That "the girls" included celebrity rock-boy predators Drew Barrymore (who dated Moretti earlier this year) and Winona Ryder didn't help. In truth, there was privilege--four of the five Strokes grew up on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side--but stardom was not handed to the band as a graduation present.
Only a few family and friends witnessed the Strokes' first show at the Houston Street hole-in-the-wall the Spiral in September 1999. They rehearsed at a shared space in Hell's Kitchen, then showed up at local clubs like Don Hill's with fistfuls of gig flyers. Fraiture worked in a video store. Hammond worked in a record store. Casablancas tended bar. Even as their crowds tripled in New York, leading to a weekly residency at Mercury Lounge, they were unknown everywhere else.
"They went to Stamford, Connecticut, and played in front of five jocks and an old man," Gentles says. All the griping about the band's pedigree, along with the fact that they've been schoolmates or bandmates for nearly a decade (Casablancas and Fraiture's friendship is pushing 20 years), may account for the Strokes' aloof exterior. That insular quality has fueled more than a few "Strokes haters." But now, when the five virtual brothers exchange inside jokes and near-telepathic glances, hug and kiss one another (and tweak one another's nipples), it seems more necessary defense than secret handshake.
The past year and a half has been characterized by exciting, nerve-wracking firsts--first TV appearance; first huge outdoor show (England's Reading Festival, where they headlined over Weezer and Jane's Addiction to a crowd of 60,000); first taste of seriously surreal fame. "My best friend in L.A. gets calls from people he hardly knows asking for tickets," Hammond says. And as easy as the band's camaraderie is, more often than not, you can sense major group jitters.
"You never lose your nerves, you just disguise them better," says Hammond (who insists that he and his bandmates are "really shy"). "It still feels like we're walking into a bar full of strangers every night."
SOUND CHECK AT Boston's Fleet-Center is over, and it's time to get hazed. The Strokes are on a Harvard campus bus, speeding through midday traffic. This being a vehicle filled with rock stars, beers go round, smokes are lit up, and John Lennon's "How Do You Sleep" is cranked on the stereo. "Is Natalie Portman gonna be there?" Valensi asks. The band's formally attired collegiate escorts huddle together, force smiles, and apologize for Queen Amidala's absence, but the Strokes remain psyched--they're being made honorary members of Harvard's 127-year-old humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon. They'll soon join the esteemed likes of Bill Cosby, Peter "Columbo" Falk, and last year's inductee, Elijah "Frodo" Wood. Bow Street is glutted with students as the bus pulls up in front of The Lampoon's office in "the Castle," a low-lit, Flemish structure furnished by onetime staffer William Randolph Hearst. The Strokes are ceremoniously led into the circular library.
"You're all so dressed up," Moretti exclaims. Firm handshakes and awkward, high-strung introductions from the clean-cut Lampoon brainiacs cause the band's security team to actually tense up. The disheveled but courteous Strokes head for the free booze, then to a common corner of the well-appointed study to sit on real thrones (!) and stave off the sensation that they've crashed a party in their honor. Well-lubricated, the band is finally led back out to the street.
Here, in the shadow of high academe, the Strokes will challenge "the Hives" for the dubious title Best Rock Group of the Millennium. The band is to choose its "form of competition," and a previously briefed Moretti grabs a bullhorn and shouts defiantly, "Go-carts!" A crowd of students cheers, and on cue, two go-carts whiz around the corner in front of the bemused, slightly freaked-out rockers. One is driven by a Lampoon-er done up in Hives drag--black shirt, white tie, etc. Moretti pulls on an old yellow football helmet and gets behind the wheel; Hammond climbs into the passenger seat. At the bullhorn signal, the two carts tear off, speeding through the Cambridge streets. When Hammond and Moretti finally return to the Castle with "the Hives" trailing, it's clear the fix was in. The Strokes are presented with their trophy--a plastic, baby carnival giraffe, stolen from an unlocked study hall.
"Thank you, my friends," Casablancas says through the bullhorn. "Now, do your homework."
Such are the new distractions, very different from the old distractions. According to Fraiture, the band's new unofficial motto is: Get your shit done, then have fun. Wyckyd Sceptre is their first big-venue tour as headliners, and it's got all the rock-god trappings: a traveling caterer adept at whipping up an array of sushi or a large Italian feast; a security/road-management team; drum and guitar techs; and a semi loaded with sound equipment, instruments, and lighting. Everything's timed to the minute, run very professionally. "Every night now, in my hotel room, I get a piece of paper slipped under my door telling me the whole deal," says Valensi. "It gets much easier when you've got a whole crew taking care of your shit. Making sure your fucking luggage doesn't get lost."
This year, everybody wanted the Strokes. And so they played for everyone and nearly cracked up in the process. "There's only so much time you can be on the road before you lose your mind," says Hammond. "We were pushed everywhere. Different time zones, different languages. Jet lag. Finally, we were like, 'If you don't give us time back in New York, we're not gonna be a band anymore.'" The pressure culminated in Paris, where Casablancas scuffled with a record-company exec after objecting to the band's heavy European promo schedule. Later, he performed with a serious knee injury, singing from a stool.
"It seems like if you don't play the game, you get screwed," he says. "Like, if you don't play ball with radio stations and MTV, no one hears your music. Sometimes I think we should get some MTV director to do a video the way he wants to. I mean, I liked Nirvana growing up, but the way they did stuff, like videos, the way they toured, maybe that was their mistake, you know?" He stares deep into the cherry of his lit cigarette, as if searching for some misplaced clarity or much-needed energy.
Casablancas has been composing songs since he was 14. "I wrote really cheesy stuff," he says of his early rock years. "It's not like I picked up a guitar and was prolific, you know? It takes time. I started with figuring out how to play Nirvana songs on one string."
After years of studying and relentlessly pushing himself, Casablancas is becoming one of his generation's best songwriters. But he can't write on the road. He hasn't packed a notebook or a tape recorder. Nearly every song on Is This It, as well as the five new songs the band play on tour, was written in his apartment in New York City. The process is simply too lengthy and complex. "It's weeks of misery till the song is done," he says. "It's getting down to the deep, deep details. Like, what a bass can do with a certain part, and if that's okay, what the rhythm should be and then getting a guitar part to go with it. And, of course, you've gotta have a chorus that's kind of pretty." Frequently, he brings a fully arranged song to the band.
On tour, though, he barely has time to figure out the lyrics. "Some of these new songs we're playing, I'm just making shit up," he confesses. Many of the new songs, like "Meet Me in the Bathroom," address familiar second-album subjects, like how touring and fame are trying his mind. On "You Talk Way Too Much," Casablancas nearly screams, "Gimme some time! I just need a little time!"
"The responsibility has definitely changed," he says. "It's gone from, like, 'You don't have to worry about rent and stuff' to 'Now my job is to worry about the music.'" And everyone else's job is to worry about Julian, a heavy drinker since his teens who admits, "Nothing I do productive, I do sober." "That guy," Gentles says, "he's got a lotta fuckin' pressure on him. A lotta pressure."
Gentles, who could be mistaken for a sixth Stroke with his skinny ties and pegged Levi's, has the unenviable job of fielding every offer and relaying it to the band. "Anytime I pick up the phone, Julian's always ready to talk, but I know if I say anything he's going to dwell on it for 24 hours," says Gentles. "It's like 'Okay, Jules, I really want you to do this, but I don't want you to fucking die if you do this.'"