Five Minutes With The Arctic Monkeys

• 21st Jul 2008

Avoiding festival toilets is always the way to go. Driven away from the nasty business with the smell hurrying behind we hit the grass to watch what happened to be among the worst shows of a monumental Latitude Festival. Those chemical longdrops do funny things to your mind so as we sat next to four young lads and commented that the skinny one looks alot like Alex Turner we thought we must be suffering. The other three look very similar to those boys in the band, he's speaking with a Sheffield accent and it's either them or the perfect tribute band. Thousands of people were sitting next to the Arctic Monkeys and nobody knew it; they blended in to the trendy young groups and it was only because the music from Fields was turning our eyes to people watching that we got lucky.

We caught quick time with Alex to find out just what the Monkeys were doing in Suffolk – maybe sales have slowed and the boys decided a foreign holiday would have to wait.

Apparently not. Having been in Gloucestershire for the first week of recording on that tricky third album they were taking time out and hopefully not inspiration from Elbow. With such brilliant music on show the follow up to Favorite Worst Nighmare is a worry as Alex told us Elbow and Interpol later on the Sunday night were his highlights. Read our review to discover that they didn't come close. How to keep producing brilliant album after another? You should have been at Sigor Ros, Tindersticks, Amadou & Marium and the Buzzcocks sunshine.

We talked of the days when Glasswerk pointed them on the road to glory having promoted their brilliant early gigs and then as they weren't here to perform or do press we left them in peace to lay back and enjoy a festival among the unsuspecting crowds, just like normal lads.