Arctic Monkeys cover The Beatles at their biggest ever US gig

Arctic Monkeys played their largest headlining US gig of their career to date last night (February 8) at Madison Square Garden in New York.

While they’ve played MSG twice previously in 2012 supporting The Black Keys, this eighth date of their current US tour, which started in Miami, Florida on January 30, was the first time the Sheffield band had topped the bill at the prestigious venue.

Supported by Deerhunter, Alex Turner and co took to the stage just about 9.15pm and played for an hour and a half. With a giant ‘A’ and ‘M’ made out of lights behind them, the four-piece – augmented for most of the evening by touring keyboardist Tom Rowley – began their set with ‘Do I Wanna Know?’, off last year’s ‘AM’. In all, the band played 20 songs, which included all but three of that fifth record’s 12 songs, ‘No. 1 Party Anthem’, ‘I Want It All’ and ‘Mad Sounds’ being the ones they left out.

As he has been for a few of the other gigs on the tour so far, Miles Kane was in attendance, and Turner’s Last Shadow Puppets bandmate joined the band on electric guitar for ‘505’, the last song of the main set. He also walked back onstage with them for the start of the encore for a slow, moody cover of The Beatles‘ ‘All My Loving’, played to commemorate, a night early, the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four’s first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the legendary group’s first ever US tour.

Only two songs – ‘Dancing Shoes’ and ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ – were played from their debut album, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’, but there was a smattering of tunes from their other records, including ‘Brianstorm’, ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ , ‘Crying Lightning’ and ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’, the only song from 2011’s ‘Suck It And See’ to make an appearance. The encore was rounded out with ‘One For The Road’ and ‘R U Mine?’.

Arctic Monkeys played:

‘Do I Wanna Know?’
‘Brianstorm’
‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’
‘Snap Out of It’
‘Crying Lightning’
‘Old Yellow Bricks’
‘Fireside’
‘Knee Socks’ ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ ‘Arabella’ ‘Dancing Shoes’ ‘Pretty Visitors’ ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ ‘Cornerstone’ ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ ‘505’ (with Miles Kane) ‘All My Loving’ (with Miles Kane) ‘One for the Road’ ‘R U Mine?’