{"id":435217,"date":"2026-01-24T21:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/435217\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T21:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T21:26:08","slug":"chris-mcclure-from-cover-of-arctic-monkeys-whatever-people-say-i-am-thats-what-im-not-reflects-on-chaos-of-debut-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/435217\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris McClure from cover of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ reflects on chaos of debut success"},"content":{"rendered":"

The man on the cover of\u00a0Arctic Monkeys<\/a>\u2019 \u2018Whatever People Say I Am, That\u2019s What I\u2019m Not<\/a>\u2019 does not believe the album\u2019s success could happen again.<\/p>\n

The Sheffield band\u2019s legendary debut album was released 20 years ago yesterday (January 23), and it remains the fastest-selling debut album by a band in British chart history, having surpassed Oasis<\/a>\u2019 \u2018Definitely Maybe\u2019 and\u00a0shifting over 360,000 copies in its first week.<\/p>\n

The album artwork featured\u00a0a black-and-white photograph of\u00a0Chris McClure, a close friend of the band who was the\u00a0frontman\u00a0of The Violet May and\u00a0is now known\u00a0as the viral comedy character Steve Bracknall<\/a>, a pastiche of an amateur football manager.<\/p>\n

McClure is also the brother of\u00a0Reverend & The Makers<\/a>\u00a0frontman\u00a0Jon McClure, and to mark the 20th\u00a0anniversary of the album, he appeared on BBC Radio Sheffield to reminisce about the chaos of the record\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember the release date\u00a0were\u00a0really intense,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThere were, like, reporters outside my mum\u2019s house. I worked in a boozer in\u00a0Grenoside\u00a0at that time and there were reporters in the pub.\u201d<\/p>\n

McClure went on to\u00a0speculate\u00a0on whether the headline success of the album\u00a0could be replicated now.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was thinking the other day, like, you imagine now a band coming from England, a working class band of four lads, and being headline news on the Six\u00a0O\u2019Clock\u00a0News\u00a0on the BBC?\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0asked.\u00a0\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think it\u00a0would\u00a0happen now. But\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0how big it\u00a0were\u00a0at the time, you know, fastest selling British album of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

To shoot the album cover, the band gave McClure \u00a370 for a night out in Liverpool, and took the shot in the early hours at the city\u2019s Korova bar.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It was] just me sat on a stool. They gave me more whisky and I threw up half way through. Everything was blurry,\u201d he previously recalled. \u201cI was pleased but I don\u2019t think I grasped how massive it was going to be. It was only on the day the album was released, in January 2006, I thought, \u2018Shit, what have I let myself in for?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On the 15th anniversary of the album in 2021, McClure\u00a0reflected on having his photo used as the artwork and shared a colour photo from the original shoot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The album included their breakout Number One single \u2018I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor\u2019, which\u00a0frontman\u00a0Alex Turner told\u00a0NME\u00a0in 2011<\/a>\u00a0he wrote after he\u00a0\u201cfound the lyrics for it scribbled on a piece of paper\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u00a0was\u00a0all sorts of stuff about cigarettes and stuff\u2026 There were some stinkers in there,\u201d Turner said about some of the early lyrics he wrote. \u201cArguably, there still is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since its release, the album has been certified eight-times platinum in the UK, and in the US it became the second-fastest selling debut album on an independent record label. It also saw the band win the 2007 Mercury Prize<\/a>, take home the\u00a0BRIT Award<\/a>\u00a0for Best British Album, and get nominated for the Grammy\u2019s Best Alternative Music Album award.<\/p>\n

The band surprised fans earlier this week by\u00a0releasing a brand new song called \u2018Opening Night\u2019<\/a>. This was recorded as a one-off release, and it is the first taste of a new all-star charity album \u2018Help(2)\u2019, made in conjunction with War Child.<\/p>\n

NME\u00a0gave \u2018Opening Night\u2019 a four-star review<\/a>, noting that the song\u2019s release had been \u201cenveloped in hearsay \u2013 that\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0their final release, that\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0an outtake from \u2018AM\u2019 sessions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re looking for answers as to what the future holds, you\u2019re not going to get them here,\u201d it read. \u201cBut if this is the last piece of music we\u2019re going to get from Arctic Monkeys, it\u2019s a solid way to bow out \u2013 interesting, enjoyable and for a mighty good cause. More tunes aside, it\u2019s all we could ask for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man on the cover of\u00a0Arctic Monkeys\u2019 \u2018Whatever People Say I Am, That\u2019s What I\u2019m Not\u2019 does not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,1770,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-435217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-indie","12":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}