Keeping The Faith

Straight off: I have a confession to make. The first time I went to see The Strokes I wanted to hate them so badly that I forced myself to listen to Cast and The Stereophonics in order to summon up the requisite bile. In my defence I’d like to point out that there were mitigating circumstances. Surely I wasn’t alone.

This was back in the days when the press were involved in a hugely unedifying mating ritual with the band – salivating over their ‘exotic’ surnames, the cut of their trousers and their supposed Glass-family upbringings; sniffing their tails while trying to trace a non-existent bloodline running from The Velvet Underground, through Television and Talking Heads.
A brief encounter with the much-heralded The Modern Age EP had left me cold. Radiohead, at the time, were making courageous shapes trying to sculpt their music to the mood of uncertain times. Lambchop, Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, At The Drive In and The Queens Of The Stone Age were expanding the scope of US Rock. And Eminem was ripping his nation a fresh arsehole with every new song.
This, it seemed, was the stuff to light flares for. Not a New York version of Menswear.
We already had a vacuous, American rich kid in The White House; did we really need another five of them on Top Of The Pops?
Going to watch the band play Belfast’s Limelight in June 2001, a month before the release of debut album Is This It, I was expecting nothing more than a morose, painfully-stylised mob of pretty boys rehashing some exhausted New Wave clichés.
I certainly wasn’t expecting to be bewitched, bothered and bewildered by a group of very obvious mates, more interested in conjuring up a warm, celebratory, generous noise than in sucking their cheeks in for the benefit of the pit cameras. As for sounding like Talking Heads and Television, well they’d obviously missed that class. Probably because they’d bunked off to devour The Smiths, The Jam, The Fall and – judging by ‘Last Nite’ – ‘Soul Rebels’-era Dexys instead.
Julian and co were a fabulous surprise. Never more so than when, at the end of the night, the supposed poster boys of austere New York cool hung around outside the venue, buying munchies for the kids from a burger van on Ormeau Avenue.
Who would have thought it: The Strokes really were the kind of flesh-and-blood band that deserved to have their name scrawled proudly on schoolbags. Who would have guessed that The Strokes had soul?
“Music should be a breath of fresh air,” says Fab Moretti, sprawled on a sofa back stage at The Ulster Hall.
“It’s for people to dream to and to give them hope,” Albert Hammond Jr. adds in agreement.
And, two and a half frantic years on, who would have bet on that soul still being there?

“That’s fucking awesome man. We don’t like to make comparisons with other bands but it’s cool when certain standards have been set and we go and break those standards. That’s something you can file away in a little locket and take it out every once in a while when you’re feeling bummed.”
Fab, the band’s drummer, has just found out that tonight’s guerrilla show – announced Tuesday, takes place Sunday – has sold out at a rate comparable to Oasis in their absolute prime. He is known as the member of The Strokes most keen to take ideas and go running and, right now, we find him in a talkative mood. The jet lag that has been plaguing him since flying to Europe (“It was a surreal experience. Everything seemed two feet further away than it really was but was actually two feet closer. But the minute I heard whispers… man that was time to get some fucking sleep”) has started to ease and he’s becoming increasingly animated by what’s playing on his mind at the moment – namely: fame, friendship, war, Lennon, Dylan. All the usual 23-year-old rock star stuff.
Albert, who in the flesh bears an unsettling resemblance to Bolton’s Spanish midfielder Ivan Campo, has more pressing concerns. The candyfloss-haired guitarist apologises in advance for any toilet breaks that may ensue. “Blame this stuff,” he groans, waving a bottle of beer. “It’s making me pee like I don’t know what.”
He shouldn’t really worry. Over the course of an hour and a half, he only disappears once. The rest of the time, he’s a model of relaxed good-humour. Not that fame, friendship, war, Lennon and Dylan don’t concern him to the same extent as Fab. It’s just that, when they do, he starts playing with some of his copious curls, or gets up and tinkles the keys of the old piano in the corner of the room.
