Arctic Monkeys are over a month into their 2023 ‘The Car’ European tour and returning to the UK for their first run of stadium shows. Drummer Matt Helders shared a sneak peek of the band’s pre-show ritual to BBC, where he said:
“It’s like our little moment. Before we walk on, backstage, we all have a little dance. We’re pretty tight. We’ve got a good thing going.”
To get into the mood before a big show, to let the jitters out, they listen to two artists, as Helders revealed:
“Barry White definitely gets us in the mood, but Tom Jones even more so, in terms of pace and speed and getting us pumped to do a gig.”
Besides jamming to Barry White’s, ‘I’m Gonna Love, You Just a Little More Baby’ and Tom Jones’s ‘It’s Not Unusual’ before getting on the stage, Helders revealed that they also play around with the setlist:
“We change the setlist quite a bit for different circumstances. But once the audience is over a certain amount of people, it does feel the same – in terms of what we play, not in terms of that experience.
They experimented with different sounds on ‘The Car,’ and it all came down to frontman Alex Turner working extra hard to ensure the quality of the music they were putting out. The band’s producer James Ford recently recalled the making of the album:
“Alex is getting very into recording stuff himself. I seem to remember the writing process for ‘The Car’ was quite long [because] he went to and fro with a few different directions. He’d do four or five different versions of the same song with different tempos, and he’d play some of them to me, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that one’s sounding great.'”
You can listen to ‘The Car’ below and read the interview here.
