Tom Dunne: Are the Arctic Monkeys really the last great band?
Arctic Monkeys are one of the standout rock bands in music world which seems to be leaving the genre behind. Picture: Zackery Michael
“Are the Arctic Monkeys the last great band?” was a question asked in a recent review of their new album. I scoffed, but it I also wondered: Who’s been ‘great’ since, as in REALLY GREAT? Phew, I wondered, like the flashing yellow Belisha lights at zebra crossings, are bands entering their endgame?
Bands, I like to believe, were invented by Buddy Holly. Prior to ‘bands’ the music world had been the preserve of men in cardigans called Bobby: Bobby Darin, Bobby Vee, Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vinton. It was a closed shop for the non-Bobby world.
The Bobbies were backed by bands, but these were background figures, interchangeable, anonymous. There was no Keith Richards or the odd Bezz here. It was a singer’s world.
It left Buddy, an errant O and two Bs short of greatness, utterly excluded. He had little alternative but to create a unit based on the guitar, bass and drums that would play songs that he wrote and produced himself. The idea of the band was born.
It wasn’t until the Sixties when The Beatles, Holly fanatics, started to run with this idea, that its full ramifications became clear. Like an ill-considered mini budget, it wreaked havoc on the music markets. The conservative Bobbies disappeared overnight.
The success of The Beatles, Bob Dylan — with and without The Band — The Stones, The Doors and so many others cemented the concept of the band as fellow voyagers on a tumultuous sea in the public imagination. The brightest and the best formed bands and wrote songs. But what was the best decade?
Obviously the Golden Age, stocked with all the bands mentioned but also The Kinks, The Byrds, The Who, The Beach Boys. Geniuses that soundtracked the most optimistic decade in history.
What the Seventies lacked in freshness they made up for in shear breath. Not just Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and a myriad other ‘hairy rockers’ but also The Clash, The Pistols, The Rats, and of course Bowie, a ‘band’ of people if ever there was one.
Bands got bigger and moved outdoors. U2, REM, AC/DC, Metallica, Blondie, Queen again, Simple Minds, The Police, A Ha, Madness, everyone at Live Aid. It seemed to be just getting going.
And it was: Radiohead, Nirvana, Stone Roses, Blur, Oasis, Pulp, Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Massive Attack, Foo Fighters. If this was a boxing match it would have been stopped.
The new millennium appeared to pick up where the last had ended. Coldplay, Snow Patrol, The Strokes, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Linkin Park. But, by the next one, it was clear this wasn’t the case.
Bands get more scarce and less successful: The 1975, MGMT, War on Drugs, Death Cab for Cutie. When you google ‘best-selling’ it becomes the preserve of Drake, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Rihanna, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.
The sea-change here was the huge impact of hip hop and R&B. They overtook rock as the dominant genres at that point and haven’t loosened their grip since. Eminem, NWA, Dre et al were just too dramatic and exciting for the four-piece to compete.
For a band to be genuinely ‘great’ it needs to tick a few boxes. Firstly, it needs two great albums. For the Arctics that’s the debut and AM. But it also needs ambition. It must want to play the stadia and compete.
You get the impression with many new potentially great bands that they are happy where they are. They have reached a level they are content with and don’t want to gamble on another great album. This is one, they say instead, that you need to spend time with. Like an old aunt.
So where do the brightest and the best go now? I suspect they are playing computer games online with their friends while tens of millions of younger fans watch them do it. Then they sell merch and attend fan conventions where people faint and swoon.
There is though, I am sure, a cohort of lads called Bobby, eyeing all this, their cardigans hidden in presses. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
