{"id":513330,"date":"2026-03-09T17:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/513330\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T17:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:07:10","slug":"james-ford-sheds-light-on-the-origins-of-arctic-monkeys-opening-night-and-the-chances-of-more-new-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/513330\/","title":{"rendered":"James Ford sheds light on the origins of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Opening Night’ \u2013 and the chances of more new material"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Ford<\/a> has told NME about the \u2018AM\u2019 era origins of Arctic Monkeys\u2019 <\/a>new track \u2018Opening Night\u2019.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0Is \u2018Opening Night\u2019 a curtain call for Arctic Monkeys? It\u2019s a beautiful gift either way<\/a><\/p>\n

NME sat down with the producer earlier this week<\/a> to get a track-by-track guide to War Child\u2019s star-studded new \u2018Help(2)\u2019 album, which features the likes of Fontaines D.C.<\/a>,\u00a0Wet Leg<\/a>,\u00a0Young Fathers<\/a>,\u00a0English Teacher<\/a>,\u00a0Pulp,<\/a>\u00a0Damon Albarn<\/a> and many more alongside the Sheffield indie veterans.<\/p>\n

\u2018Opening Night\u2019 was the first track unveiled from the indie compilation and marked the band\u2019s first material since 2022\u2019s \u2018The Car<\/a>\u2018, inviting a flood of speculation from fans \u2013 who are so far divided over whether it means there\u2019s more music to come or if the track is more of a swan song.<\/p>\n

When we put the latter to Ford, he said: \u201cNo comment! They\u2019re all\u00a0still great mates, and they may do something again, but there\u2019s nothing on the cards right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, Monkeys drummer Matt Helders recently said there were no imminent plans to get back into the recording studio<\/a>, but ruled nothing out and said making music was \u201csomething we love to do\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Ford went on to tell us that Alex Turner was one of the first people he approached about the album. \u201cFor obvious reasons,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019ve 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\u2019t particularly have any plans to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all live in different parts of the world these days, but they really pulled out all the stops to be a part of it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ford also confirmed the song was a leftover from the \u2018AM<\/a>\u2018 era. \u201cAl had the demo of a song that was written around the time of [2013 album]\u00a0\u2018AM\u2019, actually,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helders also sat down with NME recently to talk about the band revisiting old material<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d he said, before revealing\u00a0how there were \u201cparts\u201d of the song \u201cthat I remember from us trying things in the past,\u201d but that \u201cit was something that was never completed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not another version of something we already did, but I just know that there are elements of it,\u201d he went on. \u201cAs is quite often the case with us, there will be things that we kick around for a bit that aren\u2019t ready yet or just didn\u2019t make the cut at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are parts of it I remember, but there\u2019s obviously how our sound has changed over time and developed \u2013 and our ability. I always go back to the fact that there\u2019s some of this stuff that we couldn\u2019t have done like 10 or 15 years ago. We\u2019re still getting better at doing stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the harmonies, that\u2019s obviously something later in our career, to be able to do something like that and pull it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fans have joined them in reflecting on their career after they\u00a0marked 20 years since the band released their seminal, debut \u2018Whatever People Say I Am, That\u2019s What I\u2019m Not<\/a>\u2019 late last month, (January 23).<\/p>\n

Head here for Alex Turner recalling the creation of \u2018I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor<\/a>\u2018 and\u00a0here for Arctic Monkeys\u2019 first ever\u00a0NME\u00a0interview from 2005<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chris McClure \u2013 the man seen on the cover of the record \u2013 has also said he did not believe the album\u2019s success could happen again in a recent interview with BBC Radio Sheffield<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Ford has told NME about the \u2018AM\u2019 era origins of Arctic Monkeys\u2019 new track \u2018Opening Night\u2019. READ…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,16127,216],"class_list":["post-513330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-indie","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}