He is declared to access at 9 p.m. If he shows up, it is able-bodied afterwards midnight. But he will accomplish up for it by spending the next seven hours and blaster account with me. Not because he brand me or doesn't like me. Just because that is what he does. His name is Julian Casablancas, and if he weren't a bedrock star, he'd be the adjacency bashed with a affection of gold.
The advance accompanist of the Strokes, New York's finest purveyors of calmly alone retro-rock boogie, is adored with the adeptness to allocution shit. He can authority alternating all night, run about in exact circles for fifteen minutes, lose his abode and afresh alpha all over again. He doesn't assume to accept anywhere to be. He is in the moment. He doesn't even own a corpuscle phone, a computer or a watch. But his intentions are the noblest.
"Doing heroin is like walking about with a agitator as your friend," he tells a associate who has started sniffing the dust. Casablancas' cautionary address lasts twenty rambling, ardent minutes, slurred with his aperture two inches abroad from his friend's. "It's like demography a agitator about to parties," he continues. "You never apperceive if it's traveling to draft up on you."
Casablancas is cutting a blooming plan shirt with the words U.S. GARBAGE COMPANY over the pocket, and achromatic atramentous pants. The shirt is the acreage of his roommate, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. On his wrist, there are three fraying black wristbands that he has not agitated to remove–one from a Kings of Leon concert a anniversary ago, addition from a Stooges appearance two weeks ago and a third from a Vines appearance from who knows when. I will see Casablancas about every day for the next week: His clothes and bracelets will not change, admitting he claims his underwear and socks do. He will end every night in the aggregation of a babe he does not beddy-bye with. And he will allocution about aggregate from bandage clubs to night terrors to his abhorrence of Pringles potato chips. But if it comes time for a academic sit-down, he will accord me the affliction account I accept anytime experienced. It will endure seven minutes.
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The Strokes are added than just a band. Whether they like it or not, they angle for something. Just as Nirvana became the face of grunge in the aboriginal Nineties, the Strokes accept become the face of the alleged new garage-rock scene. And, like Nirvana, the Strokes accept been accepted by the designers of aerodrome fashion, the afterlife bell of annihilation sincere.
Of course, the Strokes don't technically accord to a scene, because they were never even acquaintances with their compatriots. According to Fabrizio Moretti, the band's drummer, artisan and abysmal thinker, the Strokes originally approved to anatomy a arena of New York bands that would adhere out, alcohol and go to one another's shows, but "at the time in New York, it was so aggressive that bands were not accessible to it."
As far as barn bedrock goes, the Strokes don't already acknowledgment bands like the Stooges or the Troggs if discussing their additional CD, Room On Fire. Instead, Hammond credits the reggae-sounding guitars in "Automatic Stop" to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wish to Accept Fun"; Casablancas blames the acute guitar accent of "The End Has No End" on Guns n' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine"; and guitarist Nick Valensi pledges adherence to goth. "There are some bass curve on our aboriginal anthology that were 100 percent ripped off from the Cure," he says. "We were afraid about putting out the album, because we anticipation we'd get busted."
As for the acclaimed Strokes ankle beat, Valensi says, "When we were aboriginal startins out, we capital to accept songs you could do abominable dances to - like the Carlton ball from The Fresh Prince or the Pretty in Pink dance."
The absolute berry for the Strokes was buried if Pierre, the brother of Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture, gave Casablancas a Velvet Underground CD for Christmas while he was in top school. The music was an epiphany for accompany Fraiture, Casablancas, Valensi and Moretti. The dream if they formed the Strokes, according to Casablancas, "revolved about demography the Velvet Underground and thinking, 'If alone they were absolutely famous.' And the appetite was to be absolutely air-conditioned and nonmainstream, and be absolutely popular.
"Why does aggregate that has to be big and accepted suck?" he adds. "I got a botheration with that, so I'm aggravating to do something about it."
At 2A, the East Village bar beyond the artery from the basement flat area the Strokes recorded their aboriginal EP, Gasablancas runs into an old friend, a ample Puerto Rican with dreadlocks alleged Nestor.
"You apparently don't bethink how we met," says Nestor.
Casablancas responds in the negative.
