Anthony Fantano: Hi, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you are doing well, and today we have an exclusive conversation - an interview, a back-and-forth with the one and only Stephen Hyden, a music writer as well as an author who has a brand new book out, Is This It? This new book is about The Strokes, their rise, their fall, and everything in between. I've read it cover to cover, and I'm ready to pick Stephen's brain about stuff that is in the book, stuff that is not in the book, and some interesting theories that you bring up as well that sort of struck me, but maybe let's start with a little bit of early history for the band because you do delve into that quite a bit, and there are some surprising bits of information that come up, even to somebody who's been loving The Strokes since their first album. I thought it was interesting. One of the things that kind of took me aback was how you kind of demystify some of these presumptions around what the band's influences are, given that they have kind of like this cool New York band history, and like the big first revelation with that is Pearl Jam because, as you say, in a lot of rock writing around that time, The Strokes were almost kind of painted as like the antidote to that stuff, not only that but like the post-grunge era. And no, in fact, Julian is a big Eddie Vedder guy. And when you sort of laid that out, I was like, wait, like his croon does have kind of that Eddie Vedder DNA a little bit in it. And now that I know that, I can't unhear it, even though I'm not really the biggest Pearl Jam guy, honestly. You popped that bubble for me. So, fuck you off the bat. But thank you very much for, like, kind of laying this out in detail with their history of how they all kind of met, what their inspirations and influences were. Were there any other sort of bits of that early history of the band that surprised you when you were first, like, kind of diving into the early years of their story?

Steve Hyden: One thing that really struck me was how this thing with The Strokes, where on one hand they're being looked at as the next big thing, the band that's going to save rock, how there really wasn't a grace period for them in terms of people resenting their backstory, looking at them as being rich kids or being privileged or getting too much attention from the media. You see that pop up in discussions of The Strokes very early on, like even before they become famous, even before Is This It has come out, and I always think that there's this great clip of The Strokes. Again, this is like early 2002, where they're at the Brit Awards in England, and they won the, like, best young artist award or whatever the equivalent of that is. And you see The Strokes walking up on stage, and there's like a woman doing a voiceover for the viewers at home saying - I forget what she says exactly, but it's something like, "These guys write great songs even though, you know, they come from money," and they're all these sort of posh guys, like this conversation about them. It wasn't as if they got all this attention and then people got sick of them and then the backlash happened. The backlash was sort of concurrent with their rise. It was always part of their story. So that was something I was surprised to see pop up so early on in their saga.

The book, again, for anybody who doesn't know, isn't really just simply an analysis of The Strokes themselves, and their creative process and their dynamic, but it's really sort of like a total breakdown of how they were perceived and received at the time, which I feel like I really needed a refresher on because there are so many echoes of that era of writing and perception of rock music that I feel like still even happens to this day. One thing that I kind of wanted to pick your brain about, and I know you do mention them quickly in the book, is the band Geese, or even other groups who kind of came long after The Strokes but were, obviously, more heavily and directly influenced by them, like Car Seat Headrest, for example, through some of their bigger records. When those bands were coming up, I mean, Geese are still coming up. I feel like there was a little bit more skepticism hitting them or there wasn't as much eagerness to be like, given that they were some of the most relevant rock bands of their time when they were getting buzz, there wasn't quite as much eagerness to be like, they're going to save rock rock is back, rock with capital R O C K. Do you feel like kind of there is a little bit of lingering PTSD or something from that era of music criticism and rock writing where people almost felt like, man, we sort of predicted there was going to be this big wave based upon this band that didn't happen. We don't want to make that call again, out of fear that we'll be wrong another time.

Yeah, that's an interesting thought. I think that there probably is some of that PTSD that, like you're saying. I also think that we just live in a much different world than 2001. The media world, in particular, I think, is obviously dramatically different. And I mean, I write a lot about the media in this book because I work in the media. I'm interested in it. And I think that's a big part of The Strokes' story: how they were talked about and why it gave them a context where they weren't just a regular band; they've always been talked about in this sort of heightened way. And I think in 2001, we still had largely a top-down media environment where it was about MTV and the radio and like a handful of corporate music magazines. And if you were on the cover of certain magazines, if you were getting your music video played, that was a big deal. And that was really the only way that you could become famous and successful. And now here we are in 2026, obviously a much different world. Magazines, by and large, still exist, but are greatly diminished; music magazines are all but finished at this point. There's still the radio, but not as significant as it once was. Streaming platforms, obviously, are a big force in music, but that is much broader than what the radio was in that old media world. It's harder, I think, to really dictate to people that this band is the band and this band is going to bring back rock. I think for most people, like if you care about rock music, it never goes away. There's always a million, million bands to listen to. And you can listen to them, and your enjoyment of them isn't really affected by a larger media apparatus. You may want that band to be more successful. You might think it would be cool if they didn't want that band to be more successful - or that they would be cooler if they were in the zeitgeist - but it doesn't prevent you from having access to that music in a way that I think it really did 25 years ago. It used to be the case that if a band wasn't on MTV, it might be harder to get their record. Like if you live in a smaller town, it might not be for sale in your town, and you might have to ask the clerk to order it for you, and now you have gotta wait a while. Things like that. Everything is so accessible now that I think just that way of thinking about music generally - of things dying or things going away- it doesn't feel like we really think about it that way anymore, nor should we.

