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Teddy McKrell
Professor Sonevytsky
Music, Sexuality & Gender
2 June 2018
Standing Next To Me
The Last Shadow Puppets are a rock supergroup fronted by Alex Turner of the Arctic
Monkeys and Miles Kane. They released their first album The Age of the Understatement in 2008, then went back to their respective projects before getting back together in 2016 to release
Everything You’ve Come to Expect. While there was not much of a tour for their first album, they performed together a few times in the interim, and their 2016 album had a much more aggressive tour schedule. Over the course of their recent album’s promotion and subsequent tour, Miles and
Alex played up what British GQ and NME both termed “a certain bromance” in entirely different articles, playing off the title of a song from the Arctic Monkeys’ first album (Lynskey 2016;
Perry 2016). At times, Miles and Alex’s interactions seem like the joke these publications assume it to be; often in interviews it feels as if the two are egging each other on. However, in live performance their interactions tend to take on a different tone, one that oscillates between moments that are clearly staged, even choreographed, and more spontaneous moments that feel sincerely intimate.
Neither Miles nor Alex has actually said anything official regarding their sexuality, so it is entirely possible for one or both to be a member of the LGBT community. However, it is also possible that both are heterosexual men who have never felt the need to publicly identify as such.
I do not wish to “prove” their sexuality either way—to do so would be unfairly presumptuous,
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and I do not believe that celebrities are obligated to disclose their identities. Whether Miles and
Alex’s relationship is entirely platonic or something else, it is still interesting to explore what allows and motivates them to publicly show intimacy in ways that are often interpreted as homoerotic by their audience. Furthermore, I am interested in what draws audiences to seek out and celebrate these shows of same-sex intimacy.
The Last Shadow Puppets’ demeanor in interviews often leads interviewers to describe a feeling that there is a joke they are not quite in on. In their interview with NME, their interviewer
Kevin Perry describes the process as “[feeling] like interrupting a conversation that’s been going on since 2005” (Perry 2016). Often, this joking nature comes along with references to them possibly being in a relationship, like in an interview with FaceCulture where Miles and Alex respond to a question about them being only children by adopting silly accents and saying together, “Let’s cut to the chase… What they really wanna know is, do you bum?” (FaceCulture
2016). In this case, the implication of a sexual relationship and its position as a subject of public scrutiny seems to be a source of humor and camaraderie. Danny Kaplan identifies a similar dynamic between male soldiers that he refers to as the “homosocial joking relationship.” He goes on to describe this relationship as something “men employ...to negotiate intimacy,” that “in itself can be interpreted as a mode of interaction that produces desire.” Interestingly enough, Kaplan also acknowledges the importance of publicity in this dynamic of seduction—whereas such displays might be considered too obviously genuine in private, homosocial settings and opportunities seem to “paradoxically afford them more room to maneuver their feelings” (Kaplan
2006, 574-75, 90). While I have no frame of reference for how Miles Kane and Alex Turner act
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in private, the presence of an audience is essential to understanding their dynamic, which in itself is very often performative.
It is important to note, however, the subtle differences in situation between Kaplan’s subject of Israeli soldiers, and my own of a British rock duo. Firstly, the homosocial environment of a group of soldiers has the added complexity of war and by extension violence that should not be overlooked. Secondly, the bulk of media pertaining to The Last Shadow Puppets and their second album is from 2016, a full ten years after Kaplan’s article was published, as well as a landmark year for LGBT rights. These differences are palpable in some of the more violent interactions between Kaplan’s subjects, as well as the heavy fear of being perceived as homosexual (Kaplan 2006, 584, 87). Miles and Alex’s public interactions never verge on violent, and perceptions of their relationship as something other than friendship have never been met with distaste. Some of these differences are likely brought out by the large difference in public attitudes surrounding homosexuality and same-sex intimacy between 2006 Israel and 2016
Britain and America. While it is certainly not a stretch to describe rock and roll as homosocial, as
Helen Davies does in her essay on British Rock Media, with the lasting influence of queer artists like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie, or to look further back, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, it is still a wholly different environment to a war zone, with different rules to negotiate (Davies 2001). The
Last Shadow Puppets are anything but shy with their influences, and Bowie was a clear influence on The Last Shadow Puppets’ second album; on the latter half of the tour they regularly performed a cover of “Moonage Daydream,” which of course has the wonderfully playful lyric,
“The church of man, love, is such a holy place to be.” Though in interviews and more press-driven events the joking nature of Miles and Alex’s seems to be aligned with the kinds of
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homosocial bonding rituals seen in Kaplan’s study, their interactions and gestures take on a different tone when they are actually performing their music.
