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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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We Didn't Start the Fire...
Wednesday 21 April @ 14:23:34 |
 An Interview with Albert Hammond Jr. of
The Strokes
by Rob van Alstyne
It’s sometimes hard to remember that just four short years ago we lived in a pre-Strokes era—the public consciousness yet to be deluged with lurid tales of singer Julian Casablancas’ epic drinking exploits and woefully bereft of paparazzi shots catching drummer Fabrizio Morreti snogging with celeb girlfriend Drew Barrymore in assumed privacy.
The Stokes: (L-R) Nick Valensi, Julian Casablancas, Fabrizio Moretti, Nikolai Fraiture, & Albert Hammond Jr.
Considering how omnipresent the New York fivesome have been in the media spotlight since the 2001 release of Is This It?, however, (and the inherently shortterm memory driven nature of the pop culture landscape) it feels like the Strokes have always been around—the band with vacant eyes and perfectly tousled hair that was predestined to be on magazine covers and sleep with the coolest girls.
 With the amount of “return of real rock” hoopla and general critical pandemonium that greeted the Strokes’ debut one could be forgiven for assuming that Is This It? was the second coming of Nevermind—another generation defining album that instantly turned pop music on its ear and kicked boy band ass on the charts (Julian wiping the floor with JT just like Kurt obliterated Jordan Knight). If publicity ink equaled record sales that might have been the case—Is This It? wound up in the year end top 10 of nearly every major music magazine—but the reality is that the Strokes phenomenon was hardly the all-consuming pop juggernaut one was led to believe (the band was barely played on MTV, only garnered regular airplay on “alternative rock” FM stations and Is This It? has still yet to crack platinum status in the United States - hovering around 950,00 in year to date sales).
Of course, as the Strokes would be the first to tell you, none of that matters. What matters—firstly, secondly, only—is the music. The one point all the Strokes vainly try to hammer home in article after article that inevitably focuses on every other facet of their lives (the booze, the women, their famous parents) is that the music is what counts.
And finally, after what seemed an eon, there is more music to talk about, with the Strokes having dropped the long delayed Room on Fire this fall. Of course it wouldn’t be the Strokes without the gossip, and the mythology surrounding Room On Fire was already fully formed by the time the album hit the streets. Casablancas went on record as saying that he had to quit drinking for five months in order to get it together enough for the band to finish the record, and an original session of recording for the album, with noted Radiohead and Beck producer Nigel Godrich, was scrapped. The band eventually re-teaming with Is This It? producer Gordon Raphael to put an end to the nerve-wracking recording sessions.
Room on Fire, of course, reflects none of this. It’s a 33-minute rock album, limited in scope but flawless in execution (with nary a Nigel Godrich jab in sight). Strokes LP No. 2 finds the already wiry band shedding what little water weight it had to emerge with an even leaner and tighter sound. It’s a cold, mechanical listen, driven by the lock-step drumming of Moretti and the clean clip of bassist Nikolai Fraiture. The playing of guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. is insistent, fiery, but tautly structured, bursting free to solo intermittently and generally enslaved to the overwhelming propulsive beat of the rhythm section.
In short, Room On Fire is the logical extension of its predecessor and yet another no frills college-rock album (albeit slightly more new-wave leaning in its influences and with a few nifty drum samples). It’s the sort of music any band could do poorly, but the Strokes somehow manage to do with distinction. It’s a testament to the Strokes’ genius/laziness (depending on one’s perspective) that a song like “Under Control” sounds like a lost blue-eyed soul hit from the early ’70s (seriously, how could a song with a melody this simple and indelible not have been written before?). The Strokes aren’t reinventing the rock ’n’ roll wheel—and it hardly matters. Some bands are just meant to be enjoyed, not analyzed.
Julian Casablancas would probably be the first one to admit that singing about aimless drunken nights and angst-fueled unfulfilling sexual trysts isn’t exactly rewriting the rock ’n’ roll playbook. There’s just not a whole lot to read into it when Casablancas flatly intones, “they were just two fucks in lust / baby, that don’t mean much,” and that’s OK. That’s part of why it’s easy to love and/or hate the Strokes—anyone who’s ever drank until they puked or accidentally blurted a careless insult to their girlfriend at a party will automatically connect with Casablancas’ bleary-eyed narratives and jaded anti-insights. And depending on your point of view you’ll either love Casablancas because he’s just like you or hate him because you realize he’s actually the son of a multi-millionaire (Elite modeling agency founder John Casablancas) and has personally partied with more celebs than you’ll catch on any given episode of “Access Hollywood.”
I recently took time out to chat with guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. to talk about the pressure involved in making Room on Fire, growing up with a famous musician Dad and the full-time job of life as a Stroke, amongst other topics.
Pulse: With Is This It? being such a critical success I can only imagine the amount of pressure all of you guys felt to make sure there wouldn’t be a sophomore slump with Room On Fire. Obviously there were a lot of people chomping at the bit to jump all over you guys and lead the Strokes backlash if the album was sub-par. Do you think that pressure within the band and from the outside had a big effect on the kind of record you ended up making?
Hammond: We’re never totally relaxed making a record. We’re not at that point in our career yet. There was really just so much pressure coming from the outside and so much pressure within the band that they somehow sort of balanced each other out and we didn’t explode (laughs). Definitely when we’re in the studio with Gordon [Raphael, their producer] and J.P. [Bowersock, the group’s guitar tech credited as “sensei” in Room On Fire’s liner notes] they really create a nice vibe, then you start finding sounds that you like and things start sounding cool and you start to feel better about the whole thing. The pressure stays but instead of eating you up it kind of pushes you on. We definitely as a band work well with a little bit of pressure for sure.
