To mark 25 years since the release of The Strokes‘ seminal debut ‘Is This It‘, producer Gordon Raphael has spoken to NME about the album’s impact and legacy, as well as the fortunes of the band since and the current guitar rock renaissance.
‘Is This It’ was first released on this day (July 30) in Australia back in 2001, before hitting shelves in the UK, Europe and Japan the following month and an eventual October release in the US after delays brought on by the 9/11 attacks.
In a 10/10 review of the album, NME hailed ‘Is This It’ as “one of the best and most characterful debut albums of the last 20 years”. The now classic debut from Julian Casablancas and co contained the singles ‘Hard to Explain’, ‘Last Nite’ and ‘Someday’ and kickstarted a global garage rock revolution from the ashes of Britpop, grunge and nu-metal. For better or worse, the stylish and effortlessly cool breeze of the NYC future-icons and the infectious shapes and era-defining lyrics of the album set the template for indie for coming decade, and laid the foundations for the likes of Arctic Monkeys, The Killers and The Libertines.
With the band having freshly released seventh album ‘Reality Awaits‘ last week, The Strokes’ immeasurably influential debut has now turned a quarter of a century old. “It does feel weird to think that so much time has passed so quickly, but it is absolutely wonderful that people are still listening to it and loving it,” the album’s producer Gordon Raphael told NME. “That’s a miracle.”
Despite going on the reshape the world of music together, Raphael admitted that he “really didn’t understand” them when he first encountered then in New York in the year 2000.
“Guitar music was very out of fashion when I saw them. ‘Why are these people acting like it’s important?’ It was confusing to me,” he said. “Once I got them in the studio, I thought ‘This is really cool music’. They just picked the wrong time to do rock because no one was interested. In New York, everyone was talking about drum n’ bass and jungle music. That was the big thing. That was the new trend in these clubs.”
“I really began loving their music and liking how serious they were about it and how hard they were working – but I didn’t think the world was going to go back to rock music at that point.”
Hype soon engulfed the New York indie scene that also gave us the likes of Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio. However, these bands were finding their feet and their sound independently from one another in a city that wasn’t quite ready to accept them just yet.
“These bands were existing separately to each other, and they met in London,” Raphael shared. “I moved to London in early 2002 and all the bands from New York and America – The White Stripes, Interpol, The Kills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – they were coming through Club Metro. London was the glue that made New York seem like it was a scene.”
Having produced the band’s ‘The Modern Age’ EP, Raphael was well aware of the different type of magic he wanted to bottle with the band. “Pro-Tools was coming in and people could make bigger productions so I said, ‘If you want to do the opposite then go out and play the songs and have that be it. Just play it, I’ll capture it, and we’ll be completely different to these manufactured songs’,” he shared.
“With the album they had more time, so they wanted to make sure everything was as perfect as it could possibly be: every detail done correctly. For young guys in rock ’n’ roll, that’s not usual either. It’s usually like, ‘Oh, just let it slip, it’s just rock ’n’ roll’. These guys were really serious about it.”
Raphael still fondly remembers the “incredible excitement” of being in and around London in 2001 as the UK were one of the first places to really embrace The Strokes, with clubs and radio stations playing ‘Hard To Explain’ and ‘New York City Cops’ “back-to-back”.
“There was an explosion going on in the UK, but the record wasn’t scheduled to come out in the US until around September 11,” he recalled of the album’s original US release date of September 25. “Of course it was delayed because of 9/11, and then the tracklisting was changed. I don’t think the US tracklisting was as exciting as the rest of the world’s.”
Sensitivity in the wake of 9/11 attacks saw ‘New York City Cops’ replaced with ‘When It Started’ for CD releases in the United States, as a city and a nation was reeling in the face of terror and the dawning of a new age.
“New York was fast asleep in the summer of 2001, and then completely in a sombre, freaked-out mood after the Twin Towers fell,” said Raphael. “People were in shock. I was in New York on 9/11, only a couple of miles from the site. I could actually hear it and I could see the people being effected. Everyone was tuned into the news.
“No one was talking about music, then all these bands coming through, travelling to London, making a name, and then that was echoing back into the US. ‘Woah, these bands are getting popular overseas, so we’d better pay attention’.”
