LEE PAYNE

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  • Arctic Monkeys came to Norwich and I will never forget it

    Scroll down for plenty of photos and videos

    Last night – wow!

    Arctic Monkeys at Carrow Road, 7th June 2023

    I was there when Arctic Monkeys – more than a band to me – played on my football team’s pitch. Two of my worlds, two very different worlds, colliding. I’ve been to Carrow Road hundreds of times. I have had my season ticket at Norwich for fifteen years. But instead of watching the Canaries, to see Alex Turner, Matt Helders, Jamie Cook and Nick O’Malley perform in front of the Barclay, was a surreal experience and a dream come true.

    Those guys aren’t just the producers of some great rock and roll songs for me. They changed my life. There I was in 2014, lost, my dad had just passed away. Discovering the Arctics, albeit I was late to the party, gave me a new obsession to lose myself in. Those songs brought me out of my shell and made me more confident. They changed the way I dressed, the way I had my hair cut. Watching their live shows on YouTube, the band became heroes to me because they were everything I wasn’t – successful, comfortable in their own skins, incredibly talented and able to make everything seem so effortless. I wanted to be like Alex Turner.

    I saw Arctic Monkeys in the flesh for the first time five years ago, at Sheffield Arena. They were touring their 2018 album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and I stood in awe as they put on a show for their hometown crowd. It was everything I hoped it would be – loud, stylish and immaculately delivered. Of course, I had always wished that they would come to my hometown but felt it unlikely. Norwich doesn’t have much in the way of large venues for gigs. The Arctics have played at The LCR at the UEA, but that was way back in February 2006. I was 13 at the time and too much of a terrible square to be aware of them. In the years since, they have gone on to be one of the biggest bands in the world, and it seemed they had simply outgrown little old Norwich.

    Imagine my delight, then, when last September I was alerted to the news that the UK leg of the tour for the new album The Car wouldn’t be at indoor arenas in the autumn, as I had expected, but at stadiums in the summer – and Carrow Road was one of them!

    Of course, I simply had to be there, and it was a tense morning when the tickets went on sale. I was in bed with four devices ready to go. I knew this gig would sell out fast. But I managed it.

    Cut to yesterday morning. I woke up, home alone in Dereham as my mum and step-dad are away on holiday, with a mixture of nerves and excitement. Excitement, of course, because I was going to see my favourite band in the flesh! But also nerves because – what if something went wrong? What if I didn’t get there on time? What if I missed the biggest night of my year? A month or so ago, these thoughts would have triggered full-on trembling anxiety in me, but now I’m on medication to manage my mental health and I believe that is what helped me to remain on the right side of rational.

    • Arctic Monkeys played in Norwich for the first time since 2006

    Last summer, when I went to The Killers gig at Carrow Road – the success of which I think partly convinced the Arctics that Norwich would work for them – I had parked my car on the roof of the Rose Lane multi-storey. It was a good location close to the ground, but I feared I would be there all night, such were the queues of traffic trying to get out at the end. I wanted to get there and back in a less stressful manner this time. I noticed a Facebook post by Konectbus, advertising the extra services they were putting on between Thickthorn Park & Ride and Norwich Bus Station especially for the gig. I decided that this was the way to go. Thickthorn was the right side of the city for me to get there and back easily, and the bus would be cheaper and less hampered by traffic as it could obviously use the bus lane on Newmarket Road.

    Ever cautious, in the knowledge that the first support act would be on at 6.40pm, I left the house at 3pm. I mean, there are probably people coming from Mexico who put less planning into their trip. Everything went very smoothly, and I was in the city and walking towards Carrow Road by 4pm. I thought about killing some time by popping in to see my old workmates at Queens Road, but didn’t. Instead, I headed straight for the ground and the fan village, where there were a plethora of food and drinks stalls as well as merchandise stalls. I would have liked a t-shirt, a memento of the evening, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay £35 for one. They must have made a fortune, though, as I saw so many people wearing them. They did look stylish, it has to be said, but I just couldn’t pay that amount.

    Over the course of the evening, it did strike me that I wished I had someone to share the experience with. All around me, there were couples, groups of mates – and I was alone. But, as Mark Corrigan once said in an episode of Peep Show, ‘you’re never alone with a phone’ so I spent quite a lot of time staring at mine, so other people didn’t pity me.

    The doors opened just after 5pm and I went straight inside. On being pointed towards my seat, my heart sank – I couldn’t see the stage! My sheer desire just to be there had meant back in September I’d taken the first ticket offered to me on the website. I didn’t consider the possibility that my view of the stage would be impeded.

    My original and less than ideal view of the stage

    I kept telling myself, ‘alright, this isn’t ideal, but at least you’re here. You can see the screens, and you’ll be in amongst the atmosphere’. I had made my peace with the situation when a steward approached me, with the words ‘senior supervisor’ on the back of his hi-vis jacket. He said, ‘you can’t see anything there, follow me’. He took me up the stairs right to the back of the South Stand, through a door into what appeared to be a staff area of Carrow Road, into another concourse and up some more stairs where it turned out I was in the tier above and to the left of where I was originally. He pointed me to a seat and handed me a ticket. Clearly, these were the few tickets that had not been sold, and thus the seats would be empty. When I realised the view I would have, straight on with a great view of the stage as well as the screens, I was incredibly grateful to this kindly steward.

    My view once I had been moved by a kindly steward

    I have never minded sitting and waiting for a gig to begin. There’s something about watching the place fill up, the roadies setting up the stage, the atmosphere building and the anticipation rising that I enjoy. Eventually, 6.40pm came and with it The Mysterines, the first support act. I always feel when going to a gig that it’s important to support the support, as often they are up-and-coming artists being given a bit of exposure by the more illustrious headline act. Sometimes, you can find some new music to explore in a support act – when I went to see Blossoms at the LCR in the winter, they were supported by an excellent young singer called Brooke Combe.

    The Mysterines come from Liverpool and the Wirral, released their debut album just last year and are fronted by the energetic and charismatic Lia Metcalfe. They delivered a short but strong set and are definitely ones to watch. A female-led alternative rock band is always worth a listen. If Arctic Monkeys like them enough to ask them to tour with them, they must be good.

    Lia Metcalfe and The Mysterines get the evening underway

    The best way I can describe the weather last night: bloody freezing. The warm and sunny weather the rest of the country has been enjoying doesn’t seem to have reached the east yet, so the temperature dropped as the blanket of white cloud that had been in situ for several days remained draped over the stadium. Between the two support acts, I found myself actually shivering, so felt I had to abandon my frugal nature and went and bought a coffee and a hot sausage roll. They did the job and warmed me up enough to see me through the rest of the evening.