Pulse: More so than any other rock band currently in the spotlight you guys have become celebrities. It seems like the press is more eager to write about what clothes you’re wearing or what places you’re partying than the music you make. Does it get frustrating?
 Hammond: It always makes me kind of laugh that we’re a band whose lives people find so intriguing. I try not to let myself get annoyed by stuff like that. I try not to let those kinds of things ruin my day or I’d be constantly frustrated. I think the only way [to get the media attention to change] is to keep on making records. I think eventually the press will be talking about the music. In a way it’s kind of cool that people actually want to write about our everyday lives. But actually if you’re a fan and want to find out more about us the best magazines to read are the guitar magazines or the drum magazines or the bass magazines. Those tend to be the most insightful things out there about us. The rest of it tends to be, “He got drunk!” Well so what, doesn’t everybody? It’s not like rock bands getting drunk is a brand new thing.
Pulse: The biggest problem Strokes detractors seem to have with the band has a lot to do with the fact that most of you come from privileged backgrounds [Hammond and Casablancas first became friends at an elite Swiss boarding school]. There’s definitely still a certain mentality in the minds of a lot of people that “authentic” rock ’n’ roll can only be made by people who come from certain backgrounds. Do you understand where people are coming from when they have those kinds of prejudices?
 Hammond: If I hadn’t attended that Swiss boarding school I would have never met Julian and the band would never have existed. I understand where people are coming from when they don’t like us because of [our backgrounds], but I wish people would not like what we do because they don’t like our music, not because they’re looking at what was happening in my life when I was 13 years old. I think it’s funny, because some of the biggest punks back in the day in 1978 went to boarding school. I mean Tom Verlaine [founding member of legendary NYC post-punk outfit Television] went to boarding school. Any art form has always had support from someone, from Van Gogh to Beethoven to the Beatles. Not coming from somewhere doesn’t mean you can make music easier or vice versa. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. A good example of that I would say is that my father grew up very very poor, no money, in a little one-bedroom apartment with three kids. When he wanted to play music though, his dad bought him a guitar. If you’re coming from nothing, I think that’s more what Hip-Hop’s about, because all you need is yourself in order to rap. In rock music, someone had to buy you the guitar. I don’t think we ever tried to hide [where we came from]. I think I was raised pretty well and my parents taught me to treat people with respect. It doesn’t bother me because I know we’re going to keep making music and eventually people won’t talk about it anymore.
Pulse: Because your father was such a successful musician [Albert Hammond Sr. was a well established songwriter who scored a top 10 hit with “It Never Rains In Southern California” in 1972] did you consciously attempt to follow in his footsteps? Were you the kind of kid that grew up with a guitar in his hand and emulating dad?
 Hammond: You know, not really. When I was young I didn’t really like music at all. When I discovered it, it was for myself. I think the only reason why I actually knew that I wanted to do music was because I came to it on my own —I didn’t even realize that this whole time my dad was doing the same thing. When I told my father I wanted to be a musician he was very straight with me, he tried to make sure that I knew how much hard work it was going to be and that he wouldn’t really be able to help me out professionally at all. There are people out there whose dad’s are a thousand times bigger than mine who weren’t able to get anywhere with music. And I was like, “I know I know, but I really want to do it. I want to work.” I remember even when I got my first guitar my dad wanted to make sure that I already knew how to play it a little bit so that I wouldn’t buy it and then just have it sit in the corner. I think he wanted me to respect everything and not take anything for granted.
Pulse: It seems like the Strokes are one of the few “real” bands out there, and by that I mean that every piece of the band feels equally essential. On some tracks the drums or the bass are really the center of attention, not just the vocals or guitar leads, which is a pretty unique phenomenon. So many groups these days are really just a singer/songwriter with a revolving band of backing musicians. I get the feeling that if any of you guys walked away from the band it wouldn’t be anywhere near the same kind of sound.
 Hammond: We’ve all agreed that if one person ever leaves it’s no longer the Strokes and we’re going to have to change names. We’re a band and we try very hard to get that across and a lot of the time people can’t take that right now because they’re not used to it (laughs). Like, “What do you mean? It’s really all about the singer guy!” Of course Julian is the front man—every ship needs a captain. But still, this is a band. We’ve always wanted to be seen as the five of us, it’s a lot stronger than just, “Hey, here’s this one dude.”
Pulse: If you had to do it all over again would you have wanted things to happen differently at the beginning of your career? The Strokes got a very high profile in such a short period of time that it seems like the band ran the risk of becoming overexposed and burning out quickly. Clearly you guys are in it for the long haul.
 Hammond: It’s so hard to look back. I wouldn’t change anything we did, the long touring, all of it—because I think it made us who we are now. It’s almost too soon to be able to tell you what I would have liked to change about the band’s beginning. Right now, it’s what’s happened, and to sit and think about it just feels like wasting time when I could be working on making another record.
The Strokes play on Sun., April 25, at First Avenue with the Raveonettes. 6 p.m. $25. All Ages. 701 First Ave. N., Mpls. 612-338-8388.
Download an mp3 of The Strokes’ song 12:51 AM.
You can find out more about the Strokes on their official website.
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