Send in the Frown

Interpol’s Paul Banks stands on the street corner outside his Manhattan apartment, blinking in the October sunlight. A former boyfriend of Helena Christensen and sometime pal of Bono, he’s been explaining why, contrary to his reputation as the grumpiest man in rock, he doesn’t object to being famous. Actually there are moments he rather enjoys it.

“I was never reluctant about the fame thing,” he says. “I’d be happy to be a lot more famous, if it made me secure in the job I’m doing. Yes, starting out, I didn’t want to be a celebrity. Now, as long as I don’t have a career I hate, I’m fine with it.”
Maybe it’s the relationship with Christensen – his ex took the cover snaps for his new solo record – or the mellowness that comes with turning a little older but Banks seems to have softened his worldview. When Interpol first struck it big, he was forthright about his dislike of life in the spotlight, and straight-up disgusted by all the ladies who would throw themselves at the group (and by most accounts there were quite a few).
“A lot of it takes you by surprise,” he reflects today. “For many debut artists there should be a preparatory course I think. You have to have a sense of humour and not be terribly self=important. Girls glomming onto the band – no, that never bothered me.”
It’s been a rough few years for Interpol. First their play-dandy bassist Carlos Dengler quit. Then his replacement David Pajo left, unable to reconcile the life of a touring artist with his responsibilities as the father of a young family. And then critics started beating up on the now three-piece, complaining that their two most recent records, Our Love To Admire and Interpol, were pallid imitations of their first and second albums.
“There was a patch where things got a little tricky," Banks admits. “It's disappointing when you lose members. A lot of shit went down. Ultimately we are a very resilient group – the only thing that was taxing was the touring. We hit the road for a long time. Eventually, everything starts to feel like a pain in the ass. Towards the end I got a bit of that – you know, ‘fuck I want to be off the road now’. Other than that, everything we went through, we were capable of weathering.”
As for the critical backlash... to be honest, he’s hardly aware of it. Early in Interpol’s history, Banks was super sensitive to criticism and particularly stung by the accusation that the band were nothing better than Joy Division clones (the damning evidence being the way Banks sounded very vaguely like Ian Curtis). He’d get mad – furious actually. So in the end he decided the best step was not to read about Interpol. Ever.
“You know, I haven’t cared for a number of years,” he states. “I stopped reading it all when the third record came out. The last thing I want to read about now is my work. I figured it is appropriate for fans to read music criticism. But it isn’t in the best interest of the arts to pay any mind to it. My biggest mistake was that I read stuff in the beginning. I took it much too seriously. You need to have a sense of humour and not be self-important.”
In that initial flush of fame what got to him the most was heckling from the London music press, far more ding-dong and bare-knuckled in its approach than the American equivalent. Again and again, Interpol were jeered at for their supposed debt to Joy Division. Banks got really angry.
“When people start comparing you to bands you are not familiar with, begin saying things about the quality of your work – it’s like, woah, wait a minute. I’m pretty sure what we are doing is fucking awesome and original. I don’t understand where you are coming from. I was pretty pissed off.”
His new album will be his second solo record. The first was released under the alias Julian Plenti in 2009. This one goes out under his own name. What the projects have in common is a desire to step outside the boundaries of Interpol. It's surprising to hear he doesn’t necessarily have a vast amount of creative input in the band, as most of the songs originate with guitarist Daniel Kessler.
“With Interpol we don’t have disputes over the songs, we just have a formula where it starts with Daniel. He and Carlos had written ‘PDA’ before I even joined the group. The original idea was that Daniel writes the songs and then we refine them into Interpol material. The solo stuff is different in that it doesn’t originate with Daniel.”
For much of Interpol’s history, Banks appeared intensely uncomfortable centre stage. Whatever about fame in the abstract, he certainly didn’t seem to relish being the focus of attention. The idea that he would be itching for a solo career doesn’t sit with the caricature of him as this retiring aesthete, albeit a retiring aesthete who used to step out with a supermodel.
“I wouldn’t say I'm any more comfortable in the spotlight today, the fact that it might not sit with the group’s aesthetic. That isn’t to say Interpol is restrictive. It's just its own thing. We all represent the band equally.:
It annoys him that people have this idea of Interpol as the stoic monks of alternative rock – that it took 2006’s ‘No I In Threesome’ for people to realise that, actually, there was a lot of humour in what they did. You only had to scratch the surface a little.
“It’s on the first record and people don’t get it,” he says. “It’s been there all the time. Fans kind of understand. Generally, however, it is overlooked that I have said countless things in the history of the band that are tongue-in-cheek.”
Was he joking when he told reporters the success of The Strokes lit a firecracker under Interpol and encouraged them to move their career up a gear?
“There was a sense of ‘fuck it, where did they come from?’ We had the songs written, everything was ready to go. And then, they exploded. Our response was, ‘How the fuck did that happen?’”

Banks is out now on Matador Records