Wayward Blog Q&A: Arctic Monkeys
Who: Nick O’Malley, bassist, Arctic Monkeys
Where: Tonight, Thursday, September 13, at the Uptown Theater
Interview by Jason Harper
The Arctic Monkeys bring their pint-swilling, dancefloor-filling, blue-collar British rock and roll to the Uptown Theater tonight. The Sheffield band is touring on the heels of its second full-length, Favourite Worst Nightmare. Not only did the new album shoot to number 1 on the UK chart on the day of its release in April, all 12 songs from the album landed in the top 200 singles chart.
None of that’s suprising, considering the band’s Mercury Prize-winning debut record, Whatever People Think I Am, That’s What I’m Not, beat out the Beatles and Led Zeppelin (and, well, everyone else) upon its January 2006, becoming the fastest-selling debut album in British history. The band’s rise to fame, instant success and global touring created pressures that were too intense for original bassist Andy Nicholson to handle, and he left the band between the two albums.
We caught up with replacement bassist Nick O’Malley (whose instrument chugs throughout Nightmare like a steam press in a workboot factory) via phone yesterday as he was browsing through the racks at a Chicago music store preceding a Windy City gig. His Yorkshire accent was a bit thick and the cell phone connection wasn’t crystal clear, so some of this is our best guess.
The Arctic Monkeys’ Nick O’Malley pulls out his 10-grand’s worth to the Uptown Theater tonight. Photo from a 2006 Austin, TX, show by Scott Spychalski.
