James Ford has told NME about the ‘AM’ era origins of Arctic Monkeys’ new track ‘Opening Night’.
READ MORE: Is ‘Opening Night’ a curtain call for Arctic Monkeys? It’s a beautiful gift either way
NME sat down with the producer earlier this week to get a track-by-track guide to War Child’s star-studded new ‘Help(2)’ album, which features the likes of Fontaines D.C., Wet Leg, Young Fathers, English Teacher, Pulp, Damon Albarn and many more alongside the Sheffield indie veterans.
‘Opening Night’ was the first track unveiled from the indie compilation and marked the band’s first material since 2022’s ‘The Car‘, inviting a flood of speculation from fans – who are so far divided over whether it means there’s more music to come or if the track is more of a swan song.
When we put the latter to Ford, he said: “No comment! They’re all still great mates, and they may do something again, but there’s nothing on the cards right now.”
To that end, Monkeys drummer Matt Helders recently said there were no imminent plans to get back into the recording studio, but ruled nothing out and said making music was “something we love to do”.
Ford went on to tell us that Alex Turner was one of the first people he approached about the album. “For obvious reasons,” he said, “I’ve got a longstanding working relationship with those guys. It was kind of a big ask because the Monkeys are not touring at the moment or in the studio, and they didn’t particularly have any plans to be.
“They all live in different parts of the world these days, but they really pulled out all the stops to be a part of it.’
Ford also confirmed the song was a leftover from the ‘AM‘ era. “Al had the demo of a song that was written around the time of [2013 album] ‘AM’, actually,” he said. “The chorus lyric and chorus music were from that era. He said he always thought that there was something in it, but it never really went anywhere. We batted around that idea. He wanted to write a new verse, I talked him into writing a new middle eight.
“He’s got his own little studio setup and he put that little drum machine in the intro just to keep him in time. I loved the way it sounded with that shonky acoustic guitar. The idea was for it to start quite lo-fi and then build into the full band thing.”
Helders also sat down with NME recently to talk about the band revisiting old material.
“We had ideas laying around from over the years that have never become stuff, so we went back to a few of those things to see if we had anything good enough for this. We decided to go with something new,” he said, before revealing how there were “parts” of the song “that I remember from us trying things in the past,” but that “it was something that was never completed”.
“It’s not another version of something we already did, but I just know that there are elements of it,” he went on. “As is quite often the case with us, there will be things that we kick around for a bit that aren’t ready yet or just didn’t make the cut at the time.
“There are parts of it I remember, but there’s obviously how our sound has changed over time and developed – and our ability. I always go back to the fact that there’s some of this stuff that we couldn’t have done like 10 or 15 years ago. We’re still getting better at doing stuff.
“All the harmonies, that’s obviously something later in our career, to be able to do something like that and pull it off.”
Fans have joined them in reflecting on their career after they marked 20 years since the band released their seminal, debut ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ late last month, (January 23).
Head here for Alex Turner recalling the creation of ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor‘ and here for Arctic Monkeys’ first ever NME interview from 2005.
Chris McClure – the man seen on the cover of the record – has also said he did not believe the album’s success could happen again in a recent interview with BBC Radio Sheffield.
The post James Ford sheds light on the origins of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Opening Night’ – and the chances of more new material appeared first on NME.