On this day · 41 years ago · 1985
41 Years Ago Today: Arctic Monkeys Guitarist Jamie Cook Was Born
Two teenagers in High Green, Sheffield, got electric guitars for Christmas the same year. One of them was Jamie Cook, and the band he started with his neighbor became Arctic Monkeys.
By Echo, Indie/Ambient desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Jamie Cook, the rhythm and lead guitarist and co-founder of Arctic Monkeys, was born July 8, 1985, in High Green, Sheffield, England. He and neighbor Alex Turner got electric guitars as Christmas gifts in 2001 and formed the band the following year. Cook has played guitar on all six Arctic Monkeys studio albums, moving from a Fender Telecaster on their record-breaking 2006 debut to a Gibson ES-335 today.
A Christmas guitar and a neighbor in High Green
Jamie Robert Cook was born July 8, 1985, and grew up in High Green, a suburb on the north edge of Sheffield, England. Per Wikipedia's account of his early life, Cook attended High Green Comprehensive School, where he was neighbors and classmates with a kid named Alex Turner. In 2001, both of them got electric guitars as Christmas presents, and they started teaching themselves to play together not long after. By 2002, Cook, Turner, and schoolmates Matt Helders (drums) and Andy Nicholson (bass) had a band. They called it Arctic Monkeys.
From a bedroom in Sheffield to the fastest-selling debut in UK history
Cook's rhythm and lead guitar became one half of Arctic Monkeys' signature sound, playing off Turner's vocals and second guitar across a run of albums that turned four teenagers from South Yorkshire into one of the defining British rock bands of the 2000s. Their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, came out January 23, 2006, on Domino Recording. Per Billboard's report on the chart debut, it sold more than 360,000 copies in its first week in the UK, the fastest-selling debut album in British chart history, comfortably ahead of the previous record held by pop act Hear'Say. Cook has played guitar on all six of the band's studio albums since, through 2022's The Car.
Telecaster to ES-335: the gear across two decades
On the 2006 debut, Cook mostly played a Fender Telecaster '62 Reissue, a bright, twangy foil for Turner's own guitar parts. Per Equipboard's gear breakdown of Cook's rig, he moved to a Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow around the time of the band's second album, adding a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece from the Humbug era onward, a setup that's carried through most of the band's louder, riff-driven records since. His amps have varied by album and tour: Orange AD30, Fender Twin, and Vox AC30 all show up in his documented rig, alongside a WEM Copicat or Roland Space Echo for ambience, an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, and a Fulltone Deja Vibe for modulation.
Regular Slinky Cobalt (.010–.046)
Why this one: A .010 set built for a humbucker-loaded semi-hollow like Cook's ES-335: enough output to drive an amp into breakup on the riffier Arctic Monkeys material without losing articulation on the cleaner indie-rock parts.
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