1. Is This It
2. The Modern Age
3. Soma
4. Barely Legal
5. Someday
6. Alone, Together
7. Last Nite
8. Hard to Explain
9. New York City Cops
10. Trying Your Luck
11. Take It or Leave It
Anita is an English broadcaster and journalist. You may have seen her on Countryfile, The One Show, or Strictly Come Dancing with a fella with a nice chest.
The Queen is Dead – The Smiths
Soundbombing II – Various Artists
Off the Wall/Thriller/Bad (all three) – Michael Jackson
Here’s how The Strokes released a classic rock ‘n’ roll record while some people were listening to nu metal.
Julian Casablancas was minding his own business at college one day when a bunch of mates suddenly invited him to their room and shut the door.
Apprehensive, apprehended, Julian stood there and considered his fate.
The leader of the gang spoke – asking Julian to state his name, swear a loyalty to their fraternity, and declare his favourite sexual position.
As pivotal moments in the history of rock ‘n’ roll go, it’s a big one. If Julian plays this wrong he could end as a frat boy for life or, even worse, a member of Blink-182. However, if he plays it right there’s still a chance that the best album of 2000 will happen.
He considered his options.
Then he spoke.
‘My name is Julian Casablancas. I don’t want to join your fraternity and I don’t know why I’m here.’
What a great bloke.
Having avoided hell, Julian then got some new mates and formed a band.
Let me quickly introduce the lineup:
On vocals we have the aforementioned Julian Casablancas.
On guitar we have Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr.
On bass we have Nikolai Fraiture.
And last, but definitely not least, on drums we have Fab Moretti.
You’d be forgiven for assuming that some of these are made up, or from a rock ‘n’ roll comic strip, but remarkably they’re all real. Put simply, they’re the best five names of any five people ever and, without even hearing a note, you already know they’re going to be better than a band with names like:
Liam Gallagher
Noel Gallagher
Tony McCarroll
Paul McGuigan
Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs
In fact, the only downside of the brilliance of these names is a tinge of sympathy for Julian Casablancas. In any other band he’d immediately hold the title of ‘The One with the Coolest Name’ but here he’s denied that honour because he’s in a band with a fella who has the best name ever – Fab Moretti.
Oh, and one last thing – The Strokes is a great name too. It’s practically impossible to come up with a good ‘The’ name these days but somehow they managed it.
Just ask The Pigeon Detectives.
Ok, they’ve got the names, it would now help if they also had the looks. The last thing The Strokes need is to look like a bunch of trainee vicars, or Radiohead (actually that’s the same thing).
But fear not, The Strokes are probably the only band to achieve a 100 per cent ‘I would’ ratio – considerably better than The Rolling Stones (60 per cent), The Beatles (50 per cent) or The Who (0 per cent). Only The Monkees come close but I’ve decided they don’t count because a) there’s only four of them and b) they’d be too tired to have sex because they run around a lot.
Even modern boy bands, who are specifically put together based on their ‘sex appeal’, always have one who’s a bit chubby and would rather be hugged or taken seriously – like that bloke in Westlife who looks like someone has drawn a good-looking person on a jacket potato.
The Strokes, however, have no such problem. To a man they all look like male models. Even the bass player who looks like a butler in a horror film looks like a really good-looking butler in a horror film.
And finally, while I’m being shallow, they complemented their good looks with an impeccable wardrobe. At a time when people were wearing hoodies and huge jeans with hundreds of pockets, they came along with a classic denim-and-leather look that was simultaneously timeless and refreshing.
Nick Valensi once told the rest of the band to ‘dress every day like we’re going to play a show’.
That’s great advice to be honest.
Unless you’re Genesis during that phase when Peter Gabriel played gigs with a massive flower on his head.
In our Pavement chapter you may remember that I referenced a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.
‘I didn’t read your Pavement chapter, mate.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll quickly summarise it here.’
The book suggests that all mythical heroes essentially follow the same journey and points to the fact that there is always an older guide to help them along their way. For every Luke Skywalker there’s an Obi Wan Kenobi, for every Frodo there’s a Gandalf, and for every Terry McCann there’s an Arthur Daley.
The Strokes were no different and had their own guru to point the way – J. P. Bowersock.