No, certainly not. I mean, something that what you just said kind of reminds me of: I saw this kind of like breakdown of a lot of the music listening diets of people that are primarily segmented into certain genres, and they found that the average listener of rock music is more often than not listening to tracks or albums that are five years or older. As opposed to other genres, where there's more of a kind of relevancy of immediacy with what the most listened-to acts and artists are. Is that something that you feel like kind of prevents maybe newer bands from getting sort of that initial hype wave out of the gate, but simultaneously contributes to a legacy act like The Strokes kind of almost seeing a bit of a peak in their career at this point, post New Abnormal?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's an interesting question. I think in rock music, there's always been more of a sort of reflexive nature of listening, where the idea of listening to music by bands that broke up years ago is not as unusual, and I remember when I was young, classic rock radio was a big deal. And oldies radio was even a big deal, like we hear music from the 50s and 60s. And it was, in a way, that music was as accessible as new music was; I would listen to the new rock station, and I would listen to the classic rock station. And like Led Zeppelin, you could hear them every day, just like you could hear Nirvana every day. So if you were coming into music, those two things were sort of put on the same level. And I think in rock music, as opposed to hip-hop or pop music, I think in hip-hop and pop, generally, people are much more innovation-oriented. It's more about embracing the new and casting aside things that are older. Whereas rock kind of has, like, a folk music element to it in terms of not in terms of it sonically, but in terms of the sort of philosophy that it's a time-honored tradition, sort of. It's like a continuum of music, and that you that listening to something older is just as valid as listening to something new. The Strokes are interesting, and I'd be curious for your take on this. My feeling with The Strokes is that the younger audience that came to them in the 2020s almost takes them more seriously than people who were around when Is This It came out. I think for a lot of older people, there's this idea that The Strokes put out the first record, maybe they like Room on Fire, and then they're finished after that. They sort of stopped paying attention. And then you've got this younger audience that is much more engaged with the newer music that's coming out, New Abnormal, Reality Awaits. I mean, just reading some of the reviews of Reality Awaits, you could tell sometimes when it's an older critic writing about it, because there's almost this, like, bemusement that The Strokes are still making records or that they're like a nostalgia band now and talking about them almost like you would some of the other bands of their generation that are more clearly past their prime. And I think there's a separation there between audiences, really, where, like, when I saw The Strokes this summer, on the Reality Awaits tour, it was a predominantly young audience. It was like 15 - to 25-year-olds all around me. And I was clearly the oldest person in the audience. I feel like with most bands of that vintage, it would be like an older audience dragging their kids, but it didn't have that dynamic at all.

Yeah. But that's not, that's not the dynamic. I, that that is something that, in terms of the history and kind of the storyline, the book is very front-loaded in terms of telling The Strokes story. And that is exactly one of the things I wanted to kind of pick your brain about because I didn't get as much of a sense of, again, what you directly think about, like how younger fans who got into them off of The New Abnormal sort of perceived them, because I feel like there is almost this, like, anachronistic presumption at this point that their popularity now was like a constant because they didn't sort of go through those wilderness years as you described them. So, as a result of having not experienced those low points in real time, there isn't a low point. They're like, "Oh, this band is good," and when you go back to their early stuff, that's also really good.

That's a funny thing because I've had younger people react to the title of the book where they're like, " Fall? " What are you talking about?

Exactly. Because all the albums, it's just a time collapse. So it's like that low period never happened because they weren't there.

