dressmeslowly1

Dress me slowly (I like my title better...)

the emperor's new clothes?
As if by magic The Strokes arrived from New York, stirred up a fashion press frenzy and kicked their way into the British charts. "The hype had nothing to do with us," the "coolest band on the planet" tell Bob Gordon.
Julian Casablancas looks like he's woken up in Disneyland. a little hungover after a show the night before, perhaps, but the treats on offer at Perth's Memory Lane costume store have got him on the good foot.
Shuffling around in a white '40s sports jacket, an over-sized bow tie and a pair of obviously beloved torn jeans, the vocalist and his band have been taken on a shopping expedition by You Am I, the big-noise Australian group they're supporting on tour.
"Man, this is the best clothes shop I've been to in my life!"
He's probably seen a few. Infamously, his father is John Casablancas, founder of New York's Elite Modelling Agency. But with suits and ties at one end of the store and chicken outfits the other, one can't imagine him normally shopping in a place like this.
"I'd shop in a thrift store, but this isn't like a thrift store. This is like... a Hollywood costume studio."
Unsurprisingly, the rest of The Strokes agree with him. As they paw through the racks, toying with the bizarre fancy dress apparel on offer, their wallets are out for that impossibly old-cool attire that you can only find in a place like this.
Guitarist Nick Valensi emerges decked out in a samurai outfit that looks likes it's been borrowed from the rat on the cover of the last Leftfield LP. "Don't make fun of my nobbly knees," he pleads, brandishing a sword.
An elderly Robin and Maid Marion shopping in the store, in possibly their first ever encounter with a New York rock band in a costume shop, avoid eye contact with the lower half of his body. "Wow," says Nick, "you guys look great. No, really."
The Strokes may be the coolest band in the world, but not at this moment. While their bags are stuffed with rockworthy apparel (guitarist Albert Hammond Jr has already purchased four pairs of shoes, including Cuban heel boots and a pair of "Dutch Chocolates", plus a grey pin-stripped suit he'll wear at tonight's show) the men themselves look like they've been cast in a pantomime.
Resplendent in a panda outfit, Casablancas surveys the red Elvis-suited Hammond Jr. "You're dressed like Elvis but built like David Bowie," he laughs, as bassist Nikolai Fraiture walks up looking like Henry VIII. Temporary drummer Matteo Romano (filling in for Fab Moretti, who is nursing a broken hand in New York), inexplicably combines the gangster look with NASA headwear. You Am I frontman Tim Rogers, tour manager Kevin O'Dwyer and band soundman James giggle from the wings as a nervous shop assistant steps forth.
"Umm... I assume that all you guys are together?"
The Strokes have all been together, in one way or another, since 1995. The band itself were a way off from forming, but as Casablancas laughingly puts it, "the magic began" when, as a 15-year-old, he met Valensi, who was two years his junior. Both attended New York's Drake School, a private institution where hip hop was high on the schoolyard agenda and skinny white boy rock was, well, lower.
Enjoying an al fresco lunch in Perth's nightclub district Northbridge, The Strokes are a laconic collection of people, but incredibly affable when the mood takes them. when asked if they'd like the Q tape recorder turned off during the meal, Valensi leaves us agog with his willingness to cooperate: "We'll do whatever you want, man. We can talk while we eat. We can talk while we shit. We can eat while we fuck!"
A photo request for the latter is politely declined, but the mood is up, even as an uninvited character attaches himself to the party. On the periphery of the interview there is a constant mumbling, and it's not until later that we learn that, as The Strokes reminisce, he has asked the Q photographer if he can sit in her lap because, apparently, he has a spaceship that can take us to Alice Springs.
Meanwhile, the band seem to enjoy digging back through their history.
"I though it'd be cool to be a modern-day composer, but I didn't know what the hell music was all about," Casablancas reflects. "Nick had played the guitar since he was, like, six. And I did not. I met this bloke who played the guitar really well and I was blown away.
"Julian caught on really quickly," Valensi adds. "It took one guitar lesson, he didn't even know any chords or anything and was writing songs on, like, one strung. It was like... wow. It was impressive to see someone pick up things so quickly. then he just went way over my head."
Before long the pair had enlisted fellow student Moretti (the absent Stroke) on drums and Casablancas's best friend, Fraiture (the, erm, quiet Stroke) on bass. There was a missing link, however, which could only be filled by another guitarist. It was a recruit that didn't appear to be "falling out of the sky" until one was found under curious circumstances.
He came, instead, from Switzerland, via Los Angeles. Casablancas had met him at Swiss Rose School in 1993, when both were the only American students. "What was I doing in Switzerland?" he asks. "I wish I knew. My dad had gone there and his parents were from Europe. So I went and... I don't know if it was a good idea."
For his part, Hammond Jr (Hammond Sr sang the '72 US hit, It Never Rains In Southern California) didn't know just what the hell he was doing there either, but when his Los Angeles-based family moved to New York in 1999 he immediately looked up Casablancas. Swiss time had finally paid off and The Strokes, so called simply because "it was something we agreed on", were five.
"Our goals were, like, really small," Hammond Jr recalls. "To be able to play a song and finish it and end. I'm serious. We couldn't do it. Most people join a band and it's like, OK guys, rise to fame. For us it was just that we liked music and liked playing songs. When we started, all of us together, it was fun."
It's the fun and friendship within The Strokes that leaves then wondering why so many make such a big deal out of everyday things. They're close enough to each other to air grievances constantly and immediately as friends do, but have gained quite a reputation for fighting among themselves and others.
"The shit that we fight about is usually pretty small shit," Hammond Jr contends. "I think the key to arguments is to not hold grudges. Once everybody's point has been heard it's like, Alright, I'm not gonna hate you for the fact that you don't like my fucking sneakers."
"The important issues we tend to agree on," says Valensi. "It's usually the irrelevant things that we argue about, that don't make a difference. Would you agree Julian?"
"Yeah. It's true," Casablancas allows, clearly uninterested in the subject.