Arctic Monkeys x 'Esquire' magazine, May 2014.

The Arctic Monkeys are featured in the May 2014 issue of 'Esquire' magazine, styled in the likes of 'Saint Laurent', 'Burberry Prorsum’ and 'Calvin Klein'.

"Esquire: Music aside, what’s your role in Arctic Monkeys?
Cook: I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.
Nick O’Malley: Central defender. [To Cook] You’re a bit of a right winger
Helders: Masseuse.
Turner: My job is not to use football analogies.

Esquire: What makes a good frontman?
O’Malley: Someone who’s got charisma, I suppose. People always say, “I like it when frontmen of bands are really honest and themselves”. Well, I fucking don’t. I prefer a character you won’t meet everyday, someone that seems like they’re from another planet. It’s not, “What about that fucking weather?” Do you know what I mean? I want to think you’ve just landed from outer space.
Cook: Alex has evolved from being quite shy, quite kind of quiet. Like, some people have got freaked out by the change. But I think it’s much better the way he is now.
Turner: Certainly, in this day and age, a sense of humour. Because it’s pretty ridiculous. In 1969, there probably weren’t many laughs in rock’n’roll. But then they were probably funny people. They had a sense of humour, they just didn’t use it. Not to name-drop, but we bumped into Robert Plant last night and he’s hilarious. Just funny, straight away. [These days] I think if you start taking it too seriously, which I’m, like, sometimes definitely in danger of doing… then it gets ugly.
Helders: Probably a decent hairstyle wouldn’t go amiss.

Esquire: Why haven’t Arctic Monkeys messed it up?
Turner: It depends on who you ask, in some people’s heads we probably have. I suppose working with good people, and a bit of luck, really. We’ve got a great manager and we made a good decision there to sign with a label that was going to encourage us to flourish. [Thinks] I was trying not to say this but, you know, it’s built on a friendship that goes back to when we were, like, seven years old or whatever. I’m just desperately trying not to be, like, sentimental.
O’Malley: We keep trying. I need to get a really big drug habit, then we’re fucked. But you want to look back and go, “No regrets about it”. You meet people who are in bands and they seem quite bitter about things that have happened to them. But we’ve got no feelings like that. Hopefully, when I’m old I will still be able to say that.
Helders: There’s loads of things we’ve backed away from or not done that maybe would have made us a bigger band but weren’t necessarily that credible or something we could live with ourselves for. Even if that’s just a song idea that’s a bit dishonest in a way. It’s quality control. As long as we all agree on stuff, then I think we’ll be alright.
Cook: Really? I don’t know."

Click HERE to read the full interview. I think it might actually be my favourite Arctic Monkeys interview, ever.

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