Outside a queue has formed at the venue’s front door. Shock haired indie kids in corduroy jackets rub shoulders with skateboarders and nu metal fans. Thirty-something couples lend lighters to young teenagers. It’s a demographic jackpot, and Albert – who has just taken a sly peek – couldn’t be happier that The Strokes have managed to hit it.
“We’ve been lucky enough to get that kind of mix all over the world and it’s just so awesome. It’s really great to bring all those different kinds of people together. We really couldn’t be happier.”
“What about that little kid in Huston?” adds Fab. “She’s like 5 and is so fucking cute. She comes with her mom and sings along to the songs. She’s back stage waiting to give us pictures she’s drawn of us. Man, that’s such a buzz.”
Some bands wouldn’t admit to that.
“I know but I don’t understand why,” says Albert. “We’re not remotely cool and stand-offish. That’s not the kind of people we are.”
Fab agrees, with a qualification.
“You know what, I think we all want to keep a kind of idealism. It’s something that we strive to maintain. But anyone who tries to tell you that sometimes it doesn’t go away a little bit and then come back in a flash is lying to you and lying to themselves as well. All you can do is try to preserve the reason you wanted to make music in the first place. But it is hard.”
This November night, we’re here to see the first show on the European tour that The Strokes have embarked on to promote their second album Room On Fire. Commenting on the differences between the band’s two LPs, Albert claims that: “The first record was: ‘I wanna see the world now, damn it!’ Room On Fire is like: ‘I’ve seen the world and wanna go hide in a little corner someplace’.”
It’s certainly true that the new album is a far nervier, desperate and distracted beast (the opening lines run “I want to be forgotten/And I don’t want to be reminded”) than its well-scrubbed, charming predecessor, but don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s succumbed to frazzled, sophomore nihilism.
If anything, underneath the bruises and scrapes on songs like ‘Automatic Stop’, ‘What Ever Happened’ and ‘The End Has No End’, there’s a poignancy that Is This It only hinted at. It may not present a radical departure for the boys, but Room On Fire’s against-the-odds vitality and lack of easy cynicism is worth celebrating at a time when even Pop Idol winners are making ‘come-down’ second LPs.
“We never want to be closed-off,” says Albert. ”Who knows what the next record is going to be like, but I fucking hope we’d always keep that faith that something cool’s going to happen, that some really great girl is going to appear.”
The question, though, that now seems to be preoccupying the band is how long that particular glow can be maintained under the white light of celebrity. The Strokes are navigating a perilous course at the moment: they may all still get a huge buzz hanging out with Guided By Voices, but the dates they bring along happen (in Fab’s case) to be members of Charlie’s Angels. Indie bands tend not to cope too well with promotion to the major league.
Geoff Travis, their label boss at Rough Trade, has already spoken of how he hopes the band can avoid, at all costs, the kind of debilitating profile that did for The Stone Roses. But it won’t be easy. According to the drummer, though, salvation lies in fostering a productive sense of ambition and maintaining, at all costs, the decade of friendship that he feels glues them all together.
“We’re really not that big of a band,” he says, ”especially where we’re from. And its gotta be that way, it’s gotta stay like that, because that’s where the hunger and integrity comes from. It’s like Alexander The Great; it’s that quote about how he wept for he had no more worlds to conquer. As long as we have more worlds to conquer, we’ll always keep that hunger and integrity…You’re looking at me like you didn’t like that answer.”
I’m just wondering how easy it is to maintain that kind of common purpose with five people in the band?
Fab: “You know, we do have differences of opinions over the most inane shit, but we’re pretty tight when it comes to what this band is about.”
Albert: “I believe, not in a big-headed way because I don’t even write the songs, but I think because our intentions are so good, and because the music is so good, it would just be really cool if we could find a way to show that to more people. The underground is a great thing but I’d love it if we could appeal to a mass of people.
“The thing is, you have to be careful too because the level of success we’re talking about, it can really fuck a lot of things up.”