"We were at Spa and all of a abrupt Julian comes up to me and says, 'If you were a babe I'd kiss you,'" Nestor recalls. "I backed off. And afresh he told me that his bandage the Strokes were arena at Mercury Lounge, and if I came he'd be my best acquaintance forever. No one knew who they were then. So I went, and it was absolutely hot. The air conditioning was broken, so I larboard afterwards three songs. Afresh I saw him afterwards at the Cherry Tavern and told him I'd apparent the show, and he bought me a drink."
An aged Asian woman walks accomplished affairs bootleg CDs: Radiohead, Beck, Nirvana.
"How much?" Casablancas asks.
They are 5 dollars.
"I'll accord you a buck."
She doesn't even absorb the offer.
Casablancas owns alone three CDs: the two discs that haven't abolished from his Bob Marley box set (Confrontation and Uprising) and The Essential Johnny Cash.
"I would've bought that Radiohead CD for three bucks," Casablancas says afterwards the bagman leaves. "But afresh you ability address about it, and I'd run into them backstage and they'd say something about it."
Casablancas is afflicted by something alleged the press. Every so often, he imagines his words destroyed up in big blazon in magazines and tries to yield them back. Afterwards putting down Neil Young's voice, he backpedals, "Not that I abhorrence Neil Adolescent or anything." I ask him if he is consistently like this. "You apperceive how bands accept to adjudge what to abrasion onstage?" he says. "We just absitively that we would abrasion what we capital to abrasion onstage all the time, so we wouldn't accept to anticipate about it. So that's what I do if I allege now. No amount who I'm talking to, I consistently allocution like I'm accomplishing an interview."
Over time and beer, however, his disclaimers stop, his chat loosens and his jokes get sharper. Casablancas is adored with a quick wit, and if you accept abutting enough, you apprehend him carrying off-the-cuff comments that, if announced in his slow, slurred voice, assume alert as funny.
Out of aural of two girls who accept absorbed themselves to his ancillary tonight, he explains that he didn't go to a bandage club until recently, and he doesn't like them: His aboriginal acquaintance with a heavygrinding lap ball so aching him that as anon as he got home, he had to exhausted off twice.
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As he tells this story, the jukebox fills the allowance with the strains of Sam Cooke's soul-stirring "A Change Is Gonna Come," and the girls accumulate round. All time stops for Casablancas. "When I apprehend 'A Change Is Gonna Come,'" he says, "it frustrates me."
Why? "No amount how harder I try, I can never be that good," he answers.
One of the girls asks if he's anytime advised singing lessons.
The afterward afternoon, I accommodated Hammond at Tower Records in the East Village. He is antic several canicule of bristles and a pinstriped secondhand snort covering over an chaotic T-shirt. He too will be in the aforementioned compatible every night I see him. His CD accumulating was baseborn if his accommodation was burglarized endure year, and he is replacing the inventory– Ziggy Stardust, by David Bowie, 69 Adulation Songs, by the Magnetic Fields, and three CDs by Guided by Voices, a bandage that, according to Fraiture, the Strokes aspire to be like: semipopular, authoritative abundant money to survive and blockage in the bold continued abundant to absolution added than a dozen albums.
Hammond is aflame to go home and accept to his new CDs. "It's like affairs a agglomeration of pornos and cat-and-mouse to jerk off," he says sagely.
On affectation in the next almanac store, Added Music, is a CD by the adolescent Australian garage-rock bandage Jet. "They accomplish me not wish to play music," Hammond says. He finds their attending contrived, their music empty, their songs too same-y and their CD overhyped. These appear to be the exact criticisms that humans accept collapsed adjoin the Strokes in the past.
"In the end, I apperceive why humans accomplish fun of us," Hammond says. "I anticipate in interviews we appear beyond as weird, affected people. Afresh if they accommodated us, they apprehend we're nice. I like accepting nice. I wish to be nice for people."
Actually, what humans don't apprehend about the Strokes is just how austere and accomplished they are, decidedly Casablancas and Hammond. (In the aboriginal days, Hammond appointed shows and addled almanac executives, claiming to be the band's administrator and application the pseudonym Paul Spencer, taken from an old affected ID.) Hammond's passive, grinning, affable exoteric belies a faculty of gamesmanship and ambition.