One of the clearest and most consistent gestures utilized by the duo in concert performance is the act of sharing microphones. This gesture fits rather poetically with a song from their first album, “Standing Next to Me,” which ostensibly describes the course of a relationship in which both parties no longer share the same feelings they once had (Domino
Records 2008). Miles takes the melody on the song, while Alex joins in with upper harmonies.
“Your love is standing next to me,” sing the dual narrators, addressing the “you” rather than the
“her” mentioned in the verses. One performance of the song at an Arctic Monkeys concert in
Paris in 2012 involved Alex and Miles starting off the song at different microphones, then coming together at the same microphone for the final verse and chorus (AnezLullaby 2016). On their 2016 tour, this song was often performed the same way, with notable escalations in the amount of contact between the two, even at the expense of the actual music. In their performance at the Ace Hotel in LA, Alex throws away his tambourine before joining Miles at his microphone, while Miles turns all the way into Alex’s embrace and actually stops playing guitar to hold hands with him (Strangedaysindeed9 2017).
Whereas older bands like the Beatles would often share mics due to technical limitations,
The Last Shadow Puppets make the decision to share mics despite having more than enough microphones and fully functional monitors. In these earlier performances, the reference to the
Beatles is likely a motivation for this gesture—the Beatles influence is particularly obvious on the first Shadow Puppets album, even down to Miles and Alex’s matching moptops. More recent artists have also utilized the gesture, one being the Libertines, whose shows of homoeroticism
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coupled with legitimate drama and tragedy would warrant a paper of their own. Then there is of course Bruce Springsteen, for whom mic sharing came along with “lingering kisses” with his bandmates, often during ostensibly heterosexual songs (Fanshel 2013, 359, 372). Interestingly enough, Springsteen’s image in mainstream media and popularity with straight men directly contradicts much of his queer performance and aesthetic. Meanwhile, The Last Shadow Puppets have had the opposite trend: while they are still ostensibly within the bounds of heterosexuality, much of the buzz surrounding their work interprets them otherwise.
By the time the second Last Shadow puppets album had been announced, their usage of mic sharing had clearly shifted to something closer to these other artists. The music video for
“Bad Habits,” released two months before the album, alternates between clips of the band playing the song to a small crowd and erratic shots illustrating the story of the song. The live performance in the video involves Miles and Alex sharing a microphone with hardly any distance between them, turning their faces in towards each other before backing away as they reach a rest in the music. The more story-related parts of the video would be even more suggestive if they weren’t so dizzying and out of focus—a few shots show the silhouette of a woman leading the viewer up a set of stairs, and later in the video we briefly see Alex and Miles on a bed with the same woman just out of frame, implying a threesome. It could be said that the presence of a woman is what allowed such an overt reference to Miles and Alex’s relationship being a sexual one. Like with Springsteen, we see a double trap where the presence of a woman allows for queer possibility, but at the same time limits queer plausibility.
This same stipulation is visible in The Last Shadow Puppets’ subsequent music videos for “Aviation” and “Everything You’ve Come to Expect.” These videos are implied to be part of
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a larger narrative wherein Miles and Alex have in some way wronged a bride-to-be, and are then forced by a mafioso (perhaps the bride’s father) to dig themselves neck deep into sand on a beach at low tide. In “Aviation” they are openly defiant, with Miles even kissing the father to rile him up, but in “Everything You’ve Come to Expect” they are resigned to their fate, watching the sea roll in, both making one last connection with the angry yet anguished bride before she runs away to leave them to the inevitable. Perhaps this storyline is an attempt to reckon with the group’s composition as a band with two frontmen; both need to have some kind of stake in the story, so if the director is trying to show a torrid romance, both frontmen need to be involved.