    The Hives seemed a slightly unusual choice of support act for the Arctics. Far from being an up-and-coming group, The Hives – who hail from Sweden – released their first album in 1997 and have sold more than 750,000 records. I was aware of their biggest hits, such as Hate To Say I Told You So and Tick Tick Boom, but their music had always been a bit loud for me.

    The Hives rock Carrow Road

    On stage at Carrow Road, however, it became clear that The Hives are a phenomenal live act. The lead singer, Pelle Almqvist, is an incredible performer and interacted with the crowd like nothing I’d ever seen before. This particular exchange really made me laugh:

    Almqvist: Do you love the Arctic Monkeys!?
    Crowd: YEEEAAAHHH!
    Almqvist: Do you want to hear a song by the Arctic Monkeys!?
    Crowd: YEEEAAAHHH!
    Almqvist: That’s cool. Here’s another one by The Hives.

    Brilliant.

    The crowd were well and truly warmed up by the time The Hives had finished, expressing their gratitude to the Arctics for taking them with them.

    At last, as day turned to night, it was time for the main event. The sound of Barry White’s I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little Bit More Babe gave way to the entrance of Arctic Monkeys. Huge cheers greeted the first sight of Sheffield’s finest.

    There’s a slightly annoying discourse around the Arctics these days. There are fans from when they first started out, as an indie rock band playing songs about nights out, and fans who know them because of the 2013 behemoth AM, who haven’t seemed able to get their heads around the band’s evolution in sound. There is some snottiness towards their newer stuff, but I love it all – and last year’s The Car contains some of their best work. Big Ideas, in particular, is an absolutely beautiful song. The fact is, the Arctics would have faded away long ago if they had still been thrashing around on guitars like spotty teenagers. It’s because of their exploration of new genres, use of new instruments, and desire to be different that has maintained their position as one of Britain’s most relevant and vital bands.

    The band’s set took in six of their seven studio albums

    So the question was – what balance would they strike between the old and the new? Well, they kicked off with the first track from their very first album, The View From The Afternoon. Then it was guaranteed crowd-pleaser Brianstorm, AM track Snap Out Of It, Crying Lightning from 2009’s Humbug, another one from Favourite Worst Nightmare in Teddy Picker, then my favourite Arctics song Cornerstone. Six songs in, four albums picked from, but none from the most recent couple.

    The Bowie-esque Four Out Of Five, reworked for this tour, marked the first appearance of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino before an extended intro to AM favourite Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? The brooding Arabella was then followed by the first track from The Car, Sculptures Of Anything Goes. The dark arm-waver Pretty Visitors brought another one from Humbug to the show before they played the original version of 2007’s Fluorescent Adolescent. I can’t remember the last time they played that in its original form – in Sheffield in 2018, Turner only played half of it on the piano – but it was very well received by the crowd. The gorgeous closer to The Car, Perfect Sense, was next before the thunderous Do I Wanna Know?, surely a candidate for one of the great live songs.

    When the tour began in Bristol last week, the Arctics surprised us all by opening with the original version of Mardy Bum from their first album. In recent years, it’s a song they have hardly played live at all, and at Glastonbury in 2013 they played an acoustic version backed by an orchestra. Many of us probably thought we’d never hear the guitar version again, but here it was, to the delight of everyone in the ground. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball, the opening track to The Car, was followed by fan favourite 505 and then another one from The Car, Body Paint, was given an extended, full on rock outro to see the band off the stage.

    • Arctic Monkeys said ‘There’d Better Be a Mirrorball’ and there it was

    There was only a brief interlude before they returned for an encore, comprising the John Cooper Clarke inspired I Wanna Be Yours, the Arctics’ biggest song of all I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, and the last song of the night R U Mine?

    A huge ovation, and they were gone. My favourite band had smashed it. They came, they saw and they conquered Carrow Road. Just as they had in 2018, Joe Cocker’s version of With a Little Help From My Friends accompanied the crowd filing out of the stadium. I made my way back to the bus station, where Konectbus had put on extra buses to ferry people back to Thickthorn Park & Ride. I had a seat on the bus, which wasn’t crowded at all, it didn’t get stuck in traffic and I had a smooth journey back to Dereham in the car, home by 11.30pm.

    How did it compare to the 2018 gig I went to in Sheffield? Well, not only has the shaved head Alex Turner was sporting back then been replaced by an unkempt mass of hair, the fact that it was an outdoor event rather than indoors in an arena made the lighting really stand out. Looking to my left, I could see the majestic Norwich cathedral lit up in the night’s sky. The band also seem to have gone a bit further back to their roots – they had previously considered their old songs difficult to play any more, claiming it was as if they were doing karaoke of them. In 2018 it seemed very unlikely that we’d hear the original versions of Fluorescent Adolescent and Mardy Bum again.

    Arctic Monkeys will now go home to Sheffield, where they will play two big homecoming shows at Hillsborough Park. The tour will then take in Swansea, Southampton, three nights at the Emirates Stadium in London, Malahide Castle in Dublin and then Glasgow on 25th June. On Friday 23rd,in between the Ireland and Scotland dates, the band will headline Glastonbury for the third time.

    Those are all huge shows, but the fact remains that the Arctics came to Norwich. It might never happen again, but those that were there will never forget it. I know I won’t.

    Videos

    The crowd hold lights in the air as Arctic Monkeys perform Perfect Sense
    The band performed a reworked version of Four Out Of Five
    The Hives did a superb job of getting the crowd going
    The Mysterines are a band to watch

  • I back Gary Lineker – the BBC have made quite the rod for their own back

    Gary Lineker being taken off the air from his position as the host of the BBC’s Match of the Day is the story that’s dominating the headlines at the moment. The former England striker, who has been the host of the Premier League highlights programme since 1999, is being punished because he won’t apologise for a tweet in which he likened the language used by ministers of the Tory government in relation to its new policy on asylum seekers to “that used by Germany in the 30s”.

    Since then, pretty much every presenter, pundit and commentator has said they won’t work for the BBC this weekend in a display of solidarity with Lineker. This includes his most likely replacement as host Mark Chapman, as well as Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Alex Scott. This Saturday’s edition of Match of the Day will be broadcast with no presenter or pundits at all, without any of its usual commentators and with no interviews with players or managers. Other BBC shows, such as Football Focus and Final Score, have been pulled from the schedules because they can’t find anyone willing to work on them.

    I will be completely honest with you. I would describe myself very much as left leaning, politically, and I despise the Tory government. I don’t feel that it represents me and I find myself not only unable to support them but frequently disgusted by its actions. I wish for a more compassionate government, one that cares more about its ordinary citizens than the rich and privileged and one that doesn’t actively stir hatred. My wish is that it gets removed from power at the next election.

