’s not right. Even more so when it’s not right. Then you know it’s right.
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