Matt Helders

Matthew Helders was born 7th of May 1986 in a Sheffield suburb, High Green. In his teens he formed the highly successful band Arctic Monkeys with his mates Alex Turner, Jamie Cook and Andrew Nicholson. He bought a drum kit "'cos that was all that was left.". The band rose to fame with an international breakthrough in 2006, after gigging around the UK for some years. He went to college in Barnsley with band mate Alex and had A-levels in musical technique, where they both passed the exam with top grades. Matt's drumming technique is funky and inspired by that from rap and hip hop-music, which he was a big fan of in his teens. He also provides his distinctive backing vocals, which can be heard on tracks such as "You probably couldn't see for the lights, but you were staring straight at me", "D is for Dangerous" and "Teddy Picker". He often does cameos in the band's music videos, since the rest of the band don't do that. In Paul Fraser's "Scummy Man" (2006), a short film based on Arctic Monkey's #1 hit "When the sun goes down", he plays a young man on his way home from a band practice who turns down a prostitute offering him her services. He also appears in the music video for the song.