Who Is Alex Turner? A Portrait of a Modern Master

Alex David Turner is a tricky character to decode. A songwriting genius? Yes. A rock'n'roll cliche? Maybe. In a milestone year for the Arctic Monkeys frontman - and in the week that the new Last Shadow Puppets album is released - Matt Wilkinson makes sense of a true musical enigma. 

- Matt Wilkinson

DECEMBER 2003. ALEX Turner, aged 17 and set free in London, thought his world had peaked for ever. Staying overnight in a £30 Golders Green B&B (no running water – but who really needs that?) and flanked by his best friends Matt Helders and Andy Nicholson, the parttime barman from Sheffield surveyed the capital’s grandest music venue, Alexandra Palace. The Strokes, at the height of their career, were playing onstage and a starstruck Alex had just met his idols, Libertines frontmen Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, who were also in the crowd.

Talking to NME in 2011, Turner was still fondly recalling the “little adventure” they’d all had that night. “As much as they probably hate hearing this,” he gushed about The Strokes, “they were the band that encouraged me to rip the knees of my jeans and write on them in marker pen. I wrote on them in red ink: ‘I’ve got soul and I’m superbad!’”

Exactly two years after that gig – to the week, no less – and the tables had turned for all concerned. This time, it was The Strokes who were left open-mouthed after witnessing a hyped new band called Arctic Monkeys play 25 minutes of the most mesmerising, precision-perfect Buzzcocks-esque punk since two Johnnys (Ramone and Rotten) had invented it three decades earlier. Having already displaced Doherty as the UK’s premier songwriter, Turner (with Nicholson, Helders and fellow like-minded soul Jamie Cook in tow) was about to go global. And there he’s remained. His art has been praised by millions, from bona fide legends (Bowie: “A delight”), to rap royalty (Diddy: “The Arctic Monkeys are so cool!”), to politicians (Gordon Brown, although the less said about that the better) to poets (Simon Armitage: “God bless him”). And, let’s face it, probably by you too.