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Last night – wow!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
LEE PAYNE 