strokes_news (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} themodernage) wrote,@ 2006-02-28 15:33:00 |
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FULL ARTICLE BELOW: american songwriter magazine
march/april 2006
The Strokes: Hard to Explain
By Evan Schlansky
http://www.americansongwriter.com/
*************************************
THE STROKES: HARD TO EXPLAIN
Hype. The not-so-silent killer. Hype can pluck one band out of six billion out of a dead-end-bar-scene-trip-to-nowhere and make them global icons of cool. And, in this increasingly cynical age, (The Modern Age, as the Strokes have coined it) it can also kill a band’s career dead in a relative heartbeat, turning them into yesterday’s news before they’ve even had a chance to explore their surroundings. Hype is like a wave that must inevitably recede – the bigger the wave, the stronger the backlash.
The Strokes are no strangers to the H word. In the span of a single year, they went from recording their first demo to headlining England’s massive Reading Festival, getting tagged by the media as the “saviors of rock and roll” along the way. The Strokes debut album, 2001’s Is This It, was hailed by critics and fans as an instant classic.
“The hype got people to recognize us,” admitted Fabrizio Moretti, the Stroke’s drummer, in a 2001 interview with MTV, “and we appreciate that, but we don’t invest much attention or credit to it. Because when we do, at any moment, whoever is giving that hype can take it away just as easily…and then we’re lost.”
Nasty rumors about the band began to circulate: that they’d hired a publicist before they’d even rehearsed, that they were secretly just unskilled pretty boys chosen for their looks and put together by Julian’s father, that they’d stolen all their ideas from seminal punk bands like Television and the Velvet Underground.
By the Fall of 2003, the Strokes were on the wrong end of their wave; their second album, Room on Fire, would be tried and hung for the crime of sounding too much like their first. This was not exactly true, but the verdict was accepted as gospel. The backlash had begun in earnest.
Now, with a damaged reputation and the most anticipated rock album of 2006, the Strokes have offered, for the scrutiny of the world, their third album, the oddly named First Impressions of Earth, on which the band has taken risks with both its sound and its songwriting. If its poorly received, this could very well be strike three for the Strokes. If it’s loved, then rock music will be saved for the seven millionth time.
Early reviews have been mixed. But early reviews have been wrong. What’s amazing is how well the Strokes have pulled it off.
Friday the 13th, January 2006. I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for my phone call from the Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas. I’ve been warned by the bands’ PR person that Julian hates doing interviews, but that “he really wants to do it for you” (a publicist mind-trick, I’m sure, but a benign one.) The band are working overtime feeding their end of the hype machine, and ultimately, like their new song “15 Minutes,” 15 minutes is all I get. Some days, you just can’t get enough stroke.
Another rumor out there, that Casablancas is in actuality a nice, regular guy turns out to be true. He’s personable and laughs often, but he sounds more than a little weary. He’s got the faraway cadence of a modern day Jim Morrison, and a (dare I say it) dreamy voice. Julian will answer your questions honestly, but, by nature or design, is good at revealing very little. His overall thesis? It’s hard to explain.
It’s as if using words to explain his music feels pointless to him. Instead, he talks in circles, makes fun of his answers, pokes fun of your questions. The pressure of having to say something profound, to make sweeping statements and answer every question, seems unbearable to him. Besides…that’s for other bands to do.
AS: Congratulations on making such a daring third record. It must feel good to have it out there.
J: Yeah, it’s good…it’s weird…it’s good weird. I’ve been going around to stores, and I ask if they have it. Like to make sure it’s real. It’s weird. It’s cool. It’s great when they say yes. I went to this store today and asked how much it was. It was $9.99. I thought that was cool. But yeah, it’s great, it’s…scary, mildly? (laughter) But overall, I’m confident that it’s…..good, I hope (laughter).
AS: Were you trying to push your songwriting in new directions on this album, or did it happen naturally?
J: I think it did happen naturally. At the same time, I think you try to purposefully to change naturally. So your mind, if you keep busy, keep thinking, keep working on stuff, just keep trying to have your mind evolve, then yeah, eventually you see things in different ways, and maybe you can grow…maybe sort of…go with the flow. Sorry for rhyming.
AS: No man, rhymes are good.
J: Rhymes are good, but hard to spell.
AS: That’s true. Rhythm is hard to spell too.
“Rhythm and rhyme,” he repeats, stirring the words together like vodka and lime.
Julian has been described by his band mates as a recovering control freak. His mammoth work ethic drives the band, and he’s widely known to be hard on himself. He learned at 13, through studying the lives of people he admired, that the artist must always work hard to achieve any lasting success, and thus will devote hours to minor details, like getting the perfect snare drum sound on a track. Ideally, he likes to record from two in the afternoon to five in the morning.