The Strokes' alleged appearance faculty can abundantly be attributed to him. Afore he was in a band, he dressed like he was in one and enjoyed the bang of accepting into concerts for chargeless by assuming that he was in the accumulation arena that night. He aswell already got into a sold-out Weezer concert by arguing with the box-office accessory for twenty account that he had ordered seats through Ticketmaster, admitting of advance he hadn't. He is a wolf in thrift-shop sheepskin. And appropriate now, he's hungry.
"I alone eat two things for lunch," he says. "Breakfast or sushi."
Hammond already has the buzz numbers for every restaurant beneath application programmed into the acceleration punch of his corpuscle phone. "Every time I alarm 411, I put the amount into acceleration dial," he says. "It's, like, a dollar every time you alarm information." He settles on sushi at Blue Ribbon. As he sits down to the meal, his buzz rings. It's his mother. He doesn't acknowledgment it.
"I'm a bad son," he says. "I don't alarm her enough. She'll just accumulate me on the buzz and acquaint me that she loves me. And I'll be like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mom, I gotta go.' The endure affair you wish to do if you're home afterwards a bout and your girlfriend's over is alarm your mom."
Baptized Episcopalian, Hammond artlessly adapted to Judaism, he says, a year and a bisected ago, so that Valensi wouldn't be the alone Jew in the band. "The aboriginal time I told a guy I was Jewish was in L.A.," Hammond recalls. "He pulled me into the corner, and I apparent this accomplished abstruse world. He even got me laid that night."
After eating, we airing to the affluence auberge 60 Thompson, area the Strokes are accomplishing interviews with the all-embracing columnist in the accommodation suite. At the moment, a German anchorman is allurement Moretti and Fraiture questions such as "What's the aberration amid your aboriginal anthology and this one?" Midquestion, Moretti wanders away, abrogation Fraiture with the reporter. "That ablution bag," Moretti says.
Outside, Moretti sits on a stoop and pensively responds to questions. We accept until 11:30 P.M. to adhere out, at which point he wants to watch his girlfriend, Drew Barrymore, on The Tonight Appearance With Jay Leno. Throughout the conversation, he drums his fingers endlessly adjoin his leg and explains that it's an obsessive-compulsive habit–beating out the cadences of his thoughts and speech. "We accept accent in aggregate that we do," he says. He afresh credibility to the anxiety of humans casual by. "Look, they're creating beats walking down the street. One, two. One, two. And their baby is in a assertive rhythm. Their fucking footfall is in a assertive rhythm."
He admits that not anybody brand it if he curtains his fingers all the time. "It affronted friends, girlfriends, parents," he says. "'Stop that ceaseless tapping, you son of a bitch.'" In fact, Casablancas says the aboriginal affair he anticipation if he met the then-hyperactive Moretti in top academy was that the kid was "a little annoying." He absolute asked Moretti not to allocution about him. But now, Moretti has become the group's affable intellectual.
Afterward, Moretti active to the Strokes' appointment in the East Village to watch Leno. Fraiture, shy, blithe and cutting a Ricky Skaggs shirt, arrives in the appointment and collapses on the couch, not far from the two appointment video games–Galaga and Golden Tee. Casablancas met his bandmates over the years at assorted clandestine schools–elementary, boarding and top school. If the bandage got serious, Fraiture absitively that it was time to activate acquirements the bass his grandfathering had bought him for Christmas, arena forth with songs by Blur and the Jackson 5. Unlike his classmates, Fraiture grew up awash into a two-room accommodation with his parents, his brother, his brother's adherent and his adopted sister. He still lives in the apartment, but alone with his brother now. His ancestor was the administrator of aegis at Macy's and suffered the afterwards abashment when, one day, he bent his actual own Nikolai burglary a Luke Skywalker baby from the administration store.
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Moretti settles on the couch, flips on Leno and cranks up the sound. One of the hardest things about dating Barrymore, he says, is seeing her kiss anyone onscreen. The brace met backstage at a concert added than a year ago and afresh bought an accommodation calm in the East Village. If she comes on TV Moretti stares at her rapt, acutely smitten. "Her mom gave her that bracelet," he says. "I gave her the necklace."
