When Arctic Monkeys earned £17

Who would have bet on Arctic Monkeys’ success? Just ask Ann Flynn, owner of the Sheffield pub which hosted the very first performance of Alex Turner’s band. In 2003, the young group took home £17 after a night out at The Grapes and, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the single “I bet you look good on the dancefloor”, the hostess shared some memories with the BBC.

“Someone told me that night that they were going to be really, really big. And I said, ‘Yeah, of course, we’ve heard this one before.’ I had no idea they were going to be this big, I just like Irish music.” That night they played covers of Fatboy Slim, The White Stripes, The Undertones, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, as well as their own “Ravey Ravey Ravey Club” and the one and only live performance of “Curtains closed”.

Flynn then says that Turner secretly visited the pub 10 years later, in a sort of “pilgrimage” towards the beginning. “When he arrived, he asked my niece, who was working there, if he could go upstairs to stay in the room where it all started for a while. It was just a warehouse now, but he wanted to go back anyway.”

The other members of Arctic Monkey never forgot their roots either. “They always remember on TV that their first show was at The Grapes and I think that’s very nice of them. When they played Hillsborough a few years ago they mentioned us on stageand within hours the pub was full.”