Julian, a notoriously hard partier, recently gave up drinking for the good of the band. “I’ve always said I wouldn’t let drinking affect how I work. And then it did. So I had to stop,” he told Spin Magazine. He is newly married, to the band’s assistant manager, Juliet Joslin. Julian is fluent in Danish, Spanish, and French. According to the fan site Strokesfan.com, his favorite sexual postion is “missionary.”
Now 27, his singing voice is essentially still that of an adolescent: sullen, joyful, petulant, regretful, emotional, immediate. A voice that says it will always be younger than you, and more free. It’s a beautiful instrument that in the past he has tried hard to obscure and uglify, with vocal filters and countless cigarettes (on the first two albums, he often sounds like he’s singing through an intercom.)
His early lyrics paint oblique pictures by use of artful contradictions. It’s in his sense of humor and speaking style as well: naming the band’s debut album Is This It, singing “I wanna be forgotten” in the first line of the band’s comeback album, naming the song with the chorus “I’ve got nothing to say” ask me anything.
Julian’s lyrics are typically conflicted about everything – about you, the girl he’s seeing, himself. While they can seem underwhelming on paper, they become incredibly visceral when felt through the music. He prefers the gray area, the emotionally vague, to songs that say everything is going to be alright or everything is impossibly fucked. “I think it’s more interesting if you have to figure it out, if it’s not right on the surface. You try to find that middle ground,” he says.
He is a worrier. “The only way I’d feel secure is if we’d fooled people and it sucked, and people said, ‘Oh yeah, the Strokes are great,’” he has said.
* * * * *
The secret to the Strokes’ success is not, in the end, hype. The real reason they’ve come as far as they have is that everything they’ve ever done has been informed by a fear of sucking.
“The only thing that made us good now is that I realized my whole life I sucked,” Casablancas told the Face in 2002. “Always. Everything I did, it sucked. That was the motto of everything: I suck, I gotta do better, I gotta work harder. That’s the motto of music.”
“Before Albert (Hammond Jr., guitarist) joined, we sucked” explained guitarist Nick Valensi to the Gaurdian, the year before. “We still sucked for at least a year after Albert came in.”
“I feel like I will break under the pressure that I put on myself,” Casablancas confessed to Mojo on the eve of the release of Room on Fire. “What if a critic, or the general consensus say, he really let us down this time? That would fuck with my head and hurt me. But if I knew it was true, that would hurt me 10 times more.”
* * * * *
Julian Casablancas was born in New York city on August 23rd, 198, to John Casablancas, founder of the Elite Modeling agency, and Jeanette Christiansen, a former Miss Denmark. Julian was an only child whose parents separated when he was seven. Julian lived with his mother, and exposed to her pain over the divorce, grew to resent his father. At school, he settled into the role of class clown and troublemaker, until he realized girls appreciated him more if he acted serious. The first time he got drunk was when he was 11. At school he would ask friends who had access to their parents alcohol to bring him drinks, and he would get wasted in the morning before class. After getting caught, Julian was forced to visit a juvenile rehab center two days a week.
In an effort to straighten him out, his father sent him to Switzerland, to Le Rosey, the same swanky boarding school he himself had attended and loved. The school, with its strict disciplinary code and mandatory 6 a.m. jogs through the snow, was a nightmare for Julian, who didn’t like his classmates and was frequently punished for his behavior. But two important things happened to him there – the first was meeting fellow student Albert Hammond Jr., son of British songwriter Albert Hammond (the co-author of Tina Turner’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”) and future Stroke. The second was his discovery of music, which previously he’d had little interest in. “My stepdad sent me this tape of the Best of the Doors, he told the Observer in 2001. “That night I stayed in my room and just played it over and over again.”
Julian’s stepfather, Sam Adoquie, a painter and art teacher, would become one of Julian’s biggest influences. It was Adoquie, through long conversations about art, who instilled in Julian the idea that constant hard work was the only way to achieve anything of lasting artistic value. He is the first name thanked in the credits of Is This It.
After spending two years at Le Rosey, Julian returned to New York City and enrolled in the Dwight high school, where he reconnected with childhood friend Nickolai Fraiture. Fraiture had taken up the bass and was jamming with schoolmates Nick Valensi and Fabrizio Moretti. Together with Julian, they formed an early version of the Strokes. When Hammond moved to NY to attend film school, he bumped into Julian, who’s apartment was coincidentally right across the street from Hammond’s new job.
With Hammond added to the lineup, they settled into a routine of daily ten hour practices that would put most other bands to shame. It was only after rehearsing together for six months that they worked up the nerve to play their first public gig. They recorded a three-song demo with Gordon Raphael, a local studio owner who would become the architect of the Strokes minimalist, retro-sounding production style.
