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
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino father at the age of eight, commenting that he "never thought [his father's influence] would find its way into [his] compositions as much as it has on this record". Many of the vocal takes included on the finished album originate from Turner's home demos on a TASCAM 388 8-track recording machine. Guitarist Jamie Cook commented that he "was blown away by the direction Alex had gone in" when Turner played him the demos in February 2017. Initially unsure how they would record the songs, Cook suggested Turner release it as a solo album, but Turner was uninterested. Cook began recording