Bowersock’s initial role was to teach Albert Hammond Jr how to play guitar but he was so knowledgeable that the rest of the band started to turn up to the lessons to hear what he had to say. He’d spend a lot of time talking to Julian about the craft of songwriting, collaborating on ideas and testing out different structures. He also played Nick Valensi a load of records he’d never heard which went on to massively influence his guitar style.
The whole band were mesmerised by him and he quickly taught them a comprehensive musical history that took in everything from Elmore James, to Link Wray, to the Nuggets compilations.
Such was his influence that his photograph was included in the album artwork, below the simple heading – ‘Guru’.
Oh, and I hate to labour the point, but J. P. Bowersock is a brilliant name – considerably better than Dumbledore.
During an interview in 2002, Julian Casablancas said The Velvet Underground are the only band that all five members of The Strokes like.
Along with the whole ‘dressing like you’re always going to play a show’ thing, this is another great piece of advice that all bands should be forced to adhere to from the beginning.
Had it been a legal requirement there’d be no Red Hot Chili Peppers, half of Arcade Fire, that fella in M People who calls himself Shovel, The Rembrandts, that bloke out of The View who thinks it’s a big deal to wear jeans for four days, Scouting for Girls, The Orb, Mani, Babybird, Ugly Kid Joe and John Cale.
Would Pete Best have liked The Velvet Underground?
No, and the rest of The Beatles knew it.
With all the hard stuff in place, The Strokes now just needed to do the easy bit – become a decent band.
At the start of 1999 they diligently rehearsed in a tiny studio in the Hell’s Kitchen district of Manhattan – the same place Madonna had rehearsed when she first arrived in New York. Starting at 10 p.m. each night and working through to 8 a.m., they financed the entire enterprise with a series of day jobs including selling frozen yoghurt, working in second-hand record stores and bar work.
Even Nick Valensi getting mugged three times in the same night by the same man couldn’t put them off. They never missed a rehearsal and, crucially, they never thought they were ready until they actually were.
Six months after they started, six months of working through the night, they finally emerged and decided to play their first gig.
The Strokes’ first gig was at a small New York club called the Spiral. The audience contained six people and Casablancas was so nervous that he threw up before going on stage.
Despite an inauspicious start, which left the band demoralised, they dissected the performance in minute detail and decided to soldier on – playing a series of local ‘toilet’ venues where Casablancas still used to throw up before taking the stage. One of these included playing a lobster restaurant in Delaware in front of a family of five who were trying to enjoy a meal.
Eventually they got bored of all these venues and decided to do what all great bands do – just find one venue and let the audience find them. They secured a residency at the Mercury Lounge in New York, just over the road from where they started out at the Spiral. Fifty people turned up for the first gig, which quickly became a hundred, and before long they had sold out.
They’d found their Cavern, quit their jobs, and developed into something like the band you hear on the first album.
By the time they entered the studio, everyone had stopped throwing up and they produced one of the best demo tapes ever, containing the songs ‘The Modern Age’, ‘Barely Legal’ and ‘Last Nite’.
Geoff Travis at Rough Trade was halfway through listening to the first song and made an offer to their manager before it had finished. In fact, he was so impressed with it that he decided to release it in its current form.
How often has that happened? A 100 per cent strike rate with a record company and a demo that’s so good it becomes your first single. It’s tempting to view this as a remarkable chain of events but, in reality, Travis’s response was entirely sensible and level-headed. When I first heard the chorus of ‘The Modern Age’ I thought it was the best thing I’d heard in years. When I later heard ‘Last Nite’ my head actually fell off.
Had I been in charge of a record company, had anyone been in charge of a record company, they would have followed exactly the same course of action.
A few weeks after Rough Trade had signed them, Noel Gallagher was at The Strokes’ first London gig, trying to crane his neck to see what all the fuss was about while probably wishing he didn’t have a rubbish name like Noel Gallagher.
Yes it is, thank you very much.
We’ve all been taken in only to be let down by someone who turns out to be Babylon Zoo. Yet, whatever anyone thinks about The Strokes’ later career, and the terrible bands they spawned, you have to give them the debut. I loved it at the time but I can safely say, listening to it all week, that I love it even more now.
More than that though, as if liking the songs isn’t enough, there was a refreshing quality about it that belied its obvious influences. In 2001, I’d been listening to The Flaming Lips and Lambchop, both of whom I liked but only in that way people in their thirties like bands that make music for people in their thirties. I never thought they were exciting, or even cool. I just thought they were age appropriate and had a load of good songs.