    I agree with Gary Lineker’s tweet. When you start using terms like “illegal immigrant” you stop using terms like “human being”. You start to think of asylum seekers like farmyard animals, or worse, vermin that need to be exterminated. These are living, breathing human beings with thoughts, feelings and families. They are not making extremely dangerous crossings of the English Channel in small and inadequate boats to get a free house and benefits over here. Most of them are fleeing a war or horrific regime the like of which that we can’t really comprehend in this country. I find it astounding that the government is looking to simply move the problem elsewhere rather than attempt to find out why these people are risking their lives to get here and making an effort to address those problems. This doesn’t mean put them up in luxury homes.

    The uninitiated might be forgiven for thinking that this story is all about a mere football highlights programme on TV and that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. But it does matter. In removing Lineker from his position, the BBC are effectively saying that you can’t broadcast on their platform if you say something the government doesn’t agree with. And that’s worrying – you might expect this of Russia or China, but not in Britain.

    Remember, Lineker has never used his position as the host of Match of the Day to express his political opinions on the programme itself. Such opinions have always been confined to Twitter. The same Twitter that Alan Sugar has used to share several of his political opinions, a lot of them against the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, plenty of them against the rail strikes and the relevant union leaders involved with them, and the not exactly impartial “DONT (sic) VOTE LABOUR”. Yet, the old boy is still allowed to wave his finger around as the face of The Apprentice on primetime BBC One. Could it be that he gets a free ride because his opinions are in support of the Tory government? I wonder.

    I don’t know where this story will end up, but I do know the BBC have created an entirely avoidable situation. The furore over Lineker’s tweet was just about quietening down when they announced on Friday night that he’d been taken off the air. In doing so, they’ve made quite the rod for their own back. If it makes some people stop and think about what a sorry state this government has brought to country down to, then it might not have been a waste of time.

  • My not-at-all-impartial review of the latest Arctic Monkeys album

    Friday 21st October. A package lands on the doormat. Could it be? The previous day’s postal workers’ strike had put doubt in my mind. It was the right size and shape. All the signs were good. I opened it. YES! It is!

    The new Arctic Monkeys album!

    Me, excitedly showing off my copy of the new Arctic Monkeys album

    Yes, I know I could get it on Spotify or Apple Music, but I always like to own things that are important to me in a physical form if I can. Maybe, as someone born in 1992, I’m part of the last generation that doesn’t automatically go digital with everything. The CD will live in my car, appropriately enough given its title.

    This will be my ‘review’ of The Car, the seventh studio album to be released by Arctic Monkeys. Just don’t expect it to be an impartial review. In case you’re not already aware, I LOVE Arctic Monkeys. I mean, look at the photo above! I’m wearing an Arctic Monkeys t-shirt, I’m holding an Arctic Monkeys album and on the wall (my bedroom wall) behind me are framed prints of each of their previous albums and their track listings. It sounds like a cliché, but Arctic Monkeys have been the soundtrack to a large part of my life. The lyrics speak to me. Their songs have helped me through tough times and accompanied me at high points. I’ve been to The Grapes in Sheffield, the pub where they played their first gig, and I have also seen them play live in their home city. I even had my photo taken next to an Arctic Monkeys-themed elephant sculpture (evidence provided below).

    With the Arctic Monkeys elephant sculpture, Sheffield city centre, July 2016

    The last decade has seen us fans have to wait a long while for new material from our heroes. After the phenomenally successful album AM was released in 2013, there was a near five year wait until its follow-up Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino arrived in 2018. The tour for that album came to an end in the spring of 2019, and the now familiar silence from the Monkeys began. We did get a pandemic treat in the form of a live album, Live At The Royal Albert Hall – a recording of a 2018 concert released in December 2020 with all the proceeds going to charity – but otherwise the band were on hiatus.

    In August 2021, reports that Arctic Monkeys had been recording at Butley Priory in Suffolk made the NME. The band had enjoyed the experience of all living and recording together under one roof on their previous album when they used La Frette studios just outside Paris to put their sci-fi inspired masterpiece together, so it was not unexpected to hear that they’d taken over what is essentially a wedding venue for their next record. Butley Priory’s website referred to hearing “the double bass, drums and piano wafting out of the open double doors”, indicating that this album would likely be as light on heavy guitar as their last.

    Then, the trail went cold again. In November last year, an announcement was made that Arctic Monkeys would be playing a small number of shows in Europe in August 2022, starting in Istanbul, Turkey. The months passed, that first date came and we still had no new music. Some people were even questioning if the band would actually be performing in Istanbul. YouTube footage confirmed that they definitely did, and served up a selection of hits with no new songs. They continued to do this on subsequent tour dates until 23rd August, when they played I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am for the first time. At last, we had an idea of what the seventh album might sound like.

    A day later, the lid was finally lifted. The new album would be called ‘The Car’ and it would be released on 21st October. I pre-ordered my copy on CD immediately. The track listing was also released, with ten songs. Click on the title of one to hear it:

    There’d Better Be A Mirrorball
    I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am
    Sculptures Of Anything Goes
    Jet Skis On The Moat
    Body Paint
    The Car
    Big Ideas
    Hello You
    Mr Schwartz
    Perfect Sense

    Unlike the last album, which had no singles released from it at all in the build up, we did get to enjoy some of the songs from The Car before 21st October. As 29th August became the 30th, I was eagerly awaiting the release of There’d Better Be A Mirrorball (click here to read something I wrote about it a while ago). Going by the title alone, I was expecting something with a kind of 70s groove, but it is actually a wonderfully concise break up song. Frontman Alex Turner has addressed the end of a relationship before, but in Do Me A Favour from 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare he did it in a far more aggressive way. In Mirrorball, he’s approaching it in a more mature manner. The song actually turned out to be extremely indicative of what the rest of the album would be like – Turner would reveal in interviews that the brooding intro to Mirrorball opened his eyes to the direction this new material was going in, and the theme of a break up or a goodbye runs throughout the album.

    I Ain’t Quite Where I Am gets as close to the groove I was expecting from Mirrorball with its guitars, then Sculptures Of Anything Goes is a gorgeous tune that contains these lyrics:

    Puncturing your bubble of relatability
    With your horrible new sound
    Baby, those mixed messages ain’t what they used to be

    Sculptures of Anything Goes

    I wonder if that might be aimed at the ‘fans’ of the band who felt isolated by the direction the Monkeys went in with TBH&C. Those complaints have always annoyed me. The first Arctic Monkeys album was released in 2006, when they were still teenagers. The tales of nights out in Sheffield would sound ridiculous now they are closing in on 40. The band have grown up, and so have their music. I doubt they would have remained relevant for as long as they have had they tried to replicate their first album time after time, and if they had done that they’d look as ridiculous as Green Day.

