Arctic Monkeys, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor"

This post is about aging. And the Arctic Monkeys.

It’s not obvious these two subjects would go together, but for me they do. Three times now at an Arctic Monkeys concert I’ve had occasion to feel a certain way about myself, in relation to my body, society, and history, as we pass through time together. You’ll have noted that I just wrote a whole pile of gobbledygook into that last sentence, specifically to avoid using the word old. There’s a reason why, and it’s not denial. The issue is more complicated (I think) than that three-letter four-letter word lets on.

Let me walk you through each of these three incidents, and we’ll see if any clear and sensible thesis emerges.

We’ll start with March 23, 2006, at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. Arctic Monkeys were touring on their mouthful of a first record, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. By this time they’d gone positively atomic in England, with fans and critics alike celebrating their surge up the charts. Here’s NME writing about the album:

Essentially this is a stripped-down punk rock record with every touchstone of Great British Music covered: The Britishness of The Kinks, the melodic nous of The Beatles, the sneer of Sex Pistols, the wit of The Smiths, the groove of The Stone Roses, the anthems of Oasis, the clatter of The Libertines …

Since the beginning of the year I had been touting Franz Ferdinand to my friend Jack, and he was insisting right back that I needed to listen to this Monkeys record. Fine, I decided, but they’re overhyped. Which is exactly what you tell yourself when you didn’t find the band first. But Jack had it right: that first Monkeys record is perfect. And not even the kind of perfect that reveals itself slowly over the course of ten ever-closer listens. From the jump WPSIA,TWIN slams down on you like a red-hot piston, stamping its perfection on your consciousness. Your brain sizzles on contact and says thank you, because this is the happiest you’ll ever be getting hit by a bus.

With tire tracks up our back and steam coming out of our ears, Jack and I turned up at the Paradise on a Thursday night to see Arctic Monkeys play their first-ever show before a Boston crowd. At some point before the Monkeys took the stage, a girl broke off from her friend group nearby and approached us.

“It’s so great to see people your age at a show like this,” she said, unironically as far as I could tell. I should emphasize: this was seventeen years ago. I was thirty-two years old. And Jack was—or at least looked—younger than me.

In that moment, I felt A Feeling. This was the first time I felt it, but as time has worn on I find that I’m feeling That Feeling, or variations of it, more and more often. To the point now where it hits me three to five times a week, and always out of the blue. Examples:

• I’m at my yearly physical, and my PCP tells me I’m due for my first colonoscopy.

• I’m scrolling through my Instagram feed, and some fan page I don’t even follow shows me side-by-side Then (1984) and Now photos of Smith and Orzabal from Tears for Fears.

• I pull clothes out of the laundry that can’t possibly belong to my kids, but they’re sure as hell not mine and not Kate’s.

I don’t have good words for The Feeling I Feel when shit like this happens. I’m sure there’s a 46-letter German term for it, but I don’t have the first clue how I would look it up. “Feeling old” is an obvious but facile tag to put on this: hardly up to the task. What THE FUCK is happening and why SO FUCKING FAST? seems closer to on-point, but that’s not so much describing The Feeling as transcribing a reaction to it. Dropping ten words and two F-bombs does decent work to convey the sense of urgency, but descriptively it’s a cop-out.

It might help to try to resolve this broil of Feeling into its several component ingredients. Incredulity is a big part of it, for sure—though sadly less so, as time has worn on. There’s a certain outrage you feel in these cases, after someone/ something comes up on your blind side and mounts a direct assault on your sense of self. Lately, too, blows to my sense of fairness, as the shots fired increase in frequency and are coming in from all sides. And finally, sprinkles and inklings of pride and defiance: all this mass mobilization against little old me? I must be some kind of threat to somebody important. Okay, you cockroaches: COME ON.

There’s plenty more to unpack here, for sure. But enough now: let’s go back to where we left off in March 2006.

The girl standing in front of me had just said, It’s so great to see people your age at a show like this, and I was feeling a Feeling. I had no answer to give her, because in that moment all my RAM was assigned to a desperate soup-to-nuts internal audit of my appearance, trying to figure what about me gave off the kind of vibe that would invite these backhanded words of welcome at an Arctic Monkeys show. The audit came up empty, presumably due to the auditor’s conflict of interest, but rather than check its work I moved on to consider Jack, who—and I hadn’t noticed this before—was wearing a collared shirt. Aha! So his fault, then—not mine …

I turned away from Jack now, toward the girl. It occurred to me that she might just be messing with us for the benefit of her friends. Yet her warm expression suggested otherwise, and in any case her friends were looking off in another direction. A reasonable person would have read that latter part as good news, but by now I was all spun up and my inner monologue was running off down all sorts of wild and spiraling paths: WHY AREN’T THEY LOOKING AT US? HAVE WE AGED OUT OF CONSIDERATION? WHAT MAKES THEM SO SPECIAL, ANYWAY?