There is a similar struggle in some of the songs themselves, especially those where neither Alex nor Miles take the lead. Here as well, the presence of a female subject seems to provide a sense of plausible deniability.
It would be easy to expand this discussion to their stage makeup as well—the traditional
“rock band” is pretty much entirely men, but the group does also include a string quartet composed entirely of women. However, the female instrumentalists are treated with a respectful distance, and are never really brought into on-stage shenanigans beyond the occasional acknowledgement of their talents. The only woman directly interacted with on stage in a joking or playful way is Alex’s girlfriend Taylor Bagley, who at a few shows, one of which I was in attendance, was singled out during “Sweet Dreams, TN,” the only song on the album clearly written about her. Beyond that, stage interactions are limited to Alex, Miles, and sometimes their bassist Zach Dawes and opening artist Cameron Avery. In both stage performance and music videos, the focus is primarily on the frontmen, not the women with whom they interact.
However, in all these cases a viewer is present. The crowd is given free reign to interpret what is
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in front of them, but they are likely being catered to in certain ways depending upon the performer’s perception of their audience.
In official recordings of Last Shadow Puppet concerts, the crowd seems fairly evenly split between men and women. Considering it is a supergroup, these audiences are largely brought in from the artist’s main projects. Alex Turner’s other band Arctic Monkeys seems to have a similar ratio of male and female fans, especially in UK, but with the rise of popularity following 2013’s AM and the Arctic Monkeys’ entrance into the American mainstream almost every online discussion became populated with resentment towards new fans, heavily implied to be teenage girls jumping on the bandwagon. One Arctic Monkeys blog run by a friend of mine received an anonymous message calling her a “spotify whore” for getting into the band after their latest album, a phrase she now uses in her blog description. Helen Davies examines some of the ways female fans are underestimated and treated as symbols of a mainstream from which
British rock music is distinct—considering how ubiquitous praise for classic rockers like the
Beatles has become, this feels particularly ironic. Davies explains that discourse of female fans and performers in British Rock media often discounts their engagement with “serious” music as motivated by “sexual attraction to a male musician,” thus “making explicit the assumption that female fans of such bands...are not sufficiently intellectual to understand them” (Davies 2001,
313). Though attraction certainly does play a part in largely female, online fan communities like that of The Last Shadow Puppets, this exists alongside serious, dedicated, creative engagement with every aspect of the band’s performance. Assumptions that emotional and intellectual engagement can not coexist are rooted in misogyny, and beyond that, simply untrue.
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As their fanbase has changed, Alex Turner and Miles Kane have clearly changed as performers, with stage presence, outfits, and overall image clearly becoming a much more immediate concern. While visuals for their first album almost exclusively featured the duo standing still wearing black suits, the 2016 music video for their cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Is
This What You Wanted?” features Alex strutting around in tight pants, cowboy boots, and a vest that barely covers his torso, making excessive hand gestures and singing with a breathy, sarcastic bravado, with Miles playing guitar with his entire body and sporting something akin to a woman’s dressing gown. As fandom for Arctic Monkeys and associated acts became more visibly female, did Alex Turner and Miles Kane change their presentation to align with these same assumptions of what female fans want? Or is this change simply a product of time, with their eight year hiatus allowing them to become more comfortable with shows of flamboyance?
A similar question could be asked of Miles and Alex’s moments of on-stage intimacy.
Are they purely meant to excite an audience? There certainly is a significant portion of their audience dedicated to celebrating their relationship. In concert, interactions between Miles and
Alex are often accompanied by loud shrieking from the crowd. Fans take and share pictures and videos of Miles and Alex interacting, as well as create their own art and fanfiction. Sometimes this takes the form of speculation as well, if usually just casually—fans will often tag more intimate displays with the phrase “Milex is real,” “Milex” being Miles and Alex’s “ship name.”
Speculation seemed to be a lot more commonplace in the interim between Puppets albums, as speculation on their relationship went hand-in-hand with speculation on them recording a second album. However, such discussion is still had, especially with regards to their respective girlfriends’ feelings on their relationship. Miles has appeared a few times on Alex’s girlfriend
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Taylor’s instagram, and one such appearance involved some playful hints of something between
Miles and Taylor (Bagley 2015). As Miles has begun to tour for his upcoming album, there has also been some discussion of his sexuality, focusing specifically on his usage of pink, blue, and purple lighting, the same colors as on the bisexual pride flag.