    The Car isn’t an album of songs that you can dance to, but I would argue that it is never its intention. I put it on in my car and I am transported to another world – these songs take me somewhere, away from the stress and anxiety I feel most of the time. While it felt like it took a couple of listens to the previous album to go through a sort of ‘wall of understanding’, the effect of The Car was instant – by the end of my first play-through I was hooked. I’ve listened to little else in the last week and I am nowhere near being remotely bored by any of these songs.

    It strikes me that this album contains no filler at all. Usually at least one song will be one you don’t remember too much about and don’t come back to after a while, but The Car is incredibly strong throughout. The closest it gets to filler is Jet Skis On The Moat, but even that contains a catchy chorus with the lines:

    Is there somethin’ on your mind
    Or are you just happy to sit there and watch while the paint job dries?

    Jet Skis On The Moat

    Body Paint was the second single to be released. Its repeated chant of “still a trace of body paint, on your arms and on your legs and on your face” towards the end is guaranteed to be belted out by crowds for years to come and we’ve just discovered that it sounds bloody amazing live:

    The use of strings on this album blows me away. They never feel like they are fighting with the rockier aspects of the tunes, the band has managed to pull off making them sound like they complement each other. The title track, The Car, sounds wonderfully cinematic thanks to its use of strings.

    My personal favourite song on the album is the epic Big Ideas. These lines are a fantastic contemplation on the act of songwriting:

    I had big ideas, the band were so excited
    The kind you’d rather not share over the phone
    But now, the orchestra’s got us all surrounded
    And I cannot for the life of me remember how they go

    Big Ideas

    The instrumental at the end is simply beautiful. Arctic Monkeys had actually convened much earlier than the Butley Prior sessions of summer 2021 to attempt to record some new material, pre-pandemic, and everything they did then ended up on the cutting room floor – everything apart from Hello You, the most upbeat tune on the record. We are then introduced to a mysterious character called Mr Schwartz, who we are told is “stayin’ strong for the crew”. Finally, a wondrous way to close an album, Perfect Sense tells us:

    If that’s what it takes to say goodnight
    Then that’s what it takes

    Perfect Sense

    You’re not inside the world of The Car for long – the album is over and done with in about 35 minutes. But boy, have I loved being inside that world. Yes, I know I’m a massive Monkeys fan and that this would have had to have been a really poor album for me to say anything else but, truly, I think it is a masterpiece. Its overtones of farewells have got some fans wondering whether this is the band signing off after 17 years at the top, but I really hope that isn’t the case. This is a band who have more stories to tell, more avenues to explore. I’m going to see them at Carrow Road, the home of my beloved Norwich City Football Club, in June next year and I couldn’t be more excited.

  • Listen To This: Suck It and See by Arctic Monkeys

    Arctic Monkeys in 2011

    There was a lot riding on the fourth studio album from Arctic Monkeys. 2009’s Humbug had seen the band adopt a daring new sound that divided fans, a big departure from the record breaking debut and the follow up that capitalised on its incredible success. The next effort was pivotal – would they blend everything they’d learned into a hit record, or alienate the people that had made them popular in the first place once and for all?

    In the gap between the Arctics’ third and fourth albums, frontman Alex Turner wrote and recorded six original songs for the soundtrack to Submarine, a film directed by Richard Ayoade – known as Moss from The I.T. Crowd – who had been behind the videos for Arctic Monkeys songs Fluorescent Adolescent and Cornerstone. I was made aware of it by Turner’s involvement but I loved the style, the story and the performances and it has become my favourite film.

    By 2010, Turner was living in New York with his then-girlfriend, the TV presenter and model Alexa Chung. It was there that he wrote most of the twelve songs that would make up the fourth Arctic Monkeys album. In Los Angeles, the band recorded live takes of each track – a different process to Humbug, where they used overdubbing.

    As for the title? It could have been The Rain-Shaped Shimmer Trap, inspired by the ‘colourful’ names often given to guitar fuzz pedals. According to drummer Matt Helders, ‘it were genuinely gonna be Thriller for, about… a week’. Eventually, they settled on the title of the album’s eleventh track to label the entire record: Suck It and See was born.

    The rather sparse cover of Suck It and See – some American retailers found the title offensive and covered it with a sticker

    Track listing

    She’s Thunderstorms
    Black Treacle
    Brick by Brick
    The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala
    Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair
    Library Pictures
    All My Own Stunts
    Reckless Serenade
    Piledriver Waltz
    Love Is a Laserquest
    Suck It and See
    That’s Where You’re Wrong

    Released on 6th June 2011, more than 82,000 copies of Suck It and See were sold in its first week, comfortably knocking Lady Gaga off the top of the albums chart and giving the Arctics another number one. The songs are much less dark than those on Humbug, the band returning to a more accessible pop sound – Q magazine described it as ‘the sound of a band drawing back the curtains and letting the sunshine in’. They remained unafraid of trying something new, however.

    The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala was the first Arctic Monkeys song I ever heard played over the PA system in a football ground, a sign of how mainstream this album was. Brick by Brick featured Matt Helders on vocals, with Turner only belting out the chorus. Some songs were inspired by such innocuous moments as someone telling Turner in the studio ‘don’t sit down, ’cause I’ve moved your chair’. Piledriver Waltz was written for the Submarine soundtrack and was re-recorded with the full band for the album.

    Turner’s insightful lyrics are still very much part of the package. On All My Own Stunts, he sings ‘Been watching cowboy films on gloomy afternoons/Tinting the solitude’, a possible reference to the long days in New York waiting for his girlfriend to come home. The excellent Love Is a Laserquest contains my favourite lyrics on the album:

    And do you still think love is a laserquest?
Or do you take it all more seriously?
I've tried to ask you this in some daydreams that I've had
But you're always busy being make-believe

And do you look into the mirror to remind yourself you're there?
Or have somebody's goodnight kisses got that covered?
When I'm not being honest, I pretend that you were just some lover

    Matt Helders has a lot to thank Suck It and See for – it was while recording the video for the title track that he met model Breana McDow. The couple had a daughter in 2015 and were married in 2016, though sadly divorced in 2019.

    Matt Helders and Breana McDow became a couple after shooting this video together

    Suck It and See was another important step for the Arctic Monkeys after Humbug, and paved the way for the huge success of AM that followed.

  • Listen To This: Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    Listen To This: Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    You’ve had two number one albums. The first was the fastest selling debut album in British music history. You’ve won the Mercury Prize. You’ve headlined Glastonbury. Where do you go from here?

    Many would have been tempted to stick to the formula that had brought such huge success, releasing a rinse-and-repeat third album to please the masses. Not Arctic Monkeys.