A car pulls up outside. The disciplinarian is actuality to yield Moretti to the airport to aces up Barrymore, but Moretti wants to accomplishment watching her on TV first. Barrymore shows Leno some photos she has taken, two of which are of Moretti. She mentions his name, but not his band. Moretti is borderline about the accomplished thing, annoying that discussing him seems abominable or boring.
"She's just like that in person," Moretti says. "She is consistently so absolute and energetic. That's the aboriginal affair I noticed about her if we met."
After Moretti takes off for the airport, I accommodated Hammond and Casablancas at 2A. It's a asperous night for Casablancas, who's accusatory about how he dislikes Pringles again. Hammond, who is dating Catherine Pierce (one-half of the countrified-pop sister duo the Pierces), is blind out with the boys tonight. I endure see him at the basal of the stairs, allurement area his shoes are. He is cutting them. (Says Casablancas, "For the record, none of us do drugs. Hi, Mom.")
At 5:30 A.M., an hour afterwards I've larboard the bar, Hammond calls to ask area anybody is. He's still because traveling out. The next afternoon, at 12:20 P.M., he calls again.
Hammond: Did you alarm me this morning?
Me: Um, no. You alleged me. Don't you remember?
Hammond: OK, sure. How are you feeling?
Me: OK. And you?
Hammond: It's been a while aback I went out like that. I bare that.
Me: Yeah, acceptable times.
Hammond: Yeah. I partied so abundant that my aerial hurt.
The next night, I accommodated Casablancas at an East Ancillary dive, the 19th Hole, for a sit-down interview. You already apperceive what he is wearing. He's annoyed from accepting spent the day aggressive RCA over the artwork for Room On Fire and accomplishing interviews with the all-embracing press. He announces with axiomatic pride that he has assuredly invented a banal acknowledgment to "the Nigel Godrich question." Originally, the bandage assassin Radiohead ambassador Godrich to plan on the CD. But their alive habits didn't jibe: Godrich capital to consistently columnist forward, but the Strokes admired to activity on every sound. So the bandage alternate to the abyss of Gordon Raphael, who produced the Strokes' debut, Is This It, and recorded the new CD in just over two months. It is agnate to the aboriginal album, but added refined, a tighter, added studio-proficient adaptation of the Strokes, assuredly abacus to the baby repertoire of songs that a lot of admirers accept austere out on by now.
I ask Casablancas what his abundant complete chaw about Godrich is, and he says he will acquaint me if we alpha the interview. So this seems like as acceptable a time as any to columnist RECORD on the band deck. And so begins the affliction account ever. The affair about Casablancas is that he speaks and sways like he's out of it, but if you stick about him continued enough, you activate to apprehend that he is ultra-aware of aggregate traveling on about him. I acquaint him this.
"That's your opinion," he says, about defensively. "I see myself out of my own eyes, which agency I accept no abstraction what's traveling on the added way around. I just anticipate I try to be a acceptable being –and I fail."
With that, Casablancas alcove over to the band recorder and turns it off. I attending at him. He looks at me. Afresh I about-face it aback on and try to alpha afresh with something easier.
Me: OK, so what's your stoct acknowledgment to the Nigel Godrich question?
Casablancas: Fuck you. I'm not answering that question.
Me: What the hell?
Casablancas: Next question.
Me: Honestly, this has to be the worst...
Casablancas:... the affliction account ever?
Once again, he alcove beyond the table and places his bedraggled barb over the STOP button. And afresh he just stays in his seat, acceptable and staring. I advance endlessly the account and just accepting a accustomed conversation, but with the band accouter on. He declines.
"I just don't accept annihilation abysmal to say," he says.
I explain that annihilation abysmal is accepted of him.
"I've got annihilation to hide," he says. "But what I meant a few account ago, if I can even anamnesis what I was saying, is just that there's so abundant bits to do, and so little time. And aggregate I accept to say is not traveling to be in this one Rolling Stone interview."
The issue, he explains, is that he believes in a college power, some alarm it God. And appropriate now, that college ability is cogent him that it is not the appropriate time for him to say anything. And it will not be time until the Strokes prove themselves to the world, until they do something that he agreement "undeniable."
"I'd like to just get to a point area maybe we can say something that will be matterful. That's absolutely not a word, by the way. And I attending advanced to the future, blah, blah, blah, blah."
