Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner praises Oasis inspiration


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Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner has been praising the influence of Oasis on his generation of aspiring musicians, saying the attitude which exuded from the Gallagher brothers is something that is sorely missing from modern music.

“With Oasis, it’s just that attitude, like it’s resistant against everything else that’s going on in music,” he told Pitchfork. “I don’t know if you can fully understand that, it’s like an impulse, isn’t it? Especially at that age, you don’t rationalise, you’re just like, ‘That looks cool’.

“And I feel like that’s the way it should be now, in a way. Guitar music or rock’n’roll or whatever you want to call it sort of goes away with trends, but it’ll never go away completely. It can’t die because it’s so fundamentally attractive.”

Turner also discussed the time he and bandmate Matt Helders impersonated Oasis during their schooldays, admitting that their take on the Manchester band was not as popular with their classmates as some other performances.

“In the UK, you go from primary school to secondary school at age 11,” he continued. “And when we left primary school, all the kids would form groups and do a performance, like the girls would do a dance to the Spice Girls, or whatever.”

“So me and Matt and some of our friends put on Morning Glory – we ‘played’ some tennis racquets and pretended to be Oasis. Matt was Liam Gallagher, he had the bucket hat on. I was the bass player.

“We were just standing there, doing what Oasis did onstage. Which was not a great deal. I don’t think we got as good a reaction as the Spice Girls.”


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