They're On Fire

05/02/2004 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

Much has happened to the Strokes since they burst out of New York City in 2001 with their debut album Is This It a year ago. They generated an almost unprecedented amount of hype before the record even hit stores, but they lived up to it, and the buzz has continued to resonate with the release of their much-awaited follow-up, Room On Fire. Their success has even helped kick open doors for other garage-influenced rockers ,like the Vines, the White Stripes, and the Hives, as well as some of the supercool bands that they handpicked to tour with them, like the Realistics, Kings Of Leon, Sloan, and You Am I.

Strokes guitarist Nick Valensi and bassist Nikolai Fraiture recently came by LAUNCH's studios to talk about their incredible journey from NYC clubs to the arenas of the world. Here's what they had to say:

LAUNCH: You gained notoriety overseas, namely in England, before you broke in America. What do you think it is about your music that garnered so much attention in the U.K.?

NIKOLAI: I don't know. It's different, you know? English audiences are more open to new music and different things, and that's where it fits in.

NICK: The first thing we released ever was in England, so we sort of got a head start over there and people sort of caught on to it quicker. It seems like everywhere we go, all over the world, we play to crowds that have never seen us before, and it's like the same response. I don't think there's anything specific about England. It's just our music.

LAUNCH: So the audiences that you play to live over there aren't at all different from the ones in the U.S.?

NIKOLAI: Yes, they're different. But basically, at the beginning, they were all the same: No one knew our music, our album wasn't out yet. So you get the same attention--the same open stares, just listening. Usually by the end, it just gets crazy--they get excited, really into it.

LAUNCH: You guys are a great live band. Is that a way to hone your live skills--playing in front of demanding or unfamiliar audiences that you have to win over?

NIKOLAI: Well, for us, we started out playing in front of our friends, then their friends started coming, and it just continued that way. When you play in front of people that don't know you, it's the same thing: Everybody there is waiting for something, and I think by the end we usually give it. That's the reaction that we see, I think.

LAUNCH: As far as audiences go, I've heard New York audiences are really hard. And those were the first people you played for. Is it true that New York has tough crowds?

NICK: I guess at first. But New York is one of the coolest places to play, because the people that come to our shows in New York are completely spread out, completely diverse. There's old people and young people and jocks and nerds and black people and white people and girls and boys. Like, people that aren't typically rock fans come to our shows in New York, and coming from someone who usually doesn't like music, that is even more of a compliment.

LAUNCH: It seems there are a lot of cool bands coming out of New York right now. What are some other cool New York bands to look out for?

NICK: The Moldy Peaches are like my favorite New York band right now. There's the Realistics, they're really cool, and there's French Kicks. Who else? There's so many bands...so many bad bands, really. Like anywhere else, really, 97 percent of the bands are really terrible. And there's a few, like four or five, that really stand out and so do their own thing.

NIKOLAI: There's no real "scene," but the Moldy Peaches, I enjoy playing with them. But you know, we work really hard on our music, so we don't go out that much.

LAUNCH: Are you guys perfectionists, working as hard you do?

NIKOLAI: I don't know, we just try to do what we do well.

LAUNCH: With all the hype that's surrounded you from practically day one, do you encounter any jealousy about all the attention you've gotten? Like, are there jealous types trying to tear you down?

NICK: Yeah, you sort of encounter people like that everywhere. We don't feel like we have anything to prove to anybody, we just do what we do and don't really pay attention to any people who say silly things. We don't really pay too much attention to people who doubt us.

NIKOLAI: Yeah, we don't work hard for them, we work hard for us. It's like anywhere in the world--a little success gets people jealous. But usually at first they're suspicious, and then they get to know us and all that doesn't really matter.

LAUNCH: So you're not worried about a backlash or anything like that?

NICK: Well, I figure we're not like stupid kids--we're pretty smart people and we've got pretty good judgment on things, and until this point now we've been trying to make good decisions. So I think if we just keep on doing that and not get lazy, everything else just comes naturally, like it has up until now. We're just going to keep doing what we do, getting better as a band, making better songs and making good decisions.

LAUNCH: What would you say is the biggest misconception about you guys?

NIKOLAI: There's more than just one. There's too many.

LAUNCH: Well, name one.

NICK: That we like to get into fights. I guess the other one is that we're only popular is because our parents have certain occupations. There's lots of misconceptions.

NIKOLAI: None really bother me, it's just a lot of talk. The main thing is we're renowned for our fighting. It's not something we do every day; it's just typical rock clichés that people want us to be in. It just diverts from the actual music.

LAUNCH: How did you get that reputation as street fighters, exactly? You were doing some NME interview and a fight broke out, something like that?

NIKOLAI: The interviewer wasn't even there. We were on a photo shoot for the magazine and a fight started, and it finished, and that's it. It wasn't a regular thing, just some kids who were being silly.