The finished demo found its way into the hands of Ryan Gentles, their current manager, then a booker at the NYC club Mercury Lounge. Through a contact at British label Rough Trade, Gentles was soon playing the tape for label president Geoff Travis over the phone. They were signed on the spot. Their demo, renamed The Modern Age, was release as an EP in the UK in January of 2001 . Attracted to both their raw, visceral music and debauched rock star image, the British music press latched on to them instantly.
After scoring a record deal in the States with RCA, the band unleashed This is It in late 2001 and soon became a household name. The Strokes toured relentlessly in support of Is This It, eventually reaching the point where they were exhausted and close to breaking up.
In an effort to keep the momentum going and justify the hype, the band rushed back to the studio to record Room On Fire, using Gordon Raphael once again as their producer.
While the band flirted with new styles, such as the Motown flavored “Under Control”, critical reaction harped on the production and the fact that most songs rode the same trademark groove the band had perfected on Is This It. Ultimately, the album experienced sluggish sales.
“I think the music was going in different directions, but maybe it wasn’t a big enough step for people,” says Julian now. “On a lot of levels, Is this It and Room on Fire were sort of the same ilk. They’re pretty much 22 consecutive songs.”
“Ah, the wait is over, I’m now taking over,” sang Julian, and it sounded true, but it was just a tease. Room on Fire was a short burst, a fireworks show that ended early, only 33 minutes long. “Good try, we don’t like it,” he sang on Fire’s final song, “I Can’t Win.” “Hold on, yes I’ll be right back.”
Three years later, they were.
* * * * * *
First Impressions of Earth is a thrilling rebirth for the band that everyone had pegged as crafters of three minute, lo-fi, four chord punk songs about teenage sex and the city. On the surface, you’d think this is just more bored apathy from jaded rock stars who drink too much, but after multiple listens, you realize Impressions is the most passionate record they’ve ever made.
As with their other albums, First Impressions takes a while to sink in, before it converts you entirely, before the hype melts and away and the hooks sink in. With the Strokes, there are always three or four songs you like right away, and then you get the delayed pay-off of coming to love the other, more difficult ones. Since the album is nearly twice as long as the previous two combined, there’s that much more to love.
The album kicks off with the exuberant blast of “You Only Live Once,” currently Julian’s favorite new track. “We worked on that one so much, it didn’t even mean anything to me anymore,” he says, “but now that I’ve went away and came back to it, and played it live, the meaning of it, it sums up the record for me a bit, and a moment in time.” It begins in typical Stroke fashion, with the steady pulse of the bass pumping out 8th notes that form the backbone of much of their earlier material. But 9 seconds in, a sweet falsetto enters, and combined with the chiming guitars, it sounds almost like U2 inviting in a beautiful day. “Sit me down,” Julian advises, “and shut me up. I’ll calm down, and I’ll get along with you.”
You don’t’ have to be a serious audiophile to realize that the band has divested themselves of their trebly, lo-fi sonic identity. Impressions is recorded in full color. The Strokes, having built their own studio for the occasion, began working on the album with Gordon Raphael manning the boards. Knowing that avoiding sounding too much like Room on Fire would be crucial to the album’s acceptance, Hammond Jr. suggested they bring in season studio vet David Kahne to help out. Kahne had come recommended to him by his friend Sean Lennon. After the band had worked with Kahne on three songs, Julian made the decision to drop Raphael and work with Kahne exclusively.
Kahne’s name is an eyebrow raiser. As a producer, he’s worked with such pop-rock acts as No Doubt, Sugar Ray, the Bangles and Sublime. Kahne is also somewhat infamous for being the Reprise Records executive who didn’t hear the commercial potential in Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Placed temporarily in charge of the label’s A&R Department after a period of heavy lay-offs, and facing a high demand for radio hits, Kahne facilitated Wilco’s release from their contract. That album went on to be a critical smash, and a major embarrassment for Reprise.
It’s easy to picture Kahne as a Dr. Evil type figure, the record company player who cares only about making hits, not art. But there are no signs of corporate tinkering of any kind on First Impressions – no Kelly Clarkson style hooks, no co-writing credits with Swedish song doctors, no guest appearances by Ludacris or the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead, Kahne punches up their sound, giving them a third dimension, and pushes Julian’s vocals way up in the mix.
The band had trouble adjusting to Kahne at first, and Julian was worried about creating anything that could be construed as too accessible. Kahne drove them hard and demanded a lot of takes, but they quickly came to respect his input, and for Julian, ideas and songs began to flow. The producer also encouraged him to sing outside of his vocal range, an the results can be heard to excellent effect on “Juicebox” and “Killing Lies.”