“We’re not talking about Guns N Roses big are we?” Fab interrupts.
“Fuck no,” Albert replies with a shake of that fright wig. “ We’re nothing like that. We’re more of a band. Those guys met through ads in the paper, we’ve been hanging out for years. We maybe don’t sell the same number of records, but our records mean more to people.”
And that’s important? That you’ve all grown up together.
“Totally,” Fab answers. “That is so fucking important. Those bands that meet through ads in the fucking paper, what do they have to talk about besides their business plan and schedules? With us, it’s like: man, I don’t like you wearing muddy shoes on my carpet. That’s how we interact, that’s how we’ve always interacted and, you know what, that’s the exact place the fucking music comes from.”
But does that get harder to maintain? Not only because of the success of the band but because life starts impinging?
“That’s the cool thing about us,” smiles Albert. “We hung out for such a long time before we even thought of starting a band. We just talked about what clothes we liked, what records we dug, what dreams we had – just shooting the breeze really. But it all added to the atmosphere that our music came out of. If it changes, then the music’s gonna change too. It’s not like I’m scared by that; I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s gonna turn out.”

You wonder if the sleeve of Room On Fire offers a coy indication of the kind of waters that they may soon be looking to explore. For the front cover the band used a painting entitled ‘War/Game’ by Hockney-contemporary Peter Phillips, while bassist Nikolai Fraiture is pictured inside wearing a t-shirt that quotes Orwell’s 1984 (“War is Peace/Freedom is Slavery/Ignorance is Strength”). It’s hardly setting fire to the Stars n Stripes (or enough to suggest an imminent Strokes cover version of ‘Bomb The Pentagon’) but it seems to suggest that the five-piece are taking a broader view than the one offered by an East Side loft apartment.
Judging by his expression, though, Albert would rather have his head shaved than talk about this.
“There wasn’t anything meant with that,” he says. “It was just a cool painting and Nikolai was just wearing a cool shirt. It wasn’t like we were trying to send a subliminal message to people.”
But surely, living in America, living in New York, in an environment that has changed so much from the one you experienced making the first record, it must have impacted on you on some kind of level as individuals and as musicians?
Fab is more willing to take up the slack.
“Man, it’s had a fucking huge impact,” he says.” But I hear so many different opinions about our songs that it kind of proves to me that we’re not here to be like Rage Against The Machine. You can’t listen to Rage Against The Machine and fall in love. You can’t do that. Not to say that they don’t have their positives, but it’s a very politically driven thing and we don’t want to close any windows when it comes to expressing ourselves.”
“It’s really hard to express your feelings properly with subjects like that, “ adds Albert. “You definitely don’t want to look like you’re talking out of your ass.”
Fab: “And your feelings are so fucking abstract to begin with. People think they have to be expressed in such a specific way, but the source of what you’re supposed to be talking about is so abstract, it’s a tough thing trying to sum that up with any accuracy.”
For a moment it looks like Fab has had his good mood ruined. Later on, though, he’ll admit to having spent the last year listening obsessively to The Clash. He’s only taking a breather.
“I guarantee you,” he starts again, this time waving his hand in the air. “If I had to carry a fucking rifle the whole day long and went home and listened to some music, the last thing I’d want to hear are songs about shooting people up. Come on – I love this girl, and she loves me back. I’ll fight for that. And I guarantee you that if I’m blessed one day with some sort of forum to speak on, god damn it I’m gonna speak on it, but right now is not the time.”
But surely the counter-argument is that now is exactly the time.
“We’re too young,” says Albert. “You’ve five different people with five different perspectives. We’re 23, we need to do a lot more homework.”
Fab: “If we opened our mouths now it would be futile. There are so many fucking people talking now who are so fucking righteous, who think they know everything. Don’t get me wrong, man - this is probably one of the paramount moments of human history right now. But that means, to me, not holding a fucking gun or waving a fucking flag like everyone is doing in the United States, you’ve gotta sit back, take a deep breath and start reading and educating yourself about the world around you. If an animal trips over a rock once, it won’t trip over the same one a second time, but fucking humans keep on walking straight onto the fucking thing again and again.”
