Andy Nicholson's Arctic Monkeys book made his ex-bandmates cry

20 November 2025, 20:30

Andy Nicholson's Arctic Monkeys book made his former bandmates cry

The original Arctic Monkeys bassist told Radio X's Dan O'Connell about the band's reaction to his forthcoming photobook, I Bet This Looks Good On Your Coffee Table.

Andy Nicholson revealed that Arctic Monkeys became emotional over his new book of photos.

The original bassist of the band is set to release I Bet This Looks Good on Your Coffee Table - a 175 page collection of Nicholson's candid moments taken of the band between 2005 and 2007.

Speaking to Radio X's Dan O'Connell about the the A4 hardback - which sees the band in cramped dressing rooms, on tour buses, in recording sessions and making their Saturday Night Live debut - the former Monkeys rocker revealed that the band have seen the book and frontman Alex Turner even helped him brainstorm ideas for its title.

Quizzed if he's still in contact with any of his ex-bandmates, Nicholson revealed: "We talk quite a lot. I sent them an early copy of the book and got some great replies."

He added: "[Drummer] Matt [Helders] said it made him cry. [Guitarist] Jamie [Cook] weren't far behind. I showed it Al[ex Turner]and some of the names that were suggested for the working titles, Al came up with a couple on them."

Nicholson also touched on the band's spotty, teenage look, adding that their subsequent glow-up wasn't lost on their frontman. Speaking of Turner's reaction to the nostalgic collection, Nicholson revealed: "He said, 'Good job the music was good, because we didn't look too good either'. Do you know what I mean?"

Watch our full interview with Andy Nicholson above and pre-order the book here.

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Speaking about the band's early days and how important making and performing music was to them, the Sheffield artist went on to explain how the passion in their early crowds made them want to perform as with as much energy as possible.

He recalled: "The only thing we ever cared about was, let's write some songs, learn them, be able to play them really well and perform them to people. And then it got to a point where we were doing these gigs and people were singing these songs back to us and it starts to live a life of its own. "

"And these songs just start to evolve and people are knowing the lyrics better than we know them and singing them back, and there were times where we hadn't have to sing the songs. They're singing it for us. So we just made sure we captured that energy and made sure that energy was as tough and as strong as it could be at any point."

Despite the fact he loved making music and performing, Nicholson credited family issues at the time and the band wanting to keep his replacement Nick O'Malley permanently among the reasons for his departure.

However, after a few frosty years, the band have fully cleared the air and "rebuilt" their friendship after a series of "grown up" chats.

Asked what made him want to give it up, he told Dan O'Connell: "It was a difference of reasons. I had family stuff going on, they decided to take Nick on tour, came back, decided to keep Nick, so I wasn't in there anymore.

"After a few years, maybe four, five years of us parting ways and not really talking a lot, we kind of started to link back up and started to have these serious grown up conversations and really rebuilt our friendship from there and everything's been fine since then."

The band's stratospheric success and seemingly overnight fame appeared to take its toll on a young Nicholson too, who recalled: "I think when it was happening to me, the whole fame thing, we were all still so young. That is not the reason we were in it.

"The whole fame thing was a horrible side effect to being successful. All we cared about was the music and the art and the performance side of it. And then when people start to recognise you and things like that, that's a whole completely different thing..."

I Bet This Looks Good On Your Coffee Table is available to pre-order in various bundles here.

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