As far as album covers go, Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not must be up there with the most iconic.
But did you know the story behind the blurry eyed man holding a cigarette that graces it?
Chris McClure was just 16 years old when he first met the Arctic Monkeys.
“We’d go to the same gigs, then see each other on the number 77 [bus] – so we became friends,” he told The Guardian in 2016.
Then, when Chris was a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, he got a call from bassist Andy Nicholson saying they wanted pictures of a guy on a night out for the artwork of their debut album.
Chris agreed and later met up with a photographer and assistants in a Liverpool bar.
He asked them: “What do you want us to do?”
“Go out and get drunk – come back after midnight,” they allegedly replied, handing Chris and his mates a ‘wad of cash’.
Chris McClure featured on the cover of Arctic Monkeys’ debut album when he was just 19 years old (Domino)
So they did just that, returning to the venue of the photoshoot past 2am.
“[It was] just me sat on a stool. They gave me more whisky and I threw up half way through. Everything was blurry,” he recalled.
But the result was exactly what the indie band were looking for and they decided to use one of the shots on the album’s cover.
“I was pleased but I don’t think I grasped how massive it was going to be,” Chris said. “It was only on the day the album was released, in January 2006, I thought, ‘S**t, what have I let myself in for?'”
Soon after, everyone wanted to know who the man on the cover of the Arctic Monkeys album was.
According to Chris, reporters waited outside the pub he worked at part-time, E4 asked him to become a presenter and the Daily Star even offered him £10,000 to let them follow him on a night out.
The indie band’s album went on to sell more than three million physical copies (Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images)
Ultimately, Chris refused, not wanting to sell the band and his mates out but there were definitely some perks he took full advantage of.
He said: “I’d go to house parties and my face would be in the bedrooms. Strangers would ask me to do the cigarette pose. Clubs would call and offer free drinks all night if I just went down.”
Chris joked: “I think that album cover is the reason I only got a 2:2 degree.”
Nowadays, Chris works with adults who have learning difficulties but he has very few regrets regarding the famous picture.
“The only thing I might change is the money,” he said. “I got paid £750 for that night. I should have asked for 10p of every album sale.”
With more than three million physical copies of the album sold, according to Chartmasters, he’d be rolling in it.