It’s instantly apparent that The Strokes have grown as musicians since Room on Fire. Hammond and Valensi, when not supporting each other’s guitar work with perfect counterpoint, play concisely brilliant solos that at times sound like inspired wanking, and at other times like Hebraic heavy metal. On the angst-drenched, “Visions of Division,” their guitars build a funeral pyre, building up the tension to near unbearable levels as Casablancas screams “why do I accept the things you say?” at the top of his lungs. Lead single “Juicebox” finds its glory in a dissonant chorus and a thundering, Spy Hunter-esque bassline. On the Other Side lopes along on an 80’s style sexercise groove as Julian has a small existential breakdown, moaning about his half-dead heart (I hate my friends, I hate myself, I hate my friend’s friends, etc.)
But there’s one more musical skeleton lurking in the Strokes’ closet. After being accused of aping the Velvet Underground and Television since their inception, the band now has another icon’s influence to live down – the chorus of “Razorblade” nicks its melody cleanly from Barry Manilow’s cheesy love-ode “Mandy.”
“I don’t know, I sort of knew the song,” explains Julian when asked, “but I was going more for a Built to Spill vibe. The two note back and forth melody are the same,” he says, minimizing the connection, ‘but the chords are kind of different. I knew it but I didn’t like the song so much, so I didn’t care. I got nothing against Barry Manilow…I LIKE my Manilow,” he laughs. “We talked about it, more than one person said something to that effect, but I don’t know…that song is so irrelevant to me, I guess. It’s unfortunate, but yeah, what can you do.”
There’s more going on in Julian’s mind then he lets on in interviews. Each song on First Impressions contains it’s own secret message, hidden inside the liner notes. The inscription for “Ize of the World” poses the question “Can our minds evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal need?”
Julian’s lyrics have stretched out as well. Largely leaving behind his file of contradictory one-liners from the first two albums (“I should have worked much harder, I should have just not bothered”), he mixes in high school notebook poetry (Ize of the World), describes a strange yet peaceful dream (15 Minutes) and muses about religion (You Only Live Once), being seen at concerts (Heat in a Cage), summer camps and hostile Indians (Ask Me Anything).
“I try to avoid things that are too sappy or makes too little sense, that are way over the top, like arty intellectual bizarre-o shit that no ones gonna enjoy except for some mathematician or something,” says Julian. Still, “15 Minutes”, the first Strokes song in waltz time, follows its own beguiling internal logic (“third times a charm/circle of fourths/five days to rehearse/six to make it work/seven notes in a scale/eight in some countries/nine in fancy keys/ten years we been friends/eleven seconds to hell/and of course, twelve major chords.”) I always feel like if you don’t like the chords or the chord progressions when you’re writing a song, throw it out,” he adds.
The most revolutionary song in the Strokes catalogue almost didn’t make it on the album. The jokingly titled “Ask me Anything,” which repeats the line “I’ve got Nothing To Say” some fifteen times, was conceived in the studio during a final overdubbing session. Julian first heard the song’s richly crooned melody in a dream, except when he heard it, it was the dance-rock band Scissors Sisters singing it. There’s a desperate, near-suicidal edge to much of the lyrics (“I’ve got nothing to give, got no reason to live”) (“we could drag it out, but that’s for other bands to do”), but they’re sung with a wink, as if he knows that ultimately, everything’s going to be okay. It’s a strange little dirge of a song, and it’s the first one not to feature any other band members (Julian sings over a lone mellotron.)
There’s also a naked vulnerability to the song that you won’t find on Is This It or Room on Fire. “Wish I wasn’t so shy,” Julian sings towards the end, and, even couched among the rest of the song’s contradictions, it’s crystal clear that it is not a put-on.
* * * * * * *
I want to be one of those people,” Julian told the Gaurdian in 2001, “be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That’s my aspiration. The only thing that’s important is the songs that we write and record. That’s the only proof that we existed and were any good.”
“I have only one fear,” he told Q the following year. “That we let ourselves down by not fulfilling the promise of continuing progession. Because we’ve started well but I don’t think it’s worth anything yet.”
“Sometimes you’re not thinking and sometimes you’re overthinking,” says Julian today. “I’ve had songs come out of both. So you just keep at it, keep in your mind what you don’t want to do, and keep in mind what you strive to do.
The thing is, the thing that you’re striving to do doesn’t exist yet, so you don’t know what that is,” he says with a laugh. “You gotta go from there, try to push tings, try to make things happen your own way. Sometimes a lot comes out or nothing, but you gotta keep trudging through, no matter what.”
With First Impressions of Earth, the Strokes have reset the board, proven they can evolve, that they’re not a one-trick pony, and that their musical future is wide open. They accepted their major label makeover, upgraded their distinctive sound, and came out stronger for it. They’ve made their mark and increased the odds exponentially that, no matter where they go from here, their next album will not suck. And that maybe, just maybe, they’ll be thought of as a band with something to say.
