Hot Press Meets Franz Ferdinand

We know it’s a deadly sin, but Hot Press has always been extremely proud of the fact that Alex Kapranos’ December 2003 interview with us was the first time he’d conversed with a non-British publication. It had taken just one pre-release listen to their self-titled debut album to convince the Trinity Street Massive that Franz Ferdinand were ready to join The Beatles, the Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Roxy, the Pistols, The Clash, Wire, Pulp, Blur and their fellow Glaswegians The Pastels among the art school rock elite.

And so it proved eight months later when the chaps departed London’s Grosvenor Hotel £20,000 the richer after pipping Amy Winehouse, Snow Patrol, Joss Stone et al to the 2004 Mercury Music Prize.
“Those were wonderfully exciting times, but I honestly wouldn’t swap them for now,” insists Kapranos whose lack of discernible aging since our first meeting points to some sort of Faustian pact with the devil.
“I can neither confirm nor deny my collusion with a higher power,” laughs the diabolically well-preserved 41-year-old. “The first few years of Franz Ferdinand were this sort of mad sprint. They were over in a flash whereas now we’ve more time to take it all in and appreciate what’s happening. I wouldn’t say we took the Mercury Prize for granted, but we were too busy going off to do the next thing for it to properly sink in.”
Alex & Co. are just back from the States where any fears that they may have been forgotten during the three-and-a-half-years between new album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action and its Tonight predecessor were quickly allayed.
“Rock ‘n’ roll years are even longer than dog ones, aren’t they? We could have arrived at JFK and found no one was interested but straight away the Letterman people were on to us saying, ‘Can you come on and do not just the one song but a whole gig?’ which is what they’d previously got far higher profile people like Depeche Mode and Mumford & Sons to do.”
Alex recovered from a nervy start – “We’re from Franz Ferdinand in Scotland… er, we’re Franz Ferdinand from Scotland!” – to lead his men through an all-killer, no-filler set which was the perfect appetite-whetter for their Electric Picnic appearance.
“You can’t not be nervous playing live on a show watched by that many people and in the theatre where The Beatles made their American television debut. The place is steeped in history. We also got to do ‘Right Action’ on Conan where we met this 16-year-old kid, Mitchie Brusco, who’s like the best skateboarder in the world. I’ve only been on a skateboard twice in my life so I don’t know what the technical term is, but he can spin around in the air four times, which is pretty amazing.”
Having consulted Hot Press’ resident Sk8er Boi, I can confirm the Washington teen is the first person to land a ‘1080’ on the Mega Ramp at the X Games. Franz also did some gigs whilst in the States that weren’t structured around commercial breaks.
“Before those TV shows, we did a sweaty little club in San Francisco where we took a bit of a risk by playing lots of new songs,” Alex resumes. “We were there beforehand going, ‘Are people going to be into this?’ but from start to finish the reaction was insane. A few days later we did Coachella, which is really good but very different atmosphere-wise to Glastonbury or Bestival or the Picnic. I’m used to festivals where people go for a bit of a bevvy and a bit of a dance, but at Coachella you can only drink about a mile away from the stage. You’re not allowed to bring alcohol into the main bit, so it just smells of grass. Marijuana’s not so much legal now in California as compulsory!”
Having given Queens Of The Stone Age a run for their stoner rock money, Franz nipped back to London where they joined Jarvis Cocker, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beth Orton, James Yorkston, Joan As Police Woman, Conor O’Brien, The Staves, Guillemots, Michael Kiwanuka, The Mighty Boosh and Beck for the live premiere of Mr. Hansen’s Song Reader sheet music album.
“Beck’s approach to it sort of mirrored the one we took with Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action,” Alex reflects. “Tonight was a good record but I think we sort of over-egged it a bit. We were in our own studio, so were a bit too free to go off on long-winding tangents. We were too close to everything, which meant we didn’t edit our ideas properly and some of the songs ended up sounding a bit… flabby!”