LAUNCH: Do you guys read your own press?

NICK: Sure, sometimes. It's like you're reading about a character, a fictitious character. It's like as if someone had written a novel about you. It's almost not even real, like you're not reading about yourself. You're reading about someone else's perception of yourself.

NIKOLAI: Actually, I think our press is pretty funny. It's like they talk about you, but it's somebody completely different. So I just really get a good laugh out of it. It's really funny.

NICK: I don't want to sound cheesy, like all we care about is the music and what anybody else says isn't important, but music is a priority, and everything else is very secondary, way below anything else. I mean, when people ask questions like, "What do you think about what people say about you?"...I don't give a sh-t. We're just concerning ourselves with getting good as a band and doing things in a cool and different way.

LAUNCH: How do you stay sane and not let things go to your head?

NIKOLAI: It's just a matter of knowing what's important and what's not, and I think between us five, we direct each other in the right way. We just make sure we always keep what's important in the foreground.

LAUNCH: One thing that's very cool about your albums is that they don't sound overproduced. They're very similar to your first EP in that way. But when you are recording, do you ever feel any pressure to make the music more commercial-sounding?

NIKOLAI: Not at all. We weren't signed yet when we started recording [our first album], so it was really just for us. The record company had faith in us and we listened to the options as well, and in the end it turned out the way it did, and everyone is equally happy with it.

NICK: The funny thing is that our EP was initially our demo tape, and it just got released somehow and ended up becoming sort of popular. When we were recording the [first] album, we started recording it before we signed a record contract, in the same place that the EP was done, with the same guy. Just some Lower East Side basement studio. When we found that guy, he was able to make sounds that we could only think of in our heads. Like, things that we were looking for, he was able to make it come out of the speakers--so we figured, "Why f--k it up? This is working!" There was just a good chemistry between us and this guy, and it was a cool sound that we were going for, like a sound that was from the '60s or '70s but at the same time could sound like it's from the future. Or something like that.

LAUNCH: It seems like you have a good record deal, because I know there were a lot of labels pursuing you. What was the criteria you were looking for when you signed to a label?

NIKOLAI: Well, freedom was one of them. We met with a lot of people to just get the vibe of the company, see what they were about, see how they were, see how they worked, see how they interrelated with each other. And RCA was just, in terms of bigger companies, where we saw ourselves fit the most. We knew the most attention would be spent on us and we wouldn't be overshadowed by bigger artists. That's what they offered, and that's what we accepted.

LAUNCH: Did you have any kind of weird reservations about signing to a large company?

NIKOLAI: No reservations, just apprehensions--you hear all the stories. And you learn from them.

LAUNCH: So where do you think your music fits in with today's climate, amid all these teen-pop artists and nu-metal bands?

NICK: The way it fits in? I don't think it fits in. I think it stands out from all other music. The whole point from when we first started playing music was to start doing something different than what was going on. And although there were influences there, I think it's like something really fresh and different. It sounds different. The whole point is to stand out and do something original. If we went into the studio and recorded something with some hitmaker producer and sounded just like Staind or the Foo Fighters or Sugar Ray or any sort of like contemporary band, that just wouldn't be us at all. That's like the antithesis of our goal.

LAUNCH: You have been compared to some other bands, though. What do you think of some of the comparisons you've gotten?

NICK: Well, they're flattering, I guess, because people comparing us to bands they like is cool. But most of those bands we've never heard of, or we've heard their music but it wasn't a huge influence on us. I mean, people say the Velvet Underground a lot, and the Velvet Underground is probably the one band that they mention that was influential to us. Aside from that, though, people say a lot of things that are usually way off. Like, I never heard Marquee Moon until people said to me, "You sound like Television."

LAUNCH: Once you heard Television, did you agree that the Strokes sound kind of like them?

NICK: No. They're not in my CD collection. I don't think they're in any of our CD collections.

LAUNCH: What is in your CD collection?

NICK: A bunch of random sh-t, like a bunch of Bob Marley, a bunch of Bob Dylan...a bunch of Bobs. Freddie King stuff, John Lennon stuff, the Beach Boys, the Cars, the Pixies, Guided By Voices...did I mention Freddie King?

LAUNCH: You've already come so far in the year since Is This It came out. So what is the plan for how the Strokes are going to keep conquering America--and the world?

NIKOLAI: Well, like Nick said, we're not looking to fit in. Just the way things are going now, it's just getting people excited and into what we're doing. That's basically how it's been from the beginning and how it's been catching on. And once the right people catch on, in terms of breaking, that's what you want. Kind of word-of-mouth, but behind-the-scenes.

NICK: Actually, "breaking" is not really a concern of ours, and selling millions of records is not a concern. Being a really, really good band is a concern. Not to sound like cheesy--I know a lot of people say that. But it's so true. That's all that we strive for.