The Arctic Monkeys have raised £128,544 after raffling off Alex Turner’s Fender Stratocaster guitar, which was used in many of the band’s earlier performances. The raffle was in partnership with the Music Venue Trust to support The Leadmill, which is a Sheffield venue that the band performed at regularly in the early stages of their career. The money will also go towards other UK grassroot venues.
In order to be entered into the raffle, the minimum donation was £5. There were 14,410 tickets sold in a two-week period. People who entered the raffle also gained access to a stream of the band’s performance at Reading Festival in 2006.
The Leadmill general manager Rebecca Walker spoke to NME about the success of the raffle saying; “That’s an insane amount of money and will go so far to securing not only the bricks and mortar of venues but also their key members of staff. We so humbled and so grateful. We couldn’t thank the guys enough for listening to us and allowing us to reach out to them, but also just their generosity. To them, it’s just a guitar but to us, it’s a lifeline – it’s a matter of whether a venue can stay open or not.”
When asked about how the event even came about, she said; “Everyone in Sheffield knows someone who knows someone who knows Arctic Monkeys. You can’t go very far in the city without someone having a story about them. I happen to know someone with a connection to them so we reached out back in April and then their management said, ‘We’ve actually been speaking with them and they were asking about you guys to see if you were alright’. It was so great to know that no matter how big they get or where they are in the world, they’re still concerned with the crisis of how venues are doing back home. They were only too happy to help.”
The Arctic Monkeys were formed in Sheffield in 2002. The band has released six studio albums. Their debut album is the fastest-selling debut album by a band in UK chart history, and in 2013, Rolling Stone ranked it the 30th-greatest debut album. The band has won seven Brit Awards and has been nominated for five Grammy Awards. They also won the Mercury Prize in 2006 for their debut album, in addition to receiving nominations in 2007, 2013, and 2018. The band have headlined at the Glastonbury Festival twice, in 2007 and again in 2013.