    After a whirlwind period in which the Sheffield band’s first two albums had been released within fifteen months of each other, there was more of a gap between 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare and its follow up. The front man, Alex Turner, recorded with his side project The Last Shadow Puppets – the resulting album, The Age of the Understatement, also went to number one.

    The four members of Arctic Monkeys had first met Josh Homme while playing the support act for his band, American rock outfit Queens of the Stone Age, in Houston. The idea of working together was mooted and in late 2008 they began making music with Homme in his recording studio near Los Angeles. They then continued to work in another studio in the Mojave Desert – about as far away from suburban Sheffield as it is possible to imagine.

    The result was Humbug.

    Album cover of Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    Track listing (click to listen)

    My Propeller
    Crying Lightning
    Dangerous Animals
    Secret Door
    Potion Approaching
    Fire and the Thud
    Cornerstone
    Dance Little Liar
    Pretty Visitors
    The Jeweller’s Hands

    Ten tracks, all written by Turner as usual, but this time the lyrics were more abstract and instead of just guitars and drums those lyrics were accompanied by keyboards, xylophones, glockenspiels and shakers.

    I won’t go into detail about each song, but here a couple of things I want to say: Fire and the Thud was written about Turner’s then-girlfriend Alexa Chung, and Cornerstone contains my favourite lyrics in the entire Monkeys canon.

    Tell me, where’s your hiding place?

    I’m worried I’ll forget your face

    And I’ve asked everyone

    I’m beginning to think I imagined you all along

    Cornerstone by Arctic Monkeys

    Humbug was released in the UK on 24th August 2009, which was not just the day before my 17th birthday but also five days before Arctic Monkeys headlined Reading Festival with a set that included seven of the new album’s ten tracks. They were almost unrecognisable from the band that had performed on the same stage just three years earlier – the hair was longer, the guitars louder, the mood darker.

    Arctic Monkeys headlining Reading Festival in 2009

    As such a major departure from their earlier work, it took some fans time to get their heads around Humbug but it was another number one album for the band and is now seen as something of a gateway for them – a record that allowed them to break out of the image of cheeky indie lads and into bona fide rock stars. It paved the way for AM, the album that broke America, and the other-worldly Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

    Yes, I’m well aware that I’m biased (I’ve listened to Arctic Monkeys nearly every day for years), but I urge you to give this album a listen.

  • Listen To This: AM by Arctic Monkeys

    Listen To This: AM by Arctic Monkeys

    AM album cover

    Yes, I’m writing about Arctic Monkeys again. To go with my pieces on their first, second and sixth albums, I am going to take you track-by-track through the record that cracked America for the four-piece from Sheffield.

    One of the things I admire so much about Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Nick O’Malley and Matt Helders is how they have evolved over time. They have never been afraid to go in a completely different direction and, to them, making the same music over and over again is a crime. Listen to their first hit single, 2005’s I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, and One Point Perspective, my favourite track from the 2018 album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, and you can scarcely believe that the two songs were written and recorded by the same band.

    By the time AM was released on 9th September 2013, Arctic Monkeys had transformed from the scruffy indie kids in baggy jeans they were when they started out to rockers with slicked-back hair and leather jackets. The music had gone through a similar process.

    In an interview with BBC Radio 1 at the time of release, frontman Alex Turner said:

    “…it feels like this record is exactly where we should be right now. So it felt right to just initial it.”

    AM was born – with more than a nod to VU, released in 1985 by the Velvet Underground.

    Track list (click on one to listen)

    Do I Wanna Know?
    R U Mine?
    One For The Road
    Arabella
    I Want It All
    No. 1 Party Anthem
    Mad Sounds
    Fireside
    Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?
    Snap Out Of It
    Knee Socks
    I Wanna Be Yours

    The album’s opening track Do I Wanna Know? features what I consider to be one of the great guitar riffs. If you happen to be walking somewhere listening to it through headphones, I promise that you will feel approximately 94% cooler than you really are. The song is about unrequited love, how difficult it is to move on when you’ve been obsessed with someone and ponders whether the narrator really wants to know ‘if this feeling flows both ways’ or not.

    Another reason why this band means so much to me is that I really identify with the lyrics. There’s a line in the song – ‘maybe I’m too busy being yours to fall for somebody new’ – that completely nails how I’ve felt in the past, in a way that I hadn’t been able to figure out for myself up to that point. Do I Wanna Know? was the first Arctic Monkeys song to make the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US and was the opener to every gig the band played when touring the album. If you’re a fan of Peaky Blinders you might recognise it too.

    The band wanted to make a record that sounded good in a car and after that strong start they follow it up with R U Mine?, which sounds a bit like an up-tempo version of Do I Wanna Know?. The rapidly delivered lyrics are about missing the object of your desires and having a sincere feeling that every moment spent without them is wasted. The video for the song won the NME award for Best Video:

    The award winning video for R U Mine?

    One For The Road is the first example on the album of the continuing influence of Josh Homme on Arctic Monkeys. The frontman of Queens of the Stone Age first worked with the Monkeys on their third album Humbug and has been close to them ever since. In this song, you get the sense that Homme – who features on vocals – is moving their sound away from their native Sheffield and towards a kind of Americana. This was not a popular move among some of the fans but, for me, it’s really good if done well – which it is here.

    “And when she needs to shelter from reality she takes a dip in my daydreams”

    — Lyric from Arabella

    Alex Turner would introduce a performance of the fourth track from the album by informing the crowd ‘I want to tell you about a girl called Arabella!’. The lyrics are poetic, full of metaphors and a sign of how Turner’s songwriting has matured from, as he put it, ‘pointing at things and talking about them’ to speaking more from within. The song is essentially all about how awesome the aforementioned Arabella is.

    I Want It All and Mad Sounds are as close as this album gets to filler – very listenable songs, both achieve the aim of sounding great in the car – but just not particularly ground breaking. Between those tracks sits No. 1 Party Anthem, the obligatory ‘slow’ number on the album. I’m not sure why, but it feels to me like a bit of a tribute to the band’s debut single I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor. It contains some cracking lyrics too, my favourite being ‘It’s not like I’m falling in love, I just want you to do me no good/And you look like you could’. The performance of it at Reading festival in 2014 was a highlight of their set.

    No. 1 Party Anthem live at Reading Festival in 2014

    Take in Fireside for its tale of how love can be unpredictable, the much-covered Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? for its story of frustration and try to get over that special someone with Snap Out Of It.

    Knee Socks is another song featuring the voice of Josh Homme, which might explain why I’ve always found it very similar to One For The Road.

