In a surprising new social media post, The Strokes‘ Julian Casablancas has admitted had he has “always wanted to be in the Arctic Monkeys”. The frontman took to Instagram yesterday morning to post a photo of himself spoofing the cover art of the Sheffield band’s debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.
The album’, released in 2006, features the legendary black and white cover image of Chris McClure – brother of Reverend And The Makers’ Jon McClure – smoking a cigarette. In Julian Casablancas’ recreation of the photo, the singer appears in a similar pose – also smoking – with the white title tag edited to read: “The Strokes”.
Casablancas captioned the photo with the words: “lolll – i always wanted to be in the Arctic Monkeys.” When Chris McClure shared his thoughts on the photo, his excitement was palpable: “Anyone who knows me will know of my love for The Strokes. So when I see @Casablancas_J posting a photo pretending to be me. It’s reeeeaaaalllllly mad!!!!!” he wrote on Twitter.
Alex Turner, frontman of Arctic Monkeys, has also been very open about his affection for Strokes as well, honouring the New York band with a lyric on the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino track ‘Star Treatment’ which reads: “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes, now look at the mess you’ve made me make.”
Back in 2011, Turner opened up about his love for the band, saying: “I remember I used to play that first album [Is This It] in college all the time, when our band was first starting. Loads of people were into them, so loads of bands coming out sounded like them,” Turner said. “I remember consciously trying not to sound like The Strokes, deliberately taking bits out of songs that sounded too much like them, but I still loved that album.”
Meanwhile, it has been reported that Arctic Monkeys are recording a new album in a studio in Suffolk. According to the drummer Matt Helders, the new record has been a long time coming: “We’re all eager to do it – we would have been doing it by now in a normal time,” Helders began, “There’s definitely a desire from our end to do a new record as soon as we can.”