Yeah. That's been fascinating for me to see because obviously I am from that older generation. I'm like basically the same age as The Strokes. So this is the first time I've ever written a book where I felt as close generationally to the artist that was writing about that, that I was here. I think like Julian was born in August of 78. I was born in September of 77. So a lot of the things that they experienced growing up in the nineties, the cultural reference points, I just understood them intuitively because it's the same sort of stuff. That's the thing, like with the Pearl Jam thing, for instance, that's one thing that I probably latched on to more than maybe a younger writer would have, because I relate to that. That's because I know what it was like growing up in the early nineties. That band was inescapable, and you were going to be into that band if you cared about guitar-based music. I mean, there's a quote from Julian where he says that the first time you heard the song "Yellow Ledbetter," which is a B-side by Pearl Jam. He said, "It felt like the first time I drank."

Which is powerful, because I'm not even crazy about that song myself. I do not get that sense out of that track when I listen to it. But it's so fun. It's funny to hear that he feels that way about it.

I know. And it's something that I think a lot of people would probably look at and go, what, what the hell is he talking about? But I totally understand that. I got that. But yeah, in terms of the younger audience, I think I tried to hit at that toward the end, talking about The New Abnormal and how that record, in a lot of ways, is a parallel to Is This It in terms of coming out around the time of the sort of national upheaval; 9/11 is the first, and then the pandemic with The New Abnormal. It's kind of an uncanny recurrence of that, because I do feel like both of those exterior circumstances elevated the albums. It made them feel, I think, more important because, like The New Abnormal, I think, came out right after the lockdown. And I think there's a lot of themes to that record, I think, that resonate with people dealing with the disappointment of that time. I think that there's a lot of that in the songs that maybe wouldn't have been as apparent if it had just been a normal Strokes record.

Another parallel, though, that I feel like I have to ask you if this is also necessary, because we have these elements of tragedy around these two amazing albums in their catalog. But also another thing that you kind of another parallel that you draw, is like during these points in their career, yes, you do bring up a lot that The Strokes have five members and that that's very important to you on the five, five continuum, which people will read about in the book.

Correct. Numerology is a big thing in this book!

Yeah, it's a big deal in this book. But do The Strokes actually need a sixth member? Do they need a guru? Because you mentioned how on the first record they had a guru, and on The New Abnormal, Rick Rubin essentially filled in that role as a guru on that album. Do they actually need six members, a sixth guy who's there to sort of, like, be a brain that's above it all and isn't, like, in the thick of it, working on it to sort of be that kind of, like, perception that isn't clouded by the labor of being in the moment, being locked into the dynamics of the band itself? Do they work best when they have that outside voice or something?

Yeah. I mean, well, it's interesting because you mentioned J.P. Bowersack was the guy credited as guru on the first two records, also on Room on Fire.

And going back to the album art on that first album, it always kind of perplexed me. Even as a kid, when I saw that record, I was like Guru? It's like, you never open an album art, and you see the band members, and then you're like Guru?

It's especially because he looks older, and he has, like, a mustache, and you're like, who is this guy? But he's a little bit different than Rubin in that he was really someone that Julian could lean on to help him, like, realize musical ideas. He was almost like a tool that Julian could use more so than, like, a traditional guru where you feel like it's someone almost like, like a Svengali-type figure who's helping.

Yeah. It's not necessarily a spiritual thing.

Which Rubin is more of that. And it feels like Rubin was more of a producer for The New Abnormal in terms of, certainly, how the vocals sounded, which really set up Reality Awaits in a weird way where people, I think, were expecting the vocals to be more like they were on The New Abnormal. When in reality, if you listen to all The Strokes records, it feels like - and especially if you listen to The Voidz records too, if you expand it to that - Julian is often messing with his voice and treating it more like an instrument than as the focal point or as the protagonist of the music. And he reverts to that on Reality Awaits. And of course, a lot of people hated that. I know you're not a fan, but I'm a fan of Reality Awaits. I think it's really good.

I know you are. I mean, we can even get into it really quickly here. You said that your take, if I'm paraphrasing it correctly, and you know, I would love for you to run with this, is that you say, "by the next Strokes album, people are going to love this Strokes album." Why do you feel that way?

