Odd band, The Strokes. They’ve got – or maybe nowadays since they’ve made some real money – they had something of a classic rock ‘n roll look; battered Levi’s and even more battered leather, tiny t-shirts and tight, tight pants, in their dirty Converse and winkle pickers and moneyed Manhattan sidewalk sneakers an array of de rigeur footgear, not to mention the sixteen different haircuts crowning each angular and chiselled face.
Line them up in a police identity parade though and, on closer inspection, they are indeed an odd bunch.
There’s a singer, all doe eyed boredom with the personality of dry toast who hangs from his mic stand when not having to sing. Which, given The Strokes are all about the guitars (sorry, were all about the guitars) is quite often. There’s a bass player who holds his instrument the way a big game poacher might tote his rifle if he’s on the lookout for a stray elephant. There’s a pair of guitar players, one low slung and coaxing lightning bolts of electric thrills from his six strings, the other playing his white Strat at chest-height, like Dylan in the ’60s, you might note, with the hair to match, but frantically rattling out rapid fire open chords high up the neck, his face a twisted gurn of concentration, his corkscrew curls bouncing in time to the four to the floor beat. Join the two players together and you’ve have pretty much the complete guitarist. The guitar would be at the right height for a start. And, yes, that beat. At the back, the quiet Stroke, the coolest Stroke, a Stroke so handsome he got to step out with Drew Barrymore for years, The Strokes have the greatest New York City drummer since Clem Burke.
And their individual names. Exotic. Storied. A mini cosmosis of the East Village’s multi-cultured diversity. Julian Casablancas. Albert Hammond Jr. Nick Valensi. Nikolai Fraiture. Greek. Italian. Greek-Italian. And, in Fab Moretti, a drummer who sounds like an advertising statement, a nothing more and nothing less, good, honest testament to Italian beer itself.
Is This It? turned 25 yesterday. Or, at least, BBC Radio 6 Music, by pumping out a Strokes-themed playlist across the entire schedule could tell me so. Strokes-themed. That phrase was doing quite a bit of heavy lifting, I tell you. I’ve always had it as a defining memory that I bought Is This It? on its day of release on the Monday of 27th August, 2001. Same day I bought the Zim’s Love And Theft, if I’m not mistaken. Which, Mr BBC, I’m not. I know this because our daughter was born the day before. And I know my dates. The Strokes album and the Bob album are both cultural milestones, maybe, but the birth of your children remains the highest of life’s high points. 29th July, 6 Music? I think you’re about a month too early.
I happened to catch a terrifically insightful interview with the album’s producer Gordon Raphael while out and about in the car late in the afternoon. He emphasised just how much work it took The Strokes to appear nonchalant and cool and raggedly spontaneous. Yeah, they had the look, but the real hours were put in in the rehearsal room. It takes a lot of hard work to look like you’re not working hard. 18 hour days were not uncommon in their search for the rickety rock ‘n roll sound that would come to define them. They played over and over and over, tweaking a riff here, dropping unnecessary flab there. Casablancas at this point wasn’t really their singer. A pal, he hung around in the rehearsal room’s corner until one day he went full-on Noel and pointed out what they needed to do to make the songs better. From then on in he was the band’s vocalist and musical director. Hanging freely from microphone stands during guitar breaks is, apparently, when his best ideas appear.
Listening to The Strokes then and now, it’s clear where the influences lie. A bit Velvet-y here, a bit Iggy there, a whole lotta Television interplay everywhere else. It was interesting then to hear Raphael say how the band brought three records to him in their pursuit of their sound. You could probably name them…except you’d probably be wrong.
The drum sound. It had to have the crisp compression of John Lennon’s Watching The Wheels.
The guitar rhythm. It had to have the unique and clean separateness of The Wailers on Bob Marley’s Uprising album.
The overall feel. It had to have the messy chaos of Guided By Voices’ Game Of Pricks.
That was it.
If you listen to Is This It? you’ll hear all of this. Not hard to explain at all.
The Strokes – Hard To Explain
Plain Or Pan 