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A few account later, Casablancas picks up his beer, downs three abode of the canteen in one gulp, slams it to the table, stands up and walks to the video game, Golden Tee. He turns about and addresses the bar. "Anyone wish to play Golden Tee?" he slurs.
No one responds. Four account later, he allotment to the table. "Never play Golden Tee if you're drunk," he advises.
Then he sits in my lap, kisses me seven times on the neck, and makes three lunges for my lips, abutting once. Afore I can clean dry, he is out the door, rolling himself home in a alone wheelchair he finds alone outside.
The next night, I accommodated Casablancas at the Gramercy Diner. He has promised to behave himself this time. His eyes are anesthetized over from abridgement of sleep. "I actual generally accept night terrors," Casablancas says. "Just anticipate of the affliction accessible situation, and it's a approved affair for me. I've died in my beddy-bye twenty-three altered ways."
He apologizes for his behavior yesterday. He was drunk.
Me: So does anyone anytime anguish about your bubbler or try to get you to stop?
Casablancas: No. I mean, I anticipate they apperceive that if it gets too out of hand, I usually stop myself.
Me: And how do you apperceive if it's out of hand?
Casablancas: If we were accomplishing the record, I chock-full for about 5 months.
Me: How did you do that?
Casablancas: I accomplished it was accepting to the point area it was about to accept austere furnishings on my music if I wasn't traveling to stop. I would be too afraid over to sit down and play music. Bubbler destroys your brainy adequacy unless you're drinking. Whenever I was afraid over, aggregate just seemed so negative. So I would be like, "Fuck this, I charge a drink." And afresh you accept a alcohol and aggregate is fine.
Me: What did added humans think?
Casablancas: Your adherent can leave you and your mother will bawl at you, but if you alpha activity like it's affliction the music, afresh it's a bad mistake.
Me: If was the aboriginal time you got fucked up?
Casablancas: The aboriginal time was apparently if I was ten and there was a banquet party. There were drinks on the table, and I anticipate I just downed all the drinks, and I was like, "Whoa. What the hell is this? This is great." My physique anon enjoyed it. It was like, "Life is in fact fucking amazing in every individual way."
After a cigarette break, Casablancas orders abeer and a broiled Jack-and-cheddar-cheese with bacon, and we allocution for about three hours. We altercate his academy days, in which time he accustomed one trophy, for his role in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, afore bottomward out inferior year; and Nirvana and Pearl Jam, who aboriginal aggressive him to accomplish music. "I can't even explain it," he says of the aboriginal time he heard "Yellow Ledbetter," by Pearl Jam. "It was like the aboriginal time I drank."
He says that if he weren't a musician, he'd be "a bartender aggravating to be a writer."
Casablancas is a altered being from who he was the night afore and is accommodating to allocution about anything. The alone anathema accountable is his father. John Casablancas was the architect of Elite Models. He afar Julian's mother if Julian was nine, and, admitting Julian still sees his father, he tends to accusation abounding of his bad habits, decidedly in attention to women, on his dad. Julian remembers a antic his ancestor already told him about a accumulation of bulls: One balderdash said that he could accept sex ten times a day, addition said he could do it twenty times, and a third bragged that he could do it fifty times. Afresh a fourth balderdash came forth and said, "Yeah, but not with the aforementioned cow."
"It's not funny, really," Casablancas says, "but it has a message."
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"I told him the added day," Casablancas says of his father, "'I adulation you with your flaws and your qualities.'"
My corpuscle buzz rings. It is Hammond. He's calling for Casablancas. This is how one gets in blow with a accompanist who doesn't accept a corpuscle phone. The two are planning to watch the cine Fletch tonight.
Once aloft a time, a lot of of the Strokes lived together. But, one by one, they accept confused afar or abolished into adherent land. Casablancas is the alone individual affiliate left. Alfresco it is cloudburst rain. Casablancas leaves and walks into the cloudburst after an umbrella. Within two steps, he is soaked. Afterwards he disappears, I analysis the bits of the night on the table. There is a half-eaten sandwich, several alone beer glasses, an alone cigarette backpack and a channelled section of paper. I disclose it: It is a cancellation from a Walgreen's angishore for $2.99. The date is today. Alone one account has been bought: a can of Pringles.
This adventure is from the November 13th, 2003 affair of Rolling Stone.
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