**********************
thanks EVAN
march/april 2006
The Strokes: Hard to Explain
By Evan Schlansky
http://www.americansongwriter.com/
*************************************
THE STROKES: HARD TO EXPLAIN
Hype. The not-so-silent killer. Hype can pluck one band out of six billion out of a dead-end-bar-scene-trip-to-nowhere and make them global icons of cool. And, in this increasingly cynical age, (The Modern Age, as the Strokes have coined it) it can also kill a band’s career dead in a relative heartbeat, turning them into yesterday’s news before they’ve even had a chance to explore their surroundings. Hype is like a wave that must inevitably recede – the bigger the wave, the stronger the backlash.
The Strokes are no strangers to the H word. In the span of a single year, they went from recording their first demo to headlining England’s massive Reading Festival, getting tagged by the media as the “saviors of rock and roll” along the way. The Strokes debut album, 2001’s Is This It, was hailed by critics and fans as an instant classic.
“The hype got people to recognize us,” admitted Fabrizio Moretti, the Stroke’s drummer, in a 2001 interview with MTV, “and we appreciate that, but we don’t invest much attention or credit to it. Because when we do, at any moment, whoever is giving that hype can take it away just as easily…and then we’re lost.”
Nasty rumors about the band began to circulate: that they’d hired a publicist before they’d even rehearsed, that they were secretly just unskilled pretty boys chosen for their looks and put together by Julian’s father, that they’d stolen all their ideas from seminal punk bands like Television and the Velvet Underground.
By the Fall of 2003, the Strokes were on the wrong end of their wave; their second album, Room on Fire, would be tried and hung for the crime of sounding too much like their first. This was not exactly true, but the verdict was accepted as gospel. The backlash had begun in earnest.
Now, with a damaged reputation and the most anticipated rock album of 2006, the Strokes have offered, for the scrutiny of the world, their third album, the oddly named First Impressions of Earth, on which the band has taken risks with both its sound and its songwriting. If its poorly received, this could very well be strike three for the Strokes. If it’s loved, then rock music will be saved for the seven millionth time.
Early reviews have been mixed. But early reviews have been wrong. What’s amazing is how well the Strokes have pulled it off.
Friday the 13th, January 2006. I’m sitting by the phone, waiting for my phone call from the Strokes lead singer Julian Casablancas. I’ve been warned by the bands’ PR person that Julian hates doing interviews, but that “he really wants to do it for you” (a publicist mind-trick, I’m sure, but a benign one.) The band are working overtime feeding their end of the hype machine, and ultimately, like their new song “15 Minutes,” 15 minutes is all I get. Some days, you just can’t get enough stroke.
Another rumor out there, that Casablancas is in actuality a nice, regular guy turns out to be true. He’s personable and laughs often, but he sounds more than a little weary. He’s got the faraway cadence of a modern day Jim Morrison, and a (dare I say it) dreamy voice. Julian will answer your questions honestly, but, by nature or design, is good at revealing very little. His overall thesis? It’s hard to explain.
It’s as if using words to explain his music feels pointless to him. Instead, he talks in circles, makes fun of his answers, pokes fun of your questions. The pressure of having to say something profound, to make sweeping statements and answer every question, seems unbearable to him. Besides…that’s for other bands to do.
AS: Congratulations on making such a daring third record. It must feel good to have it out there.
J: Yeah, it’s good…it’s weird…it’s good weird. I’ve been going around to stores, and I ask if they have it. Like to make sure it’s real. It’s weird. It’s cool. It’s great when they say yes. I went to this store today and asked how much it was. It was $9.99. I thought that was cool. But yeah, it’s great, it’s…scary, mildly? (laughter) But overall, I’m confident that it’s…..good, I hope (laughter).
AS: Were you trying to push your songwriting in new directions on this album, or did it happen naturally?
J: I think it did happen naturally. At the same time, I think you try to purposefully to change naturally. So your mind, if you keep busy, keep thinking, keep working on stuff, just keep trying to have your mind evolve, then yeah, eventually you see things in different ways, and maybe you can grow…maybe sort of…go with the flow. Sorry for rhyming.
AS: No man, rhymes are good.
J: Rhymes are good, but hard to spell.
AS: That’s true. Rhythm is hard to spell too.
“Rhythm and rhyme,” he repeats, stirring the words together like vodka and lime.
Julian has been described by his band mates as a recovering control freak. His mammoth work ethic drives the band, and he’s widely known to be hard on himself. He learned at 13, through studying the lives of people he admired, that the artist must always work hard to achieve any lasting success, and thus will devote hours to minor details, like getting the perfect snare drum sound on a track. Ideally, he likes to record from two in the afternoon to five in the morning.
