‘We were stubborn teenagers. We didn’t want to be famous’: the inside story of Arctic Monkeys’ frenzied early years

In this extract from a new book on Sheffield’s musical history, Monkeys drummer Matt Helders and the cream of the city’s indie scene look back on the febrile mid-00s – from brilliant tunes to ‘brainless violence’

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n 2005, enough of a storm seemed to be brewing in northern British indie music that NME tried to coin a new genre to encompass it all: New Yorkshire. “Forget LA, New York or London,” the feature read. “New Yorkshire is the best new band scene in Britain.” The magazine lumped together a bunch of disparate bands such as Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys, the Long Blondes, Milburn, Harrisons and Bromheads Jacket, along with a Leeds and Wakefield bunch comprised of Kaiser Chiefs, the Cribs, Black Wire, the Research, ¡Forward, Russia!, the Ivories and the Sunshine Underground.

The New Yorkshire tag, though, had overlooked a fairly noticeable split in Sheffield at the time between the artier indie bands, often students, and the more traditional local indie outfits.

The Long Blondes, who formed in 2003, wrote something of a mantra that was used on early press materials when introducing them: “Our shared influences include the Mael Brothers, Marx Brothers and the Bewlay Brothers. We do not listen to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors or Bob Dylan. We chose an instrument each and learned to play it.”