In the meantime, Jack was displaying his usual grace, etiquette, and good sense: i.e., he was actually engaging with the girl. “Are you kidding? The Monkeys are terrific,” I heard him say. This response was well-conceived, in that it aimed to turn the focus of discussion away from us and toward the band the three of us were gathered to see.

The girl didn’t take the bait. “What do you all do to keep current?” she asked.

At this point I went to my All-Purpose Tool for Confronting (and Probably Exacerbating) Problems, which was sarcasm. IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS:

“Well, you know: from time to time they let us use the Internet.”

She looked at me.

“Oh, they supervise us. It’s fine.”

Jack laughed. Then she laughed. The three of us had a pleasant enough conversation for the next, I don’t know, ten minutes before the Monkeys took the stage. Then we watched in awe as these four kids—none of whom were old enough to drink, at least in the U.S.—tore through their thirteen-song set like an AK-47 unloading its cartridge: all tightness, precision, speed, and hooded sweatshirts. It’s hard to imagine now, but during the in-between times, when he wasn’t serving up vocal bursts in the vanguard of the Monkey attack, frontman Alex Turner carried himself like a scared teenager that day. Clearly he was still working through how to process all the accolades and attention his band was getting. I’d walked into the Paradise Rock Club thinking I was young—or at least not thinking about whether I was or wasn’t. But the Monkeys were babies, and our new friend’s reference to “people your age” was only drawing out the distinction.

Jump ahead seven years now, to September 17, 2013. This was the third time I went to see Arctic Monkeys.¹ Note the precision of my language here: I went to see the Monkeys, but I did not say that I saw them. Within that distinction lies the story of me falling into the grip of That Feeling, once again courtesy of, or at least in connection with, Alex Turner and his cameradoes.

I had emailed my gang three weeks earlier, to see who might want to go to the show. No bites except for Jack: “Yes! I’ll check my schedule tomorrow and will confirm.” Cool. On the day of the gig I followed up: “I MAY have a ticket via Craiglist. Otherwise I’m gonna try to street-scalp. Late notice, I know, but meet me there if you’re interested.” Jack: “I would have been up for it, but I’m home sick with a cold.” Alas, I was on my own.

My Gmail records show that I corresponded with multiple ticket sellers through Craigslist, with no luck. A message I’d sent to Kate’s cousin Allison on September 9 reads as follows:

To answer your Arctic Monkeys question: I saw them touring on the first album at the Paradise. Last time they were here they played the House of Blues …. So they’re at a level now where they’re playing much bigger venues. This is described as an “intimate” show, which either means intentionally smaller venue or they screwed up and underbid on capacity. The fact that they charged $37.50 face and sold out instantly, with scalped tickets on offer for no lower than $300—well, that signs to me they miscalculated.

Or I miscalculated, because a week later I trucked on over to the Paradise an hour before the show without a ticket in hand, expecting I would find a handful of folks loitering on Commonwealth Avenue with extras to sell. But there was nothing. Nobody. Zero.

About ten to twelve other people in a similar predicament were standing around on the sidewalk outside the doors, waiting for … what exactly? One of them said the security guy just inside the door was running a count of the tickets he’d taken. There would be no-shows, and once the show started he’d let people in off the street until he hit capacity. We all just needed to wait. The then-Indians were in something like a pennant race that September, so I hung loose outside the venue and followed the game on my phone. It bears mentioning that there was no line here—just a cloud of around a dozen people chatting, checking their phones.

From time to time over the course of the next hour, the door to the venue opened and a tattooed arm would reach out and gesture toward one or two of the gathered hopefuls: You … aaaaand you: come on in. The arm never gestured at me. The dozen of so of us dwindled in number down to three, and then the door stopped opening. The three of us who were Left Behind had the following characteristics in common: we were men, and we were, to all appearances, the three oldest fans on the sidewalk.

I stuck it out until probably fifteen minutes into the Monkeys’ set before I chucked it and went home to bed. Coincidentally (or not), when I woke up the next morning, I had turned forty. It turns out I had spent the last day of my thirties standing alone and ignored on Commonwealth Avenue, while the Paradise venue staff opened its doors to everyone younger than me.

So yeah, I felt A Feeling that night, too.

The next two times I saw the Monkeys—at BU’s Agganis Arena in 2014 and again at the Garden in 2018—came and went without any age-related incident, at least as far as I can remember. I’ll note only that they were peaking in 2014, touring on the AM album, whereas the 2018 show, drawing heavily from their regrettable Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino release, was a bit of a dud.

Jump ahead to just a month ago, July 16, 2023. Turns out Arctic Monkeys had a Rock in Roma gig scheduled at the Ippodromo delle Capannalle on the day I arrived in Italy with my family. The Hives were opening, and that dumb show at the Garden notwithstanding, this was one double-bill I was not going to miss—especially because my seventeen-year-old son Florian, a Monkeys fan in his own right, would be coming with me to this one.