Well, I just feel like there's a pattern in their career where, going back to Room on Fire, really, people get a new Strokes record. And they are underwhelmed by it. And then the next record comes out, and they go, "Oh, why isn't it as good as this last record?" Room on Fire comes out, and they're like, well, they're just repeating what they did on Is This It, but then they do First Impressions of Earth. And it's like, well, wow, we really actually love Room on Fire. This is too different from the first two records. The new album was interesting because it is this record that, again, this young audience loves. I mean, critically, it got a very mixed reaction. From the big music publications at the time, weirdly, the Pitchfork score for Reality Awaits is higher than the Pitchfork score for The New Abnormal. I think I like a 5.7, and Reality Awaits is like mid-sixes, even though the reviews don't read that way. The review of Reality Awaits is like very mixed in terms of what the writer actually wrote. And I don't want to get into complaining about Pitchfork scores; it's the oldest game on the internet for music fans. But I do think that there was a little, even though it got a lower score, I do feel like some of these critics who didn't love The New Abnormal came around and said, well, actually it was pretty good. And they could also talk about how it was a hit with younger audiences. And then that was used as a comparison point with Reality Awaits, how that didn't match up. I mean, I think Reality Awaits is closer to The New Abnormal than I think a lot of critics give it credit for; certainly the vocal sound is the big departure from it. And maybe I've just listened to too much Voidz in my life. There might be some Stockholm syndrome for me having just written this book because I've listened to so much Strokes music, because I thought it was weird when people were so upset about the Auto-Tune. I didn't really understand that. And I think that's more on me for being so Strokes-pilled over the past year. I'm just used to Julian messing with his voice. And so I don't even think I really noticed it when I listened to it.

It might be premature to jump, but I do want to ask you a little bit about The Voidz because you do talk about them to an extent in the book. I loved the part where you kind of like go into describing the first album, and you say something along the lines of, "if you love this album or if you love listening to it constantly, you must be sick in the head or something." It's like, you're very complimentary toward the record, but you also kind of go into how demented the album is, which I don't. Disagree with that assessment. It's very wild. I think the debut record is really good and has a lot of interesting moments. I even love "Human Sadness." I think it's like a very interesting sort of like, boundary lists kind of motifi kind of moment on the record. I am curious, though, because you didn't get as much into it. What do you think about the second and third Voidz records? Because I love Virtue even more. I'm curious as to what you think about that album being a little bit more concise than its predecessor. And then, where things kind of went from there with Virtue in your mind.

I would agree with you. I think that Virtue would be my favorite of The Voidz records. And to me, my interest in the Voidz is pretty stroke-centric. There are people, though, that I think are Voidz fans first.

That's true. There is a contingent there.

And maybe it's only people that have emailed me, but I've, I've certainly heard from The Voidz heads out there. So I know they're out there.

Yes, every single Voidz first fan has emailed you, and it's, it's only them.

Yeah, exactly. And you know, and I, and again, I think it is probably an audience that came around later and doesn't have, maybe, The Strokes baggage, and maybe those early Voidz records came out when they were teenagers, and they were teenagers, and that was the first encounter that they had with Julian Casablancas. So they have a different relationship. But for me, as a Strokes first listener, I tend to look at the Voidz as like a laboratory where Julian is experimenting and maybe even getting things out of his system. And in particular on the last two Strokes records, you do feel like he's taking things that he would do on Voidz albums and straightening them out a little bit or fitting them into Strokes-type shapes. And it's an experience where, if you've listened to The Voidz, I actually think that the Strokes albums sound pretty normal. But if you're dropping in because you loved Is This It in college or whatever, and now you haven't listened to them for a while, and now, oh, The Strokes have a new album out, let's check it out. I think for those listeners, it's a pretty big shock to the system to hear a song like "Psycho Shit" at the top of Reality Awaits to me. Like, what the f**k is this? This is not "Last Nite," and these are not like the leather-jacketed rock songs I remember from 25 years ago. It's hard for me to think of those albums as standalone records. I do tend to think of them as almost like adjuncts to what The Strokes are doing. I've seen people do this thing where I don't know if you've seen the movie Boyhood, but there's a, there's a scene in that movie where Ethan Hawke makes a mixtape for his, where it's like a Beatles album made out of solo album tracks by the Beatles in the seventies. So, like if the Beatles had like a mythical album that came out in 1975, it would sound like this. And I've seen people do that with Strokes' solo albums. Like, we take Voidz songs and you put them with Albert Hammond songs, and because The Strokes don't have that many albums for having been together for as long as they have. And it's because there are all these Voidz albums in the middle and other various solo projects. So I haven't done that myself, but that's kind of an interesting way to look at it. That maybe these are just bizarro world Strokes albums, in between the actual Strokes albums.

Or almost like even a training ground, honestly, like I feel like that sort of relationship was like established, established a little bit between the first couple of Voidz records and what they later did on New Abnormal. And it felt almost like a little too easy to predict what Julian did on the third record and then how kind of Reality Awaits turned out. Like, in your view, do you feel like that's a good thing, a bad thing, a neutral thing?