Julian, a notoriously hard partier, recently gave up drinking for the good of the band. “I’ve always said I wouldn’t let drinking affect how I work. And then it did. So I had to stop,” he told Spin Magazine. He is newly married, to the band’s assistant manager, Juliet Joslin. Julian is fluent in Danish, Spanish, and French. According to the fan site Strokesfan.com, his favorite sexual postion is “missionary.”
Now 27, his singing voice is essentially still that of an adolescent: sullen, joyful, petulant, regretful, emotional, immediate. A voice that says it will always be younger than you, and more free. It’s a beautiful instrument that in the past he has tried hard to obscure and uglify, with vocal filters and countless cigarettes (on the first two albums, he often sounds like he’s singing through an intercom.)
His early lyrics paint oblique pictures by use of artful contradictions. It’s in his sense of humor and speaking style as well: naming the band’s debut album Is This It, singing “I wanna be forgotten” in the first line of the band’s comeback album, naming the song with the chorus “I’ve got nothing to say” ask me anything.
Julian’s lyrics are typically conflicted about everything – about you, the girl he’s seeing, himself. While they can seem underwhelming on paper, they become incredibly visceral when felt through the music. He prefers the gray area, the emotionally vague, to songs that say everything is going to be alright or everything is impossibly fucked. “I think it’s more interesting if you have to figure it out, if it’s not right on the surface. You try to find that middle ground,” he says.
He is a worrier. “The only way I’d feel secure is if we’d fooled people and it sucked, and people said, ‘Oh yeah, the Strokes are great,’” he has said.
* * * * *
The secret to the Strokes’ success is not, in the end, hype. The real reason they’ve come as far as they have is that everything they’ve ever done has been informed by a fear of sucking.
“The only thing that made us good now is that I realized my whole life I sucked,” Casablancas told the Face in 2002. “Always. Everything I did, it sucked. That was the motto of everything: I suck, I gotta do better, I gotta work harder. That’s the motto of music.”
“Before Albert (Hammond Jr., guitarist) joined, we sucked” explained guitarist Nick Valensi to the Gaurdian, the year before. “We still sucked for at least a year after Albert came in.”
“I feel like I will break under the pressure that I put on myself,” Casablancas confessed to Mojo on the eve of the release of Room on Fire. “What if a critic, or the general consensus say, he really let us down this time? That would fuck with my head and hurt me. But if I knew it was true, that would hurt me 10 times more.”
* * * * *
Julian Casablancas was born in New York city on August 23rd, 198, to John Casablancas, founder of the Elite Modeling agency, and Jeanette Christiansen, a former Miss Denmark. Julian was an only child whose parents separated when he was seven. Julian lived with his mother, and exposed to her pain over the divorce, grew to resent his father. At school, he settled into the role of class clown and troublemaker, until he realized girls appreciated him more if he acted serious. The first time he got drunk was when he was 11. At school he would ask friends who had access to their parents alcohol to bring him drinks, and he would get wasted in the morning before class. After getting caught, Julian was forced to visit a juvenile rehab center two days a week.
In an effort to straighten him out, his father sent him to Switzerland, to Le Rosey, the same swanky boarding school he himself had attended and loved. The school, with its strict disciplinary code and mandatory 6 a.m. jogs through the snow, was a nightmare for Julian, who didn’t like his classmates and was frequently punished for his behavior. But two important things happened to him there – the first was meeting fellow student Albert Hammond Jr., son of British songwriter Albert Hammond (the co-author of Tina Turner’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”) and future Stroke. The second was his discovery of music, which previously he’d had little interest in. “My stepdad sent me this tape of the Best of the Doors, he told the Observer in 2001. “That night I stayed in my room and just played it over and over again.”
Julian’s stepfather, Sam Adoquie, a painter and art teacher, would become one of Julian’s biggest influences. It was Adoquie, through long conversations about art, who instilled in Julian the idea that constant hard work was the only way to achieve anything of lasting artistic value. He is the first name thanked in the credits of Is This It.
After spending two years at Le Rosey, Julian returned to New York City and enrolled in the Dwight high school, where he reconnected with childhood friend Nickolai Fraiture. Fraiture had taken up the bass and was jamming with schoolmates Nick Valensi and Fabrizio Moretti. Together with Julian, they formed an early version of the Strokes. When Hammond moved to NY to attend film school, he bumped into Julian, who’s apartment was coincidentally right across the street from Hammond’s new job.
With Hammond added to the lineup, they settled into a routine of daily ten hour practices that would put most other bands to shame. It was only after rehearsing together for six months that they worked up the nerve to play their first public gig. They recorded a three-song demo with Gordon Raphael, a local studio owner who would become the architect of the Strokes minimalist, retro-sounding production style.
