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Arctic Monkeys · S1 E2
The Grapes and the Boardwalk
Early gigs in Sheffield's pubs and clubs, playing to anyone who would listen
June 13, 2003, The Grapes pub, Trippet Lane, Sheffield. Four seventeen-year-olds walk onstage to James Brown's "The Boss" and play their first gig with their eyes closed.
Arctic Monkeys, From the Ritz to the Rubble, live at Glastonbury 2007. A song born from being turned away at Sheffield club doors, performed here on the biggest stage in British music. Turner channels the indignity of bouncers, queues, and "sorry mate, not tonight" into two minutes of furious, breathless rock.
From the Ritz to the Rubble, Arctic Monkeys (2006)
From the Ritz to the Rubble sounds exactly like an argument with a bouncer feels: breathless, indignant, and impossible to win. Turner's lyrics spill out so fast they trip over themselves, mimicking the panicked negotiation at a club door. The song shifts tempo three times, lurching between fury and resignation. Listen for how Cook's guitar mimics the stop-start frustration of a queue that never moves.
Friday the Thirteenth
The Grapes is a pub with a steep staircase and a cramped upstairs room that gives local bands a chance. On Friday the 13th of June 2003, four boys from High Green play a 25-minute set of mostly covers: The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Undertones, Fatboy Slim. They have exactly two original songs: "Ravey Ravey Ravey Club" and "Curtains Closed," which will never be played again.
Sources
NME, '15 years on, the story of Arctic Monkeys' first ever gig'
Radio X, 'What Did Arctic Monkeys Play At Their First Gig?'
The Grapes, Trippet Lane, Sheffield
The pub where Arctic Monkeys played their first ever gig. The upstairs room has since been converted to living accommodation, but the pub still draws fans from around the world who want to stand where it started.
“Someone told me that night they were going to be really big. And I said, 'Oh yes, we've all heard that before.'”
— Ann Flynn, landlady of The Grapes, NME (2018)
TAP TO REVEAL: Why did Alex Turner actually agree to play the first gig?
The Boardwalk and Beyond
After The Grapes, the band plays anywhere that will have them: The Boardwalk on Snig Hill, The Pheasant, small rooms above pubs across Sheffield. Turner and Nicholson both get jobs behind the bar at the Boardwalk, where Turner meets Richard Hawley and poet John Cooper Clarke. Jon McClure hands them a key to the cellar next door and they start throwing illegal gigs advertised on MySpace.
Sources
The Sheffield Star, 'Boardwalk Sheffield, back in time'
The Sheffield Star, 'Jon McClure recalls wild early gigs with Arctic Monkeys'
Which of these songs did Arctic Monkeys cover at their very first gig?
Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured, Arctic Monkeys
From Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006). The lyric "I said, it's High Green, mate, via Hillsborough please!" is a direct quote from a Sheffield taxi ride home. This is the sound of the after-party: the comedown, the backseat ride through orange streetlights, the return to the suburb where it all started.
Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured, Arctic Monkeys (2006)
Turner turns a taxi ride home into a short story, complete with a cabbie who won't stop talking and a city dissolving past the window. "I said, it's High Green, mate, via Hillsborough please!" Every line sounds like something you've actually overheard in the back of a Sheffield cab.
Sheffield Scene Speed Round
The gigs are getting tighter, the original songs are stacking up, and someone has a CD burner. Next: the bootleg demo collection that made Arctic Monkeys famous before any record label could touch them.
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