Having been living the music life in bands as a producer for many years already, Raphael suddenly found himself in the eye of a storm and a world-conquering rock movement.
“To finally have something that the world was talking about and celebrating was huge,” he admitted. “The band put my photo in the sleeve along with their own so wherever I went people were like, ‘Oh, that’s the guy from The Strokes, let’s have him produce us and invite him to a party’. It was actually phenomenal and fun. It was a rock ’n’ roll dream come true.”
Raphael would go on to produce the band’s 2003 follow-up ‘Room On Fire‘, an album he admitted was “phenomenally good” despite the pressure to match ‘Is This It’.
“They had been touring for two years before that, so their musicianship was at a peak that I hadn’t seen before,” said Raphael. “They were more like Led Zeppelin than some skinny kids in a basement, like they were on the first one. They were really powerful and muscular on their instruments, so I would say that ‘Room On Fire’ was also a great achievement of music and I’m very happy to be associated with that.”
He then admitted having something of a “conflict” on their third album, having been initially brought in to produce 2005’s more arena-ready ‘First Impressions Of Earth‘ before being replaced with David Kahne partway through recording.
“I kind of never got over that feeling of, ‘OK, now they’re with somebody else’,” admitted Raphael. “That wasn’t really my sound any more so it didn’t hit me as much. It wasn’t really a collaboration, but they were moving in their own direction and that was great. They’re artists, they deserved it, they were very cool people, so I gave them kudos but I wasn’t that into the sound after the first two.”
Then of course came the era that has retrospectively come to be known as “landfill indie“, with the latter half of the ’00s into the next decade delivering a version of the genre that Raphael argued was clearly much less inspired.
“I didn’t like it. I moved to London as soon as I could after the release of ‘Is This It’ because I had opportunities to work there,” he said. “By around 2004, people were dressing like The Strokes and using the same patterns in the music, but it was all very slick, manufactured, corporate rock. They weren’t calling me to produce that stuff any more. I moved to Berlin right at the start of 2005 because I didn’t feel like there was anything super-infectious happening in the UK indie scene at that point.”
“Razorlight, Editors and other things were happening. It became very pop, slick and commercial but with The Strokes haircuts.”
Speaking to us from LA where he was fresh from a recording session with “a very cool rock band” called The Abomic Toms, Raphael said he was encouraged by the current crop of guitar bands leading something of an understated renaissance.
“Having lived in Berlin for the 2000s, the 2010s and 2020s, now I’m in the UK again,” he said. “There is an incredible live guitar band revival post-pandemic. I recorded 27 bands in New York City the last time I went there. That’s incredible. There are more bands in New York than I’ve ever seen before, more than the ‘80s, more than the 2000s, and there are many, many good ones. Also, the regional scenes up in the North of England, in London, in LA, in New York, they’re all popping off but they’re not connected. The media isn’t really paying attention.
“If I recorded 27 bands, that means there’s a whole host of stuff going on in New York but only New Yorkers know about it. I find that very strange, but it is very gratifying to know that people are back after the pandemic. They don’t just want to sit back and do laptop stuff and go on the internet, they want to go and play shows and hear live music. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”
So could we see another indie scene big bang moment again like we did with The Strokes?
“I don’t know about that,” Raphael replied. “Since the year 2001, music has shifted because of streaming and the fact that it’s free. It’s now competing with a whole lot of other social and entertainment things. I don’t know if music has the same place in culture any more as it has historically. I’m not sure how great music and phenomenal bands fit into today’s cultural landscape. I’d love to see it re-emerge as something that people have to agree upon, but I’m not sure how that’s going to function.”
He added: “There are people developing beautiful musical ideas and bands. Whether or not it can catch fire and enable them to make a living? I hope so.”
And what does Gordon Raphael think of The Strokes’ new album ‘Reality Awaits’?
“I’m very happy to see the reaction of the world,” he replied. “Whether they’re liking it or not, they’re talking about it. I think Madonna’s record [‘Confessions II’] and The Strokes’ record seem to be the talk of the summer, which is very exciting. Both of them deserve it. The Strokes are touring and everyone is raving about how great the shows are, so I’m all for this.”
‘Reality Awaits’ by The Strokes is out now. The band are currently in the midst of a North American tour that will later reach the UK and Europe in October.
