iwannafight2

Now 22, Julian Casablancas' life keeps getting weirder. Eighteen months ago The Strokes were regularly playing to crowds of 20 in New York clubs. Now they are touted as leaders of a new rock underground. The Strokes' ascent has been dizzying: on 31 January 2001 they played their first gig supporting ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead at Portsmouth's humble Wedgwood Rooms; by 24 August they were sharing the main stage at the Reading Festival with Travis Iggy Pop and Green Day.
    "I puked before Reading," Casablancas laughs. "It was pretty nerve-racking."
    Weirdest of all, Courtney Love has written a song about Julian Casablancas. The title - But Julian, I'm A Little Older Than You - has led to speculation that Casablancas tried it on with the scariest woman in rock.
    "No, not at all," he counters. "That was kind of weird for me too, but she was pretty normal, I guess, for somebody like Courtney Love. I've only heard about the song secondhand, something like, I'm older than you. I think it's because we had this talk. She was just giving me advice, I think."
    Did you fancy her?
    He pauses, then smiles. "I have a girlfriend at the moment."
    Where is she?
    "She's in New York. I don't think she's want to come on the road."
    Nor would she be invited, for the band have a firm "no girlfriends" policy while on tour.
    "They distract you," explains bassist Nikolai Fraiture, a quiet lad of Franco-Russian descent. "They make you think of other things than music. You can have girlfriends at home, but on tour it creates a weird atmosphere."
    "This rule is a collective idea," adds Nick Valensi. "We're on a bus now, and when you have strangers coming in and out, girls hanging out from city to city, it's too much like Almost Famous. Girls, sure! But when it's time to go, you've gotta say good bye."
    The Strokes have a reputation for pleasing the ladies and Fabrizio Moretti is best placed to assess his bandmates' pulling credentials. With a girlfriend of three years' standing, Moretti merely observes the action and "makes bets".
    Is there competition among the band?
    "We're very diplomatic about it," Moretti smiles. "We judge the situation and see who has the most chance and it goes from there."
    After the gig in Indianapolis, half a dozen teenage girls circle the dressing room, sipping beer and chatting conspiratorially. One fiddles endlessly with her bum-length blonde hair, perched on a bar stool beside the gregarious Albert Hammond. The others appear preoccupied with Nick Valensi, the prettiest Stroke, who accepts a spliff from a local rock DJ and flings a handful of cheese-encrusted pasta across the room. A dollop attaches itself to Fraiture's mop of hair. The bassist merely shrugs. Anything, it seems, to avoid an argument.
    Clearly, Fraiture will struggle to impress the girls with pasta in his hair, but as Hammond admits, there are occasions when even the sexiest rock'n'roll band in America fail to achieve, er, gratification.
    "There are definitely nights when you can't get laid," he says, "and there are nights when you have too many options. I usually hold off until I'm at least sure that she wouldn't mind making out with me. You can feel that. Some girls are very obvious, you just grab their hand. Just by saying hello you're in."
    Even Valensi will own up to being snubbed two days previously. "I don't like to advocate groupies," he says by way of damage limitation. "But we're OK. We're not lonely."
    "We have fun," Casablancas says, "but we're not ready to turn into a rock'n'roll cliché."

As if to emphasise his point, The Strokes' soundcheck at Birdy's is extended for the benefit of a 15-year-old female fan unable to attend the show due to the venues age limit of 21; a sweet gesture which Julian Casablancas, mildly embarrassed, acknowledges with raised eyebrows and a muffled grunt. If Casablancas appears defensive ("Mr Journalist, my friend!" he says when pissed. "Oh, that's not how it works!"), it is an accurate reflection of the additional pressure felt by any band's singer. Moretti confirms that while dining with Q in the bizarrely-named Ruth's Chris Steak House shortly before the gig.
    Moretti is of Italian-Brazilian parentage, a smiling, eminently likeable character whose good humour is at odds with the popular perception of The Strokes as preening, brattish, over-privileged, offhandedly cool rock'n'roll stars. When Moretti, a Guns'N'Roses fan, exclaims, "England is a rockin' place!", it is more endearing than patronising.
    "I'm very much appreciative of everything that's happening," he says, "but we can't let it get to our heads. I'm not like, Wow! Look at me! I'm this drummer in this crazy rock band! Because we're not a very famous band at all."
    If The Strokes give the impression that it's easy being the coolest band on the planet, "That," says Valensi, "is the whole point." Yet it is, he concedes, hard work.
    "Lots of bands with potential are just not devoted enough to drop everything else in their lives and be an amazing band. They're scared of losing their day jobs or they've got wives; there's something preventing them from devoting their lives to music, which is what we've done.
    "We all dropped out of school, quit our jobs, pretty much sacrificed our social lives for a long time, cooping ourselves up in a rehearsal studio from eight at night till eight in the morning. We ate, slept, walked and talked music. We love it. That's the way it should be."