Gus Unger-Hamilton of Alt-J has said to British music publication NME that he found Alex Turner‘s Brit Awards acceptance speech to be “self-indulgent”. The Arctic Monkey‘s frontman ruffled some feathers last month with his acceptance speech and mic drop after winning the the Best British Album award for AM.
NME reports, while the Alt-J keyboardist characterised the controversial speech as “pretty self-indulgent and rambling”, he also admitted it was the most memorable moment from this year’s ceremony. Unger-Hamilton later added in a tweet, “If you can’t be self-indulgent when you’ve just won Album of the Year, when can you?”
During Turner’s now infamous “that rock ‘n’roll, eh?” speech, the frontman insisted that “rock’n’roll will never die”. Said a bemused Turner to the audience on the night, “It might hibernate from time to time, sink back into the swamp. I think the cyclical nature of the universe in which it exists demands that acquiesce to some of its rules.”
“But it’s always waiting there, just around the corner,” he added. “Ready to make its way back through the sludge and smash through the glass ceiling, looking better than ever.” He then told organisers to, “invoice me for the microphone if you want” before dropping it to the ground.
Other artists also told the music publication their thoughts about Turner’s musings. The Haim girls decided the speech “was pretty badass,” The Smiths guitarist Johnny Mar called the text “quite poetic” while Metronomy‘s Joe Mount thought it would make a nice t-shirt slogan.
Alex Turner himself explained the meaning behind his words this week, explaining the speech was his attempt at teaching people about the importance of rock music. “It’s not aggressive,” he told NME at their awards ceremony last week. “It’s just about presenting an option that people may or may not know exists. It occurred to me that in that room, or certainly watching it on TV, were people who’d never heard the term ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ other than to describe a zip on a Topman jacket.”
Watch: Arctic Monkeys win Best Album Award for AM at Brit Awards
http://youtu.be/cEVkt0fLWKA
If you can’t be self-indulgent when you’ve just won Album of the Year, when can you? @NME
— Gus Unger-Hamilton (@gusunger) March 5, 2014