    Most people would agree that Arctic Monkeys is a terrible name for a band. The story goes that it was guitarist Jamie Cook who came up with it but they were always looking to change it, until the performance poet John Cooper Clarke was apparently the first person to say he actually liked it. Clarke had always been a hero of Alex Turner’s, which isn’t surprising what with his proficiency with language, and performed at the Sheffield bar Turner was working in one night. Turner plucked up the courage to tell Clarke about the band he was part of and Clarke said ‘that’s a name I can imagine in the hit parade!’. The name has stuck ever since, and one of Clarke’s poems was slightly tweaked to turn it into the closing song on AM.

    I Wanna Be Yours, with its quirky lyrics including ‘let me be your vacuum cleaner, breathing in your dust’, seems the perfect way to finish off the record – it’s a love song, but one that’s down to earth and not too mushy. And for a brooding, confident album there seems no better ending.

  • Listen To This: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys

    The release of the debut album by Arctic Monkeys was a major cultural event. The kind that wouldn’t happen nowadays. The full story of the origins of the band is one to be told another day, but by 23rd January 2006 it’s fair to say there was rather a lot of hype surrounding the Sheffield four-piece. They already had two number one singles to their name, had played the Carling Stage at the Reading Festival and crowds at their gigs already knew the lyrics to their songs.

    Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not album cover

    More than 360,000 copies of the album were sold in the first week after its release, comfortably securing the top spot in the charts and as I write this fourteen years later it is still the fastest selling debut album by a band. It won the prestigious Mercury Prize and well and truly set the band up for the enormous success that it continues to enjoy to this day.

    The album’s title is a quote from the 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning starring Albert Finney.

    This clip from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the origin of the album’s title

    It could be argued that it is a concept album, with the majority of its songs about the nightlife of Sheffield. The band have never claimed that this was their intention, and it’s most likely a coincidence. Alex Turner was probably writing about his own experiences, which as a teenager almost inevitably involved going out on the town.

    Here, I go through this classic album track by track. Click on the title of each song to listen to it.

    The View from the Afternoon

    It’s a fast start to the album as the drums of Matt Helders crash into the guitars, leading into Alex Turner’s lyrics about the anticipation of a night out. The lines ‘And she won’t be surprised and she won’t be shocked/When she’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock/And there’s verse and chapter sat in her inbox/And all that is said is that you’ve drank a lot’ rather date this song and evokes memories of the tiny Nokia phones everyone seemed to have back then.

    I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

    The first Arctic Monkeys song to be number one in the UK (in October 2005) and probably still their best known track. Played at the fast pace that characterised their early work, it kicks off with the great line ‘Stop making the eyes at me/I’ll stop making the eyes at you’ and paints a vivid picture of two people flirting across a nightclub. Nearly fifteen years after it was released, the band are a bit fed up of playing it now but it remains a firm fan favourite and the Monkeys even performed it at the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

    Fake Tales of San Francisco

    This song moves away from the nightlife theme somewhat and discusses how new bands often ignore their roots in the pursuit of being trendy and encourages them to ‘get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook’ and be true to themselves.

    On a personal note, my landlord is adamant that he inspired part of the lyrics to this track. He has told me a story about drinking in The Boardwalk in Sheffield with a friend, who during a conversation told him ‘you’re not from New York City, you’re from Rotherham’. A pre-fame Alex Turner was working behind the bar, seemingly overhead this and put those words into this song.

    Dancing Shoes

    Turner points out in Dancing Shoes that everyone on a night out is trying to pull but pretends that they’re not. It’s ‘the only reason that you came’, after all.

    Left to right: Jamie Cook (guitar), Andy Nicholson (bass), Alex Turner (vocals, guitar), Matt Helders (drums)

    You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights but You Were Staring Straight at Me

    This song develops the idea of being on the pull on a night out further, focusing on the narrator’s attempts to chat up a girl. It’s the most lyrically complex song on the album, delivered almost at the pace of a rapper, and I feel this verse sums it up perfectly:

    ‘And oh, I’m so tense and never tenser
    Could all go a bit Frank Spencer
    And I’m talking gibberish
    Tip of the tongue but I can’t deliver it
    Properly
    Oh, it’s all getting on top of me
    And if it weren’t this dark
    You’d see how red my face has gone, yeah’

    Now I don’t go to nightclubs but I feel like that’s exactly what it’s like whenever I try to speak to a woman.

    Still Take You Home

    We’re still on the subject of trying to pull in a nightclub here, but in this one Turner talks about how people he’d never usually fancy at any other time suddenly look stunning in this particular setting. You get to hear a bit more of the rest of the band’s abilities in this one.

    Arctic Monkeys won the Mercury Prize in 2006 for this album

    Riot Van

    The slow number that most albums tend to include somewhere, and a tale about a group of cheeky lads fuelled by alcohol winding up the police.

    Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured

    Underrated, and possibly my favourite song on the album. Turner has always been very good at observing everyday things and making songs out of them. Here, it’s the sign you often see on the inside of a taxi. It’s time to go home after a night out now and High Green, the suburb of Sheffield the band grew up in, is mentioned. The driver won’t let them have six in, though, ‘especially not with the food’.

    Mardy Bum

    A love song, but not the typically gushing type. The narrator is having a bit of a row with his ‘mardy bum’ (Northern slang for irritable) of a girlfriend, and reminisces about ‘cuddles in the kitchen’. I’m sure we could all relate. Turner would make a habit of going at love songs from unusual angles in the second Monkeys album and the track D Is For Dangerous.

    They don’t play Mardy Bum live very often but when they do they tend to slow it right down – they did it accompanied by a string arrangement at Glastonbury in 2013 and the result was beautiful.

    Perhaps Vampires Is a Bit Strong But…

    A rather brave thing to do on your first album, but here Arctic Monkeys launch something of an attack on the sort of promoters and record producers who only see music as a way to make money. You just have to listen to the lyrics yourself, they’re quite extraordinary.

    When the Sun Goes Down

    The second Monkeys single to top the charts, and it’s all about the prostitutes the band used to see around their rehearsal space in Neepsend in Sheffield. Rather than passing judgement on the women, it centres on the men coming to pick them up (a working title was Scummy Man).

    From the Ritz to the Rubble

    This one starts off about an attempt to get past the bouncers and into a nightclub and ends up reflecting on how you can say things on a night out that you just can’t say the next day.

    A Certain Romance

    The closer of a classic album and the closer to most of the band’s gigs in their early years. The maturity of A Certain Romance’s lyrics belie the tender age Turner was when he wrote it.

    If you enjoyed reading this, I have also written about the other Arctic Monkeys albums Favourite Worst Nightmare and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

  • Listen To This: Favourite Worst Nightmare by Arctic Monkeys

    It was only the year 2007 and yet it had already been quite the ride for Arctic Monkeys. Entering their fifth year since forming, they already had two number one singles and the fastest selling debut album by a band to their name. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, even claimed to be a fan – though when pushed he couldn’t name any of their songs. The time had come to tackle the difficult second album.