By comparison there’s not so much as an inch to pinch on Right Thoughts…, which rattles its 10 songs out in under 40 minutes and has the same ‘four guys making it up in the rehearsal room’ feel as that Mercury-winning debut of theirs.
“The songs are different, but the energy’s the same,” Alex says by way of summary. “It feels like when I was first in a band and you’d save up for six months to spend two days in the studio. You’d have a billion ideas but a very finite period of time, so rather than over-think things you had to go with your gut. This time we were brutal in the editing process. A few days after recording the first batch of songs in Ray Davies’ Konk studio I listened back to them and went, ‘They’re good, but let’s make them great.’ The benchmark was set very high.
“Getting back to the Song Reader gig; instead of being there from the start and micro-managing everything Beck arrived towards the end of rehearsals and accepted what we’d come up with as a sort of fait accompli. ‘Right, what’s going on? You wanna do it that way? Cool, I’ll just add this bit in…’ Nick and I did a song with him and Jarvis and Charlotte, which ended up being a completely different performance to the one I’d imagined.
It spontaneously evolved as we played it, which I love.”
What was it like being on stage with two such healthy egos as Hansen and Cocker’s?
“Exhilarating!” Kapranos shoots back. “What I like about both of them is that they’re not afraid of their own quirkiness or sense of individuality. Neither of those guys is looking around them to see what other people are doing. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that, ‘What are our contemporaries in the charts up to right now?’ approach to making music. If something’s ‘the prevailing mood’, I’ll be a contrary bastard and move away from it.”
Alex spent part of his Franz downtime landing DJ gigs in exotic locales, which doubled up as holidays for him and the girlfriend.
“Yeah, it’s usually places I fancy going as opposed to, I dunno, Halifax,” he says breaking 82,056 West Yorkshire hearts. “One of my favourite DJ gigs was in Catania in Sicily. Afterwards we did some volcano exploring with my friend Francesco who took us to the point on Mount Etna where the lava stopped flowing just before the shrine for Mary. My girlfriend, who’s from a very religious family, totally loved that!”
Talking of manning the 1’s and 2’s, is Alex aware that Giorgio Moroder is down to DJ at the Picnic?
“No… wow, that’s great! Somebody told me he’s only learned to DJ these past couple of years, which is pretty impressive for someone in their 70s. I’m a huge Giorgio Moroder fan going back to the glam-era ‘Son Of My Father’ song he did with Chicory Tip. We were in Ireland last year when the person he’s probably most synonymous with, Donna Summer, died.”
Indeed, the boy Keogh and myself were at the Dolan’s Warehouse gig in Limerick where Franz played ‘I Feel Love’ as a tribute to the Divine Ms. S.
“That was a great night,” Alex recalls. “We came over last summer and did a few ‘under the radar’ gigs where we played a lot of the songs we’d just written. In fact, ‘Fresh Strawberries’ may have made its live debut in Limerick.”
As a former Guardian colleague of Caitlin Moran’s – sadly there are no plans to resurrect his rock ‘n’ food Sound Bites column – did Alex maintain an anti-trolling Twitter silence on Monday August 5?
“No, I’d arranged to do a BBC 6Music show where people had to tweet their requests in, so I couldn’t,” he proffers. “Being on Twitter I accept there’s a certain level of abuse – being called a cunt, a bollocks, whatever – I’m going to have to deal with. Saying you’ve planted a bomb outside someone’s home or threatening to rape them goes way beyond that. Twitter need to take responsibility for the medium they’ve brought into the world and regulate it properly. Responding half-heartedly to a complaint two or three days after it’s been submitted isn’t doing that.
“I’m delighted that bloke got arrested last week for allegedly making threats to Caroline Criado-Perez and Stella Creasy,” Alex continues. “The best way to stop trolling is to let the trollers know they’ll end up in court. I also like it when these people’s identities get revealed. This kid who was talking about Mary Beard’s genitalia apologised immediately when somebody tweeted, ‘I know who you are and I’m going to tell your mam!’ It’s the online equivalent of saying to someone mouthing off down the pub, ‘Stop being such a prick!’”