Alex Turner has revealed that he “was never interested” in the new Arctic Monkeys‘ album being released as a solo effort, as they originally discussed.

Last month, guitarist Jamie Cook revealed that the band’s upcoming sixth LP was at one point considered to be made and released as an Alex Turner solo record, because the music was primarily “quite basic”. Now, in an interview with German website Intro , Turner has said that the idea never really appealed to him.

“I was never interested in making a solo album,” Turner admitted. “I am a part of this band and one would disrespect the other. Nevertheless, I wanted to make this music, it was in me. When you compose on the piano, you automatically get different results than on the guitar. And it was important to me to say goodbye to the realism of most of the Arctic Monkeys stuff.


“Overall, it developed in a direction that soon made me realise she had absolutely nothing to do with what people would expect from a Monkeys record.”

Asked at what point of the process he got the rest of the band involved, Turner said: “Relatively early. When I finished the first demos, I invited Jamie to listen to everything and work on the songs together. He recorded a few guitars, had complementary ideas and was pretty enthusiastic overall.

“His enthusiasm has taken away my uncertainty. After a while, we brought Nick into the studio and played him our demo of The Star Treatment. He was also thrilled, and so I gradually got the green light from everyone.”

“It was quite basic – piano, vocal and no guitar – Al was in two minds about, ‘is this Arctic Monkeys or am I going somewhere else with this’,” said Cook about the early stages of the album. “And maybe at first I was a bit like that as well. It’s not definitely not a guitar-heavy record, not typically what we’d do. It took a lot more thinking about.”


Elsewhere in the interview, Turner also admitted that he was “amused” by the petition calling on him to shave his beard off.

Arctic Monkeys release ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ on May 11.

They play their first show of 2018 tonight in San Diego.