Philadelphia Weekly

Four years on from the triumphant Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (fastest selling debut in UK album history), and Sheffield’s favorite sons the Arctic Monkeys are sitting pretty. Back home in Britain they’re bona fide rock gods, pampered pop princelings ruling the charts and selling out arena tours with almost contemptuous ease.

And over on this side of the pond, it’s got to be said, the future’s looking pretty good indeed—so far they’ve scooped up a couple of Grammy nominations, attracted celebrity fans (more on that later), enjoyed top 20 chart placings, and done steady business across the nation’s more modest, mid-size venues. They might not have completely cracked America (yet), so often the ambition and downfall of so many British bands, but they’re in no real hurry. They haven’t imploded or collapsed into drunken, drugged up disarray like so many of their illustrious forebears (step forward the Libertines, Blur, the Clash, the Jam, etc, etc, ad nauseam) which is highly impressive, considering they’re barely out of their teens.

What’s more, the band remains almost ludicrously sanguine about their meteoric success, the hype and boggle-eyed, froth-mouthed bullshit that’s surrounded them. Drummer Matt Helders in particular comes across as the quintessential dry, professional, young northern Englishman who’s got his head screwed on straight and his feet planted firmly on the ground. He’s remarkably unfazed about their American success, despite initial reservations regarding the band’s strong Yorkshire accents and regional references.

“Yeah, we were surprised that we’ve done so well here,” he says on the phone from San Diego, where the band began its latest US tour. “’We never really made a conscious effort to ‘break’ America, d’you know what I mean? That always seemed too much like hard work. It’s great though and it were surprising that people got into it with our accents and stuff. Mind you, we always compare that to us listening to rap—y’know it’s nothing to do with our lifestyle or the language we use, but you can still appreciate it. I mean, I obviously didn’t grow up in Compton, but I’m still interested in the language and imagery and y’learn stuff.”


The sun scorched expanses of the Mojave desert are a long, long way from the rain soaked streets of South Yorkshire. But that’s exactly where the Monkeys wound up to record the majority of their current album, Humbug . It’s a meaty, muscular, more mature affair than previous work, produced courtesy of Queens of the Stone Age head honcho, Josh Homme. It helped that Homme was a big fan of the band (and vice versa), and when approached by Domino Records label boss Laurence Bell, Homme jumped at the chance to work with them, hence the Monkeys’ journey to Rancho de la Luna out in the land of stoner rock, UFOs, and the ghost of Gram Parsons.


The thought of working with someone like Josh Homme out in the desert conjures up images of indulging in shamanistic rituals, doused naked in cheap Mezcal tequila while frying your eyeballs on a combination of peyote and smoking dried Gila Monsters. Plus Homme does have something of a reputation for being a hard living, fearless, badass motherfucker from hell. But no—by all accounts he was a total gent.


“You’re not quite sure what to expect. He does have an intimidating reputation, I suppose, but we just went in with open minds and it were cool. He’s a really nice man. Dead funny. Just someone we really respect, a good person to hang out with, always full of great ideas. A total inspiration really.”


While hanging out in the desert with Homme is undoubtedly very cool indeed, nothing, but nothing, comes close in the surreal stakes or beats the revelation that one of their biggest fans—an aficionado if you will—is none other than Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Seriously. Diddy.


“Oh yeah, I hung out with him. I went to his house in Miami,” notes Helders with quite stunning nonchalance. “That were quite funny.”


Bizarre. The incongruity is positively mind-blowing. This meeting came about through Monkeys collaborator James Ford who was DJing one of Diddy’s parties back in March at the Miami Winter Music Conference. Ford introduced Diddy to young Helders and thus, a musical love affair was born.


“Yeah, he comes up to us and says, ‘Oh I’m a massive fan of your band.”


Seriously, you’re just taking the proverbial piss now, aren’t you?


“No really, he did. He even came and saw us play in New York as well. He were right into it ...”


Now this is just getting ridiculous. God bless the Monkeys’ collective cotton socks but somehow we just can’t picture the Diddymeister kicking back in his platinum-coated, jewel-encrusted 
crib with a bottle of Ciroc or six to the strains of “Fake Tales of San Francisco” (sample lyric: ‘You’re not from New York/ You’re from Rotherham’), or, God forbid, ‘Mardy Bum’ (exactly). But no, cynicism be damned, it seems 
Diddy’s not only au fait with the Monkeys 
oeuvre, he’s practically a stalker.


“Oh yeah, he knew everything about us—B-sides, demos, the lot. He told us he were right into the lyrics which were cool. He weren’t joking y’know.”


The mind, frankly, boggles. ■