Then The Strokes came along with no keyboards, a wardrobe of denim and leather, loads of packs of Marlboro Reds, and even better songs.
Just like The Velvet Underground, just like Television, just like The Jesus and Mary Chain.
When I was a kid, music was my world. I remember singing Olivia Newton John’s ‘Physical’ in the playground aged three at my day nursery. I distinctly recall trying to discuss Top of the Pops with the other kids in kindergarten, who probably had sensible bedtimes and weren’t allowed to watch anything beyond Rainbow.
Aged eleven, I discovered New Kids on the Block and then woke up aged thirteen with taste, a die-hard fan of The Smiths. There followed a period of grunge, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, New Model Army, which morphed into dance and electronic music.
Once I began uni in 1996 my musical education exploded. I was soaking it up wherever I could. Discovering more and more. The beauty of opening one album and it leading into portals and portals of new genres.
I’d pop into Crash Records in Leeds on a weekly basis to hungrily listen to the latest drum and bass releases. Hours could disappear in Jumbo Records discovering bluegrass albums or hip hop compilations.
Back then I was a muso nerd and, along with it, a total musical snob.
I remember clearly when Is This It was released and exactly why I didn’t listen to it. It was 2001 and I was twenty-one years old. I had landed a job for a TV company in London which specialised in music. I was finally leaving my beloved North. This was exactly where I wanted to be – working as a researcher, earning barely enough money to keep me in packets of cheap noodles, Encona chilli sauce and the odd pint or three.
I remember a conversation was taking place in the office on the brilliance of this new band The Strokes. Back then, the bits I heard did nothing for me. I wasn’t going out to gigs in Camden, I was much happier in clubs in East London. I had such a wide range of taste but I couldn’t hear what everyone else could hear in The Strokes, or maybe I didn’t want to.
Inverted snobbery. If the crowd was telling me it was the best band ever or the NME had heralded them the saviours of rock ‘n’ roll, I’d dismiss them offhand and decide to listen in my own sweet time.
In this case fifteen years later.
May 2016 I’m off to NYC, baby, to film a new project for the BBC. I figure the best place to introduce myself to this record is its birthplace. So on my first day I take a long walk from midtown to Chinatown with Is This It plugged into my ears.
It’s strangely familiar for an album I’ve never listened to before. The dring dring dring dring dring dring of the guitar and Julian Casablancas’ lazy vocals trigger a nostalgia that must have been formed via osmosis back in 2001.The album sounds timeless. It could be a New York band from the seventies or an album just released.
It does feel as though each song morphs into the other but what I may have seen as a sign of sameness back in my twenties now feels like a perfect continuous mix.
And then ‘Someday’ kicks in. 2001 comes flooding back. I have a flashback of jumping around to this record in some sweaty pub in Camden, or maybe it was King’s College Union overlooking London. Suddenly I’m homesick.
This may be a band from New York but everything about their music says London to me and that’s where I need to hear it. So I select Kendrick Lamar for the rest of my time in NYC and press play when I’m back across the pond.
It’s an overcast, generic Monday morning back in London. I’m riding the tube at rush hour. It’s grim but I’m in an alternate universe, fashioned by a bunch of greasy New Yorkers in leather jackets.
‘Hard to Explain’ seems to be carrying me through the crowds. I don’t think my feet are even on the floor. The manic, repetitive guitar and Julian’s casual vocals. I like that contrast: it’s like my own relaxed inner world against the backdrop of rush-hour insanity.
‘Trying Their Luck’ slows down the pace as Julian’s voice becomes more lyrical. Now this I like a lot. That lovely twiddly guitar solo. I’m absorbed in this now.
I must have mellowed a lot since 2001. Perhaps I’m less discerning. Or free from the restraints of youthful cultural tribalism. I’m more open-minded and listening to this band now feels different. I get it now. It’s a recording that captured the essence and vigour of youth. I might not have cared for The Strokes so much back then but it turns out that they were doing a good job of bottling my twenties all along.
I’m delighted I took the time to experience Is This It. It could have passed me by forever but listening to it has taken me back to early carefree days in London when music defined me more than anything else. I’m so pleased I’ve ditched the stubborn teens and now have the ability to listen with open ears.
The task was to listen to this album three times. This morning was the fifth play.
8.