    On 23rd April 2007, Favourite Worst Nightmare was released. Not as raw as the previous year’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, the twelve songs feel more polished. Alex Turner’s superb observational lyrics go a little deeper and branch out further than musings on Sheffield’s nightlife.

    The album opens with Brianstorm, a loud and confident start which apparently describes a man the band met backstage after a gig in Tokyo. ‘Brian’ left such a big impression on the Monkeys – ”Cause we can’t take our eyes / Off the t-shirt and ties combination?’ – that he became the subject of a song. Brianstorm has become an absolute staple of their live sets, a real crowd pleaser, and they are still performing it now. Here it is from Lollapalooza in Argentina in 2019:

    Next comes Teddy Picker. If you’ve ever been to one of the arcades at the seaside, you’ll know what a teddy picker is – those machines that have a claw you try to grab prizes with. Turner uses those teddy pickers as a metaphor for the pursuit of fame and the downside of it. ‘And it’s the thousandth time that it’s even bolder / Don’t be surprised when you get bent over / They told you, but you were gagging for it’. It’s basically a warning to be careful what you wish for.

    Track three is D Is For Dangerous, the chorus of which gives the album its title:

    ‘D is for delightful
    And try and keep your trousers on
    I think you should know you’re his favourite worst nightmare’

    Love is certainly not an unexplored topic in music, but I have always admired the slightly different way Alex Turner approaches the subject. Like in the first album’s Mardy Bum, which describes a row between a couple, D Is For Dangerous is about being in love with someone you know it won’t be easy to deal with.

    Matt Helders, Alex Turner, Nick O’Malley and Jamie Cook in 2007

    The album moves on to a song about casual sex. Balaclava, with its catchy bass throughout, is all about not becoming emotionally attached to the girl you’ve just pulled. ‘The confidence is the balaclava’.

    Next is my favourite song on the album, Fluorescent Adolescent. It’s probably the best known one on it, and the one you’re most likely to have heard somewhere else (it was, for example, on the soundtrack to The Inbetweeners). It starts with two guitars crashing into each other, leading into Turner’s lyrics about getting older. I can do no better than to relay the whole of the first verse:

    ‘You used to get it in your fishnets
    Now you only get it in your night dress
    Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness
    Landed in a very common crisis
    Everything’s in order in a black hole
    Nothing seems as pretty as the past though
    That Bloody Mary’s lacking in Tabasco
    Remember when you used to be a rascal?’

    Turner was just 20 years old when he wrote that with the help of his then-girlfriend Johanna Bennett.

    The band slowed the song down and added a snippet of Dion’s Only You Know to it to make for a highlight of their headline set at Reading in 2009:

    Like most albums, Favourite Worst Nightmare has a slower tune in the form of Only Ones Who Know. I would almost describe the guitars on this song as haunting. It’s great to listen to with headphones on. It feels like a sad song, and sets this album apart from their debut, which had a cheekier tone throughout.

    In Do Me a Favour Turner once again turns the classic break up song on its head by writing it from the perspective of the person in the wrong. It starts with Matt Helders thundering on his drums and describes, in Turner’s words, ‘a goodbye’.

    ‘It’s the beginning of the end
    The car went up the hill and disappeared around the bend
    Ask anyone, they’ll tell you that it’s these times that it tends
    To start to break in half, to start to fall apart, hold on to your heart’

    We are into the second half of the album and This House is a Circus signals a change in tone for the album. A wild night out is described in what Turner calls his favourite song from the record.

    Next, it’s If You Were There, Beware and we are back onto the topic of fame. In this one, Turner talks about how annoyed he is at the way the media treats his loved ones. In terms of the instrumentation it’s the clearest hint we get of what was to come on the third Monkeys album, Humbug, which represented a major shift in sound for the band. Lyrically, it seems Turner’s girlfriend is being hounded by the paparazzi:

    ‘If you were there, beware the serpent soul pitchers
    Can’t you sense she was never meant to fill column inches
    Ain’t you had enough? What you’re trying to dig up
    Isn’t there to be dug; the thieves help the thugs
    As they’re trying to beat the good grace of a sweetheart
    Out to the point she’ll comply’

    The bad thing in Do The Bad Thing is having an affair, and Old Yellow Bricks is all about finally getting out of your hometown and realising that the rest of the world isn’t up to much after all. An interesting one, given that nowadays two of the band live in Los Angeles while the other two have settled back down in their native Sheffield.

    The album closes with 505, a song recently named the best of all Arctic Monkeys songs in a radio station poll and a track the band have used to bring the curtain down on countless live performances over the years. It starts off with the sound of an organ, the same chords you can hear in the Western film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and suddenly ups the tempo in the final third of what Turner described as ‘the first proper love song we’ve done’. Additional guitar for this track was provided by Miles Kane, who would form the supergroup The Last Shadow Puppets with Turner later in 2007.

    So there we have it – the twelve songs that made the difficult second album something of a breeze for Arctic Monkeys. Favourite Worst Nightmare went straight to the top of the album chart and secured the band their first headliner slot at Glastonbury. I will leave you with the band’s brilliant performance of 505 from Glastonbury 2013.

  • Listen To This: Leave Before The Lights Come On by Arctic Monkeys

    Arctic Monkeys in 2006

    Every now and again I am going to present a track I think you should listen to under the title ‘Listen To This’.

    I have written before about my favourite band Arctic Monkeys and their sixth studio album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. My first track for this feature is a Monkeys song, but this one was released as a standalone single in 2006 between their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and their second release Favourite Worst Nightmare.

    It’s called Leave Before The Lights Come On.

    I think the band’s frontman Alex Turner is a lyrical genius and the words to this song would fit in very well with their phenomenally sucessful debut album.

    That was essentially a concept album about nightlife in a big English city. Turner drew on his experiences of nights out in his native Sheffield to craft a compelling collection of songs that almost everyone between the ages of 16 and 21 in the country could relate to.

    Leave Before The Lights Come On basically describes a one night stand. It would have slotted nicely onto the album but it says something about it when a song as strong as this doesn’t make the cut. When the band performed it at Reading festival in 2006, Turner described it as ‘the black sheep of the family… but we love it all the same.’

    And how can you wake up with someone you don’t love

    And not feel slightly fazed by it?

    Arctic Monkeys – Leave Before The Lights Come On

    Turner’s lyrics are well supported by the rest of the band. Each of the four members has to work hard on it, and that was one of the things that makes me love it so much. Matt Helders gets it going with his pounding drums, Andy Nicholson (and latterly Nick O’Malley) come in with the bass and Jamie Cook combines brilliantly with Turner on guitar. The song feels very well structured – it tells a story from start to finish in 3 minutes and 47 seconds. If I was in a band, I’d definitely cover it as everyone in the band would have a big part to play.

