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from 'THE BAND WHO FELL TO EARTH' (THE FACE, JULY 2001)
The Strokes were born and raised in New York, except Albert who
was born in LA, and Fabrizio who was born in Rio De Janeiro
and moved to New York when he was three. Julian and Nicolai
met aged five at a French school in the city (on account of
their parents being French). At 13, Julian's parents sent him
away to L'Institut Le Rosey, a private boys' school in Switzerland.
Like Julian, Albert was also sent there for 'discipline problems'.
They all reunited at the Dwight School on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Are The Strokes rich kids, slumming it? Julian's dad John Casablancas
might have founded the Elite model agency but, says Julian, 'it's
not like we're posh kids who drove fancy cars or anything. You've got
to have money to live in Manhattan, but we all still hung out on the
street and drank 40s.'
'Anyway,' says Nick, 'it's sort of irrelevant what our
parents do, because it's not like they help us play songs or
help dress us up...or do anything!' They were all surrounded
by music when they were kids: Fabrizio's father played guitar on
cruise ships to and from Brazil, Albert learned guitar from the age
of nine, and Julian reckoned he knew that he was going to be a songwriter
when he was 'like, 14'.
The Strokes started playing together, performing Julian's songs,
in 1998. During 1999 they were booked to play some shows at the
Mercury Lounge, a shoe-box club in the Lower East Side. The club's
booking agent, Ryan Gentles, became 'like a buddy and a manager'. Last
year Ryan sent The Strokes' three-song demo tape to Geoff Travis at London's
Rough Trade records. According to Strokes' lore, Travis called Gentles and
offered to sign the band while the first song on the tape was still clattering
away in the background. The same demo was released in the UK in March as their
first single, the three-track EP 'The Modern Age'. So it came to pass
that this year The Strokes found themselves in the curious position of
playing small but sold-out shows in London, while being pretty much ignored in New York.
For the last month, the band have been making the two-hour
drive from New York to Philadelphia to play a Wednesday-night
residency at 250-capacity bar The Kyber. It's a journey that involves the band
collecting their guitars, drums and amps from a rehearsal rooms in the
rough Hell's Kitchen district (Madonna used to rehearse there, her name
is still graffitied on the wall, while Fabrizio was once mugged three
times in the same night by a man holding his fist under his t-shirt,
pretending it was a gun), loading up the van, unloading it in Philadelphia,
playing the show at midnight, and then driving back.
It's starting to lose its appeal. 'Man, I wish there was button we could
press and all the kit would be loaded into the van,' sighs Nick.
'It's called money,' says Nicolai. 'And roadies'.
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