The finished demo found its way into the hands of Ryan Gentles, their current manager, then a booker at the NYC club Mercury Lounge. Through a contact at British label Rough Trade, Gentles was soon playing the tape for label president Geoff Travis over the phone. They were signed on the spot. Their demo, renamed The Modern Age, was release as an EP in the UK in January of 2001 . Attracted to both their raw, visceral music and debauched rock star image, the British music press latched on to them instantly.
After scoring a record deal in the States with RCA, the band unleashed This is It in late 2001 and soon became a household name. The Strokes toured relentlessly in support of Is This It, eventually reaching the point where they were exhausted and close to breaking up.
In an effort to keep the momentum going and justify the hype, the band rushed back to the studio to record Room On Fire, using Gordon Raphael once again as their producer.
While the band flirted with new styles, such as the Motown flavored “Under Control”, critical reaction harped on the production and the fact that most songs rode the same trademark groove the band had perfected on Is This It. Ultimately, the album experienced sluggish sales.
“I think the music was going in different directions, but maybe it wasn’t a big enough step for people,” says Julian now. “On a lot of levels, Is this It and Room on Fire were sort of the same ilk. They’re pretty much 22 consecutive songs.”
“Ah, the wait is over, I’m now taking over,” sang Julian, and it sounded true, but it was just a tease. Room on Fire was a short burst, a fireworks show that ended early, only 33 minutes long. “Good try, we don’t like it,” he sang on Fire’s final song, “I Can’t Win.” “Hold on, yes I’ll be right back.”
Three years later, they were.
* * * * * *
First Impressions of Earth is a thrilling rebirth for the band that everyone had pegged as crafters of three minute, lo-fi, four chord punk songs about teenage sex and the city. On the surface, you’d think this is just more bored apathy from jaded rock stars who drink too much, but after multiple listens, you realize Impressions is the most passionate record they’ve ever made.
As with their other albums, First Impressions takes a while to sink in, before it converts you entirely, before the hype melts and away and the hooks sink in. With the Strokes, there are always three or four songs you like right away, and then you get the delayed pay-off of coming to love the other, more difficult ones. Since the album is nearly twice as long as the previous two combined, there’s that much more to love.
The album kicks off with the exuberant blast of “You Only Live Once,” currently Julian’s favorite new track. “We worked on that one so much, it didn’t even mean anything to me anymore,” he says, “but now that I’ve went away and came back to it, and played it live, the meaning of it, it sums up the record for me a bit, and a moment in time.” It begins in typical Stroke fashion, with the steady pulse of the bass pumping out 8th notes that form the backbone of much of their earlier material. But 9 seconds in, a sweet falsetto enters, and combined with the chiming guitars, it sounds almost like U2 inviting in a beautiful day. “Sit me down,” Julian advises, “and shut me up. I’ll calm down, and I’ll get along with you.”
You don’t’ have to be a serious audiophile to realize that the band has divested themselves of their trebly, lo-fi sonic identity. Impressions is recorded in full color. The Strokes, having built their own studio for the occasion, began working on the album with Gordon Raphael manning the boards. Knowing that avoiding sounding too much like Room on Fire would be crucial to the album’s acceptance, Hammond Jr. suggested they bring in season studio vet David Kahne to help out. Kahne had come recommended to him by his friend Sean Lennon. After the band had worked with Kahne on three songs, Julian made the decision to drop Raphael and work with Kahne exclusively.
Kahne’s name is an eyebrow raiser. As a producer, he’s worked with such pop-rock acts as No Doubt, Sugar Ray, the Bangles and Sublime. Kahne is also somewhat infamous for being the Reprise Records executive who didn’t hear the commercial potential in Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Placed temporarily in charge of the label’s A&R Department after a period of heavy lay-offs, and facing a high demand for radio hits, Kahne facilitated Wilco’s release from their contract. That album went on to be a critical smash, and a major embarrassment for Reprise.
It’s easy to picture Kahne as a Dr. Evil type figure, the record company player who cares only about making hits, not art. But there are no signs of corporate tinkering of any kind on First Impressions – no Kelly Clarkson style hooks, no co-writing credits with Swedish song doctors, no guest appearances by Ludacris or the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead, Kahne punches up their sound, giving them a third dimension, and pushes Julian’s vocals way up in the mix.
The band had trouble adjusting to Kahne at first, and Julian was worried about creating anything that could be construed as too accessible. Kahne drove them hard and demanded a lot of takes, but they quickly came to respect his input, and for Julian, ideas and songs began to flow. The producer also encouraged him to sing outside of his vocal range, an the results can be heard to excellent effect on “Juicebox” and “Killing Lies.”
