Alex Turner Arctic Monkeys in mid-2002. In the early days of the band, Helders has recalled that Turner "wasn’t necessarily going to be the singer" but was the obvious candidate for lyricist: "I knew he had a thing for words." Before playing a live show, the band rehearsed for a year in both Turner and Helders' garages and, later, at an unused warehouse in Wath. Turner gradually began to share lyrics with his bandmates. According to Helders' mother, who drove the teenagers to and from their rehearsal space three times a week: "If they knew you were there, they would just stop
Gerard Helders Wassenaar visited him, and on each occasion he wrote in his blog that he was surprised that Helders was still in such good health and well aware of current affairs. Helders became the oldest man in the Netherlands after the death of Cornelis Geurtz on 21 August 2012. He had twelve grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. Helders died on 6 January 2013. Gerard Helders Gerardus Philippus "Gerard" Helders (9 March 1905 – 6 January 2013) was a Dutch politician of the defunct Christian Historical Union (CHU) now merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). Helders a jurist by occupation, worked as