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On "Barely Legal," "Someday," and the title track from their just-released debut album, Is This It (RCA), the Strokes also incorporate unmistakable echoes of New York rock history. There are hints of the serpentine guitars of both Television and Richard Hell and the Voidoids (Valensi and Hammond rarely play separate rhythm and lead parts), of the spirited, pogo-worthy rhythms of the punk and new-wave bands, and of the glamorous, sexy swagger of the New York Dolls. But mostly there are the insistent pulse, droning riffs, subway-train rhythms, and urgent, monotone vocals of the legendary group that preceded and inspired all of the above.

"When I was probably 13 or 14 my brother bought me a Velvet Underground CD, and I just loved it," Casablancas says, somewhat sheepishly. Valensi adds, "The VU was hugely inspirational. It's the one band that all five of us can unanimously say, 'They were a great fucking band!' "

Critics have long scoffed at the notion of authenticity in rock: This is a music born of blatant thievery; everybody steals from everybody else, and if you're gonna rip somebody off, you might as well turn to the best. So better the Strokes take a page from the Lou Reed songbook than be another in the long line of rap-rock clones. Still, until recently, Casablancas was reluctant to admit the level of his Velvets fandom, for fear that it would somehow cheapen the accomplishments of his own songwriting. And all the band members think "the whole seventies New York rock thing" has been overemphasized by the press in stories about the Strokes.

"I gotta tell ya, to be compared to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and stuff like that is such an honor that I can't complain," Moretti says. "But if you listen to the album, the influences are very wide, and there's a lot of different influences. I can't say that it's always justified, the comparisons. I think it's just that when you come from the city, there's a certain vibe that comes across in your music. It's not necessarily in the notes that you play and the lyrics that you sing; it's just a little bit of the energy. You've got a bunch of people stacked all on top of each other here, so there's gonna be that little taste of New York in the music."

"It wasn't like we sat down and said, 'Let's shoot for this,' " Hammond adds. "It was the opposite--like, 'Gimmicks don't last. They're great to boost you up fast, but then they go away.' Pretty much it was just Julian trying to write good melodies, but with balls, and it just so happens that those songs remind people of the seventies. Stuff like Limp Bizkit and Korn--that's not balls to me. That's fake, like putting steroids in your body."
Fake versus genuine--it's an issue that plagues the Strokes in some corners of the New York rock scene, where other bands that are clearly jealous of this group's rapid ascent can be heard mumbling about "spoiled rich kids" and the sort of unbelievably lucky breaks that just don't happen for "the rest of us." Ressentiment, Nietzsche called it--a spirit of revenge that festers in the weak, prompting them to seek vengeance against the strong, the noble, and the talented. As if Fred Durst is somehow more worthy of success than Julian Casablancas; as if much of the best music throughout rock history hasn't been made by upper-middle-class art-school students like Pete Townshend, John Lennon, and Joe Strummer.

In reality, the Strokes' "overnight success" was at least three years in the making. It's understandable why the five band members are a little defen-sive when stressing just how hard they've worked: They spent countless all-nighters honing their material in a cramped and smelly rehearsal space in midtown Manhattan's Music Building (rent: $300 a month), emerging with red eyes, squinting in the morning sun, as they stumbled to dead-end day jobs that they were only recently able to quit.

The group had been gigging regularly all over the city for a year and a half when it got its first real break, winning an influential fan in Ryan Gentles, then the booker at the hipster haven Mercury Lounge. "I'd get a lot of the same kind of shit in there day and day out," Gentles says. "I was a musician, and I got that job because I wanted to help bands, but very few came along that you actually wanted to help. When I got the Strokes demo, I was just so floored--out of all the submissions that came in, 20 or 30 a day, nothing ever stuck out like that. I actually took their tape home with me and played it over and over again for weeks."

Gentles, who's only two or three years older than the guys in the Strokes, eventually quit his job to manage the band full-time. "Initially, I was just like, 'Do you guys need some help?' " Gentles says. "And as it escalated, my phone started to ring more for them than for booking the Mercury Lounge. If I hadn't quit, I would have been fired. Now I know I say this as a manager, but this is a band with amazing songs, the right persona, the right character--everything they do is right. It's not an accident that it works, because they work so hard at it. Julian in particular is his own worst critic. Every good piece of press he gets only makes him think, Shit, I've got to work harder, I've got to write better. He's always trying to outdo himself."

Before leaving the Merc, Gentles used his clout to land the Strokes some high-profile gigs, including a weekly residency at the club and opening slots on national tours with Ohio's underground heroes Guided by Voices and rising British favorites the Doves. The Strokes made the most of these openings: Wherever the guys played, they won fans among listeners, club owners, and local promoters.

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