These inquiries into sexuality are not made in a way that is intentionally invasive—rather, they are attempts to find belonging. People seek out media that can provide them vicarious experience and human relatability. Queer fans, especially those who are closeted, may gravitate towards media where representation is not fixed, so there is a larger realm of possibility.
Musicians like The Last Shadow Puppets provide a perfect niche in that they perform in a way that allows for many different interpretations, some radically and unashamedly gay and others heterosexual but still tender and intimate, and keep their actual personal lives rather private. In that ambiguity it is possible to carve out space that is difficult to refute. The music and stage performance of such a group thus act in similar ways; both are ambiguous enough to take on different meanings for the performers and each of their viewers, yet they contain enough concrete emotion to allow those different meanings to feel genuine. This phenomenon becomes even more apparent when applied to moments from The Last Shadow Puppets’ tour that defy societal expectations of same-sex intimacy.
One such moment can be found in the music video for “Miracle Aligner.” It takes itself just seriously enough to be funny, complete with bad Italian dubbing, slow motion dancing, and very orange spray tans. However, as the final chorus gives way to an instrumental outro with a rising, frantic organ, the camera spins around Miles and Alex, following them as they dance around each other and collapse together, somewhere just below frame. Here, the viewer is
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invited to take part in the flurry of emotions at play in the decidedly ambiguous story, and judge for themself what that story might be. This ambiguity also allows that viewer to publicly experience something approaching queer possibility without revealing too much of their feelings, much in the same way Kaplan’s subjects negotiated their desire for same-sec intimacy in an environment that discourages such genuine displays of love.
As a fan consuming new content related to The Last Shadow Puppets in 2016, I felt a sense of momentum similar to that in Miracle Aligner’s chorus. Miles and Alex seemed to become more comfortable as the tour went on, and each performance pushed the boundaries a little bit more. There was an element of story to it, like being invested in a romance novel. That romance novel turned into a detective story during Coachella 2016 Weekend 1, where Miles and
Alex maybe kissed but official cameras cut away too soon, so a few people did everything they could to a poorly recorded clip to make it more clear that it actually happened. At The Last
Shadow Puppets’ final show of the tour at Rock en Seine, they played a slower, stripped down version of the title track for Everything You’ve Come to Expect, standing still and simply holding on to each other, and to me it had enormous emotional weight. There was a sense of finally being in on the joke, but by then the joke had revealed itself to be the truth all along.
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Bibliography
"Aviation (Official Video)." Video file, 3:59. Youtube. Posted by The Last Shadow Puppets,
March 16, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd1Xc6-6VVg. "Bad Habits (Official Video)." Video file, 3:27. Youtube. Posted by The Last Shadow Puppets,
January 10, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbOF4UPpfs. Bagley, Taylor. A risque photo of Miles Kane and Taylor Bagley captioned "#tushytuesday."
Photograph. Instagram. December 15, 2015.
https://www.instagram.com/p/_U7jCLnLeE/?hl=en. Davies, Helen. "All Rock and Roll Is Homosocial: The Representation of Women in the British
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IamcaGta7hY. Fanshel, Rosalie Zdzienicka. "Beyond Blood Brothers: Queer Bruce Springsteen." Popular Music 32, no. 3 (2013): 359-83. doi:10.1017/S0261143013000275. "Is This What You Wanted (Official Video)." Video file, 6:48. Youtube. Posted by The Last
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Symbolic Interaction 28, no. 4 (2004): 571-95. JSTOR.
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"Miracle Aligner (Official Video)." Video file, 4:43. Youtube. Posted by The Last Shadow
Puppets, May 17, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPsyynjHpbY. "Standing Next to Me." Recorded 2007. On The Age of the Understatement. Performed by The Last Shadow Puppets. Domino Records, 2008.
"Standing Next to Me." Video file, 1:54. Youtube. Performance in Ace Hotel Theatre, Los
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"The Last Shadow Puppets Interview - Miles and Alex (part 2)." Video file, 12:30. Youtube.
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