From Arctic Monkeys’ Iconic Album Cover to Today: You Won’t Believe How This Mystery Man’s Stardom—and Style—Evolved Over 20 Years!
Added on September 20, 2025 inMusic News Cards
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Ever wonder how a blurry photo of a cigarette-smoking bloke on a Liverpool night out ended up defining a generation? Well, thanks to a twist of fate—and maybe a bit of Mercury in retrograde—the Arctic Monkeys didn’t just drop a debut album; they launched an enduring cultural icon with Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The man behind the smoke? Chris McClure, then a teenager just trying to have a good time, who unwittingly became the face of a musical revolution. It’s wild to think that a casual night fueled by whisky and a photographer’s clever gamble could skyrocket someone to almost mythical status. If the stars were aligned that night, it sure played out better than most planetary charts predict! Curious about what happened after that infamous night and how Chris navigated life in the spotlight without selling out his mates? LEARN MORE.
The debut album for the Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, was one hell of a belter for the band to announce their start in the world of music.
It’s all gone rather well for the band ever since that first album released to critical and commercial acclaim, and the cover is unforgettable.
While it’s a picture of a bloke smoking a cigarette, it just works as an introduction to the Arctic Monkeys, and the image on the front of the album has become iconic.
As for the bloke himself, that’s Chris McClure, who was just 16 when he first met the guys who’d go on to form the band, and when he was a student in Manchester, he got a call from bassist Andy Nicholson telling him they needed pictures of a guy on a night out for their album cover.
Chris agreed and met up with a photographer and their assistants in a Liverpool bar.They allegedly gave him some cash, told him to ‘go out, get drunk and come back after midnight’ for his photo.
McClure will forever be known as the man on Arctic Monkeys’ debut album cover (Domino Recording Company)
Returning to the photographer after a jolly night out, Chris remembered them giving him ‘more whisky’ and he ‘threw up halfway through’, so it was all a bit of a blur.
However, the pictures they got of the man ended up becoming the album cover for the Arctic Monkeys, and the rest is history.
On the album cover, he’s drunk and smoking after a night out in Liverpool to really capture that authentic image the band was going for, and in addition to the drinking money, he got paid about £700 for his trouble.
It wasn’t until the album released that the penny dropped on how many people were going to see the picture.
Speaking to The Guardian about the album’s release, he said: “I was pleased but I don’t think I grasped how massive it was going to be.
“It was only on the day the album was released, in January 2006, I thought, ‘S**t, what have I let myself in for?'”
This is the same bloke nearly 20 years later (X/@chrismcclure86)
Once his identity became known, reporters waited outside the pub where he worked, E4 offered him a presenting gig, and the Daily Star said they’d pay him £10,000 to follow him around on a night out.
However, he turned down these offers as he didn’t want to sell his friends out, though there were some perks he took advantage of.
“I’d go to house parties and my face would be in the bedrooms. Strangers would ask me to do the cigarette pose. Clubs would call and offer free drinks all night if I just went down,” he recounted.
“I think that album cover is the reason I only got a 2:2 degree.”
These days he’d be called something like the ‘Manchester final boss’ or another title along those lines, so perhaps it’s better this all happened before social media really took off.
As for what Chris is up to these days, he’s the guy who plays fictional football manager Steve Bracknall, who is a TikTok star.
If he does have any regrets, it’s that he didn’t ask for 10p off every album sale since Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not sold over three million copies, and he’d have made a decent sum out of it.
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