“That’s what I thought was so cool about John Lennon’s bed-in,” he continues. “He wasn’t telling people to believe in anything. He wasn’t saying: I’m backing Joe fucking Schmo, because he’s a stand-up guy. He was using his celebrity to make people think and challenge the bullshit they’d been fed.”
Albert: “Yeah, man you watch that and the press are giving him and Yoko such a hard time – making fun of them, insulting them, calling them idiots. It wasn’t like he got an easy ride. But, you know, it’s the attitude of the guys mocking him that looks idiotic now.”
So, that’s the best approach? Keeping light on your feet, provocative, non-affiliated?
“There are so many people running around now who want to be the leader,” Fab answers. “It’s difficult not to be corrupted by that. But those posters, they were so fucking poignant. War Is Over is a statement that anyone can say. It doesn’t mean shit. But War Is Over –(with emphasis) If You Want It. That empowers you as a citizen, empowers you as a person. The most important thing, I think, that you can do through your music is to try to empower every god damn person who listens to it.”
Which are unexpected sentiments from a mob who, it has hitherto been assumed, have been content knocking out arms-in-the-air Friday night stompers. I’m reminded of how Julian spent much of the writing and recording of Room On Fire listening to The Harder They Come – an album recorded in troubled times that eschews explicit comment for a more intricate, yet stridently aspirational, approach.
You get the impression that at this juncture The Strokes are tentatively imagining ways in which they can expand as a band – personally, artistically, commercially and, yes, small-p politically. With this in mind, I ask them if – Lennon aside – there are any other musicians who have cleared an honourable path that they wouldn’t mind following themselves.
“There isn’t any band that we’d think, yeah – that’s the way to do it,” says Albert. “We pick and choose. You did that bit cool, but then you sucked. But we just do our own thing really.”
Fab, though, has someone in mind.
“Do you know who I think has conducted himself really coolly throughout his life and is still really admirable? Bob Dylan. Albert is completely right, we’re never going to be the kind of band who says: we’ve based our career on K.C and The Sunshine Band. We take inspiration from a really wide variety of sources. But Bob Dylan has always been true to himself and always been great. And it all comes from the respect he has for his audience that he’s developed this way.
“I went to a show recently and he’s got this crazy perspective that I fucking hope we have when we’re his age. I had the privilege of going back stage, not for a fucking audience or anything, just to shake his hand, but there were so many fucking famous people there it was unbelievable. Dylan was just standing there talking to his buddies and every now and again one of these celebrities would come up and say ‘Hi Bob, I’m such and such’. And Bob would be very polite, very cool, but you could tell he wasn’t impressed by all the bullshit. He’d his core group and they were important.”
Is there a musketeer theme developing here, I ask: there are dangers abroad but so long as you all stick together, The Strokes will be okay?
“Definitely,” Albert answers. “You can’t allow yourself to get caught up in that celebrity bullshit. For one thing, it doesn’t last forever and, for another, it doesn’t mean shit. I mean, just from what Fab’s saying – that attitude is what you hope you maintain. I’m very happy that you’re super-duper famous, but, you know what, I’m here with my buddies and I don’t really care. Not in a mean way. Just in a grounded way. You can’t change just because you’ve sold some records.”

How successfully The Strokes can maintain this attitude remains to be seen. But later on that night – after they play an explosive show that’s every bit as wise-arsed, confused, imploring, inquisitive and frenetic as the band seem themselves – you can only cross your fingers and hope for the best.
Something cool isn’t always going to happen, some really great girl (or guy) isn’t always going to appear, and, maybe, one day The Strokes will suffer a crisis of faith.
But for the moment, they’re making a gale-forced noise powered by optimism and good intentions that’s difficult to resist. No need for the Tip-Ex just yet, The Strokes, it would appear, still deserve to be scrawled proudly on your school bags.