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14:37 · 2,298 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- Three albums are named as the actual hinges across seven records: Humbug, AM, and Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Everything else is adjustment between them.
▶ 00:00:29
- The sequencing on the first two records is already deliberate. Riot Van sits at the centre of the debut as a breather, and Favourite Worst Nightmare eases its tempo track by track from Brianstorm down to Only Ones Who Know.
▶ 00:01:17
- 505 carries Turner's first use of a keyboard, which the video treats as the small opening that the whole later career walks through.
▶ 00:02:03
- The Last Shadow Puppets, with Miles Kane, James Ford and Owen Pallett, put Turner in front of the 22-piece London Metropolitan Orchestra a decade before Tranquility Base.
▶ 00:02:25
- Humbug happened because Josh Homme invited them to his desert studio after they met on tour, at a point where Turner says they had tunes but needed someone to help them crack the code.
▶ 00:03:10
- The listening behind it was Nick Cave, Black Sabbath riffs and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and they worked at recreating a feel from Susie Q without copying it.
▶ 00:03:28
- The Jeweller's Hands is the first thing Turner wrote at a piano, and he describes it as deliberately placed last, pointing at where the band would go next.
▶ 00:04:27
- AM's brief was explicit: apply a hip hop or R&B producer's compositional thinking to a four-piece rock band and make a record that sounds good in a car, which is why bass and drums were laid down first.
▶ 00:07:09
- Michael Chapman's 1970 album Fully Qualified Survivor set the mood Turner wanted on AM, and emulating him is likely why his Yorkshire accent is least audible on that record.
▶ 00:08:14
- Tranquility Base exists because of a birthday present. Turner had no ideas until his manager gave him a Steinway Vertegrand for his 30th, and the record was built on it, with Fellini's 8 1/2 and Jean-Pierre Melville's jazz clubs shaping the writing.
▶ 00:10:22