It’s instantly apparent that The Strokes have grown as musicians since Room on Fire. Hammond and Valensi, when not supporting each other’s guitar work with perfect counterpoint, play concisely brilliant solos that at times sound like inspired wanking, and at other times like Hebraic heavy metal. On the angst-drenched, “Visions of Division,” their guitars build a funeral pyre, building up the tension to near unbearable levels as Casablancas screams “why do I accept the things you say?” at the top of his lungs. Lead single “Juicebox” finds its glory in a dissonant chorus and a thundering, Spy Hunter-esque bassline. On the Other Side lopes along on an 80’s style sexercise groove as Julian has a small existential breakdown, moaning about his half-dead heart (I hate my friends, I hate myself, I hate my friend’s friends, etc.)
But there’s one more musical skeleton lurking in the Strokes’ closet. After being accused of aping the Velvet Underground and Television since their inception, the band now has another icon’s influence to live down – the chorus of “Razorblade” nicks its melody cleanly from Barry Manilow’s cheesy love-ode “Mandy.”
“I don’t know, I sort of knew the song,” explains Julian when asked, “but I was going more for a Built to Spill vibe. The two note back and forth melody are the same,” he says, minimizing the connection, ‘but the chords are kind of different. I knew it but I didn’t like the song so much, so I didn’t care. I got nothing against Barry Manilow…I LIKE my Manilow,” he laughs. “We talked about it, more than one person said something to that effect, but I don’t know…that song is so irrelevant to me, I guess. It’s unfortunate, but yeah, what can you do.”
There’s more going on in Julian’s mind then he lets on in interviews. Each song on First Impressions contains it’s own secret message, hidden inside the liner notes. The inscription for “Ize of the World” poses the question “Can our minds evolve to be something other than an extension of our animal need?”
Julian’s lyrics have stretched out as well. Largely leaving behind his file of contradictory one-liners from the first two albums (“I should have worked much harder, I should have just not bothered”), he mixes in high school notebook poetry (Ize of the World), describes a strange yet peaceful dream (15 Minutes) and muses about religion (You Only Live Once), being seen at concerts (Heat in a Cage), summer camps and hostile Indians (Ask Me Anything).
“I try to avoid things that are too sappy or makes too little sense, that are way over the top, like arty intellectual bizarre-o shit that no ones gonna enjoy except for some mathematician or something,” says Julian. Still, “15 Minutes”, the first Strokes song in waltz time, follows its own beguiling internal logic (“third times a charm/circle of fourths/five days to rehearse/six to make it work/seven notes in a scale/eight in some countries/nine in fancy keys/ten years we been friends/eleven seconds to hell/and of course, twelve major chords.”) I always feel like if you don’t like the chords or the chord progressions when you’re writing a song, throw it out,” he adds.
The most revolutionary song in the Strokes catalogue almost didn’t make it on the album. The jokingly titled “Ask me Anything,” which repeats the line “I’ve got Nothing To Say” some fifteen times, was conceived in the studio during a final overdubbing session. Julian first heard the song’s richly crooned melody in a dream, except when he heard it, it was the dance-rock band Scissors Sisters singing it. There’s a desperate, near-suicidal edge to much of the lyrics (“I’ve got nothing to give, got no reason to live”) (“we could drag it out, but that’s for other bands to do”), but they’re sung with a wink, as if he knows that ultimately, everything’s going to be okay. It’s a strange little dirge of a song, and it’s the first one not to feature any other band members (Julian sings over a lone mellotron.)
There’s also a naked vulnerability to the song that you won’t find on Is This It or Room on Fire. “Wish I wasn’t so shy,” Julian sings towards the end, and, even couched among the rest of the song’s contradictions, it’s crystal clear that it is not a put-on.
* * * * * * *
I want to be one of those people,” Julian told the Gaurdian in 2001, “be they writers, poets, musicians, who leaves clues for the next generation. The really good people leave clues that help feed the human race. That’s my aspiration. The only thing that’s important is the songs that we write and record. That’s the only proof that we existed and were any good.”
“I have only one fear,” he told Q the following year. “That we let ourselves down by not fulfilling the promise of continuing progession. Because we’ve started well but I don’t think it’s worth anything yet.”
“Sometimes you’re not thinking and sometimes you’re overthinking,” says Julian today. “I’ve had songs come out of both. So you just keep at it, keep in your mind what you don’t want to do, and keep in mind what you strive to do.
The thing is, the thing that you’re striving to do doesn’t exist yet, so you don’t know what that is,” he says with a laugh. “You gotta go from there, try to push tings, try to make things happen your own way. Sometimes a lot comes out or nothing, but you gotta keep trudging through, no matter what.”
With First Impressions of Earth, the Strokes have reset the board, proven they can evolve, that they’re not a one-trick pony, and that their musical future is wide open. They accepted their major label makeover, upgraded their distinctive sound, and came out stronger for it. They’ve made their mark and increased the odds exponentially that, no matter where they go from here, their next album will not suck. And that maybe, just maybe, they’ll be thought of as a band with something to say.
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thanks EVAN