    The music video for the song features the actor Paddy Considine, who was in 24 Hour Party People, Submarine and Hot Fuzz amongst other things.

    Finally, here is the band performing the song during their headline set at Glastonbury in 2007.

  • 2014-15 Norwich City season review – part two

    This is the second part of my review of Norwich City’s 2014-15 season. If you haven’t seen the first part yet, here it is. I hope you enjoy looking back on an amazing season. This part starts with the appointment of a little known Scotsman…

    Alex Neil left Hamilton Academical to become Norwich City’s new manager in January

    9th January 2015 – Hello Neil (again)

    A few names were linked with Norwich City as the club decided who would replace Neil Adams. I can remember thinking that Nigel Adkins or Uwe Rosler would be sound appointments. In the end it was Alex Neil. Few south of the border had heard of the 33-year-old, but he had been making a name for himself in Scotland where he had been player-manager of Hamilton Academical. Neil had guided Accies to the Scottish Premiership the season before, and when he left to start work at Carrow Road they were third in the table, having already beaten Celtic at Parkhead. It was the sort of left-field appointment that might be expected of chief executive David McNally, who had pulled off something similar with Paul Lambert. But could this young, inexperienced Glaswegian really be the man to arrest Norwich’s slump?

    10th January 2015 – Bournemouth 1-2 Norwich

    Alex Neil was sat in the stands for this match, with Mike Phelan and Gary Holt taking caretaker charge for one week only. Matt Ritchie put the league leaders in front, but Gary Hooper equalised just before half time. Jonny Howson was harshly sent off for a tackle not long after the hour mark, at which point the new Norwich manager appeared in his suit on the touchline and started barking orders at his players. Cameron Jerome’s great goal ten minutes from time sentenced eventual champions Bournemouth to a rare home defeat and a stirring start to life under Alex Neil for Norwich City.

    24th January 2015 – City blow their chances of a play-off place

    Victory against Brentford would put Norwich back in the top six, but they blew it as Jota and an Alex Pritchard penalty gave the West London side the points. It was the first defeat for City under Alex Neil. They would go on a seven match unbeaten run afterwards.

    Norwich’s magnificent February

    The Canaries moved back into the promotion picture with a perfect February. Victories over Blackpool, Charlton, Wolves, Watford and Blackburn suddenly put Norwich in touch of the automatic promotion places again. It is worth pointing out that they beat Watford for a second time this season, again 3-0, and that the 2-1 win at Blackburn was secured with an 84th minute winner from Bradley Johnson after City had been behind for a long while.

    1st March 2015 – Norwich 2-0 Ipswich

    Norwich were in red hot form going into the second East Anglian derby of the season, and it showed. A thumping goal from Bradley Johnson sent Carrow Road wild, and a scrappy second off the heels of Lewis Grabban made it a double over the old enemy and a fourth derby win in a row.

    Bradley Johnson celebrates after his fantastic strike against Ipswich sent Norwich on their way to doing the double over the old enemy

    4th March 2015 – Norwich 0-1 Wigan

    It was very much after the Lord Mayor’s show for City as they were beaten by Wigan three days after the derby triumph. An early goal from Kim Bo-kyung was enough for the Latics, managed by former Norwich defender Malky Mackay. It was a game City didn’t get going in and was another missed opportunity, as a win would have put them top of the table. Wigan would go on to be relegated to League One, having sacked Mackay and replaced him with club captain Gary Caldwell.

    17th April 2015 – Norwich 0-1 Middlesbrough

    Norwich’s hopes of an automatic promotion place were all but ended on a cruel Friday night against Middlesbrough. Alex Tettey flicked an early Boro corner into his own net, and the disgusting timewasting that followed was a low point of what had been a fantastic Championship season overall. The referee stopped the game more than once for Patrick Bamford’s minor injury, and the almost comical sudden collapse of goalkeeper Dimi Konstantopolous capped a disastrous night for Alex Neil’s team.

    2nd May 2015 – It’s the play-offs, and guess who we are playing…

    With Bournemouth and Watford promoted automatically, and a play-off place secure for Norwich, issues were being dealt with elsewhere as the Canaries finished the regular season with a 4-2 win over Fulham and a first victory over the Cottagers since 1986. Derby County incredibly collapsed from automatic promotion favourites to missing out on the play-offs altogether after losing 3-0 at home to Reading, and it was Brentford who took a play-off place at their expense by beating Wigan by the same scoreline. City’s rivals Ipswich lost 3-2 at Blackburn but managed to hold on to 6th place, meaning the play-off semi-finals would see two more East Anglian derbies as well as the tie between Middlesbrough and Brentford.

    Nathan Redmond scored as Norwich won the play-off semi-final against Ipswich to make the final at Wembley

    16th May 2015 – Norwich 3-1 Ipswich

    After a 1-1 draw at Portman Road, it was winner-takes-all in the second leg at Carrow Road. After a nervy first half, Wes Hoolahan played in Nathan Redmond, who had his shot blocked on the goal line by the arm of Ipswich defender Christophe Berra. Berra was shown a straight red card, Hoolahan buried the penalty and Norwich were in front. Ipswich responded well and capitalised on some poor defending from a free kick to equalise just ten minutes later through Tommy Smith, but Nathan Redmond and Cameron Jerome put City ahead again and on their way to Wembley.

    Middlesbrough overcame Brentford 5-1 on aggregate, following up a late 2-1 win at Griffin Park with a resounding 3-0 success at the Riverside to set up a fascinating play-off final.

    25th May 2015 – The perfect day

    The days after the semi-final win over Ipswich saw City fans make a mad scramble for tickets for the club’s first appearance at Wembley since 1985. On the day, 40,000 headed to London by car, coach and train to create an amazing atmosphere at the national stadium. Those 40,000 could not have wished for a better start when Cameron Jerome stole the ball from Middlesbrough defender Daniel Ayala and slotted past Konstantopolous at his near post to give Norwich a 12th minute lead. Nathan Redmond finished off a brilliant passing move with an arrowed shot three minutes later and the Canaries had one foot in the Premier League. Alex Neil had said before the game how important it was to start well, after what had happened in the defeat to Boro a little more than a month previously. City saw the game out with little worry to spark jubilant celebrations at the final whistle. Norwich City, after an incredible ride, were back in the top flight at the first attempt.

    IMG_0143

    Norwich’s aim when the season began was to make an instant return to the Premier League. It’s a difficult task. We were going to have to do a lot of hard work. But we did it, and we have the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea to look forward to playing again. What a roller-coaster ride it was, with all the late goals and defining moments. I can’t wait to go through it all again.