The venue was outdoors, at a horse track: 45,000 capacity, and the show was sold out. Italy was sweating out a record-breaking heat wave. The temperature in Rome topped out in the high 90s earlier that day and would reach 106° two days later. I certainly felt my age entering the venue, picking my way through the crowd, skirting around all the beach towels and lawn chairs. We were arriving on the later side, just after the Hives came on, and there wasn’t much room left on the grounds to squeeze into. I was determined to find a low-density area with a direct sightline to the stage, a modest amount of air flow, and comparatively little cigarette smoke. Florian heckled me from behind as I kept pushing forward through the crowd, unsatisfied with wherever I stood.

Eventually I found a suitable plot, about a hundred yards from the stage. The Hives rocked out, then left the stage. An inordinately long stretch of time passed between acts. The two massive TV screens flanking the stage cycled through their promo programming at least four times: we watched the same Harry Styles video over and over and over again. My back started to hurt, my legs cramped, and I started old-man complaining about the delay.

Finally the Monkeys came on. They started with “Sculptures of Anything Goes” (Apple Music, Spotify) from their new record, which I hadn’t heard before, and then they kicked into “Brianstorm” (Apple Music, Spotify).

I looked behind me at Florian. His eyes were wide open, taking it all in. Seventeen years old, this kid who was still kicking around in Kate’s belly when I first saw Arctic Monkeys and a twentysomething girl marveled that someone my age might be into their punky thumping brand of rock. I felt A Feeling, but this time it was different. Same incredulity as before—that’s always there—but this time I actually felt pretty good, whatever my lower back and hip and calves were telling me after three hours standing on the packed-down Italian dirt.

I felt amazing and strange and good because I had attained an age where I could share an experience like this with my kid—and not so much a kid anymore but verging on a full-grown adult. Again: What THE FUCK is happening and why SO FUCKING FAST? God knows these questions still hadn’t been answered to my satisfaction. But somehow, with the help of the Monkeys’ set list and Florian’s arm occasionally coming to rest on my shoulder, I reached a point where my querulous inner monologue stopped asking them.

The show ended around midnight. I’ll forever remember the crunching sound of the tens of thousands of us walking off toward the parking lot over scores of plastic water bottles emptied and thrown down on the ground. (The Italians know how to keep hydrated.) After about forty minutes boxing out/ hip-checking line-cutters at the merch table, we got hold of a sweatshirt for Florian. From there it would be another ninety minutes at least before he and I got back to our Airbnb in town. The trains back into the city had stopped running, and there were zero cabs available. We stood around stranded on the Via Appia Nuova with a few hundred other fans for at least an hour, before Florian took hold of my phone and ordered up a full-sized Uber van at an exorbitant surge rate.

When the van arrived, we invited a family of four from Cyprus into the back with us, took on a single desperate teenager to ride up front with the driver, and we all split the fare back into the city center. Everything about this night was a hassle, and every bit of it was glorious.

Way back in January 2006, two months before Jack and I gate-crashed the party on behalf of Generation X, The Guardian wrote these noteworthy lines in its review of the Monkeys’ first record:

In recent years, British rock has sought to be all-inclusive, cravenly appealing to the widest audience possible. Oasis started the trend, hooking mums and dads with familiar-sounding riffs and “classic” influences, but it has reached its apotheosis with Coldplay, who write lyrics that deal only in the vaguest generalities, as if anything too specific might alienate potential record buyers. Over the course of Whatever People Say …, you can hear the generation gap opening up again: good news if you think rock music should be an iconoclastic, progressive force, rather than a branch of the light entertainment industry.

Mark me down as squarely on the Iconoclastic, Progressive Force side of the argument. I do believe—and have written elsewhere—that “rock ‘n’ roll is a privilege reserved for the young.” Time passes, and the bands who stick with it are just as affected as we are. 2006’s Zippie Hoodie Alex fretting his hour on the stage at the Paradise becomes Alex All-in-Black strutting around BU’s Agganis Arena in 2014 becomes Full-On Lounge Lizard Alex at the Garden in 2018. I can’t be the only one thinking he has been following Elvis’s career arc, mellowing out in his own right as he advances toward middle age. This may be why I can’t get into the Monkeys’ more recent “mature” and “eclectic” releases: have they crossed over to the wrong side of the generation gap? And to think so many of us mums and dads are bopping around to the old stuff with our kids … ? It’s ironic, but a blog post like this, if he ever read it, might very well make today’s Alex Turner feel A Feeling.

But then again, one surefire way he can send That Feeling packing is to grab a guitar and bang out “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor” (Apple Music, Spotify). I mean, hell—just hearing it works for me, every time.

1. A year earlier they had opened for the Black Keys at the Garden. Don’t get me started about the Black Keys. I was there for the warmup act only.