I mean, I think it makes it more interesting to talk about. I think that there are two ways of looking at it. Like when you're reviewing records, you have to just say, do I like this record? Do I think it works? And that's obviously a very valid way to review a record. I also think there's like an additional way, which is probably more of the zone I'm in, which is almost setting aside whether it's good or not. And just sort of looking at the idea of it now, what does this say about the Strokes overall and their overall trajectory? And what's interesting to me about it? I mean, to me in a way, and I know this will upset the Voidz people out there, but I think one way to think about those records is almost like someone releasing their own bootleg demos as albums, like these are things I'm experimenting with in the studio on the way to putting out my proper album. But even though he's not working with The Strokes, it does feel like him working out these ideas. And I think if you approach the albums that way, I think they actually make a lot more sense. I think if you approach them as like a regular album, they might be a little more confusing. But if it's more like, oh, this is a guy playing in the studio with his friends, and he's trying things out. And like you were saying, you can connect those Void records to The New Abnormal. I think there are a lot of those albums that you hear later on in a more sort of conventional, more regular song-oriented way on The New Abnormal.

Getting more into this low period, as you describe, where the band was in the weeds a little bit. You do kind of go into the creative dynamics around this time, and how there were certain, like, fractures within the band, and how there were certain things that were different, like the creative process in the band, and even sort of break down very well how they almost kind of viewed Comedown Machine as a contractual obligation record that they put out just to put out; they didn't even tour behind it in addition to that.

Well, at least it's seen that way, like the way they presented it. It was a very sort of like a lack; it really felt like they didn't care. I mean, I know you talked to Julian later on, and I feel like he confirmed that when you - I think you talked to him in 2020. I quoted that interview where I think he basically said, I don't know what to make of these albums. Which seemed like a nice way of saying that he just didn't like the albums very much.

And I'll say myself, like, I'm a little bit of an Angles apologist. I feel like, if you, if you really like The Strokes, you have an album or two in their catalog that maybe others don't like, or isn't, like, broadly a favorite, but you still see something in it. And given that information that you assembled for this book, around these records, do you feel like people who enjoy those albums, or will themselves to enjoy those albums, are kind of kidding themselves because, like, the band doesn't even really care about these records? Is it foolish for us as fans to see kind of merit in them, despite the fact that they have been sort of like, downplayed either legitimately or for optics reasons?

Yeah, that's a great question. To me, that doesn't matter. I think that one of the great things about art is that there is what the artist intended, but then there's also what the audience brings to it. And in the end, what the artist intended isn't unimportant, but our reaction as the audience is ultimately what sort of trumps that intention in the end. You know, there are a lot of artists who feel like their best record is nowhere near the right record that we as fans would say. I mean, a lot of times artists say my newest record is my best record. And they believe that, and sometimes they're just saying it to promote a record, but sometimes they legitimately believe it. But does that make them right? Or does that make us right for thinking it's maybe their first record or their second record? I mean, there is no right answer is the answer, but I don't think that the opinion of an artist should negate your own connection to the music. I mean, the fact with Angles is that there's a lot of really good songs on that record. I don't care what he says. I know that they played "Life Is Simple in the Moonlight" last time I saw them play. That's a great song. "Under Cover of Darkness" is a great song. A lot of the songs, especially in the first half of the record, are just really punchy, catchy, Strokes songs. I'm not going to call it their best ever album, but it certainly doesn't belong on the scrap heap. I do think, too, that one of the fun things about following an artist, if you really care about a catalog, is getting into those records that are a little underloved. Like, to me, I kind of prefer careers that are a little bumpier, and The Strokes, again, haven't put out that many albums, but you know, sometimes artists have like big catalogs and they go through periods where they're out of favor, and people don't care about the music that they're doing at a particular time. And sometimes those are the most attractive albums to revisit because they feel the freshest in a weird way. They haven't been picked over as much as the big masterpieces that are acknowledged as the classics, to dig into something that maybe is a little under-discussed. I don't know. I feel like there's often a better potential for discovery in those, in those instances. And I think that's what attracts people to albums like that.

No, I don't disagree. I mean, I think Neil Young is one of the coolest catalogs for exactly that kind of tthing like his, his whole rockabilly period. There was a point in the seventies where he collaborated with DEVO, like Neil was doing some crazy stuff, but actually, that kind of brings me to my next question. I wanted to ask you about this kind of how much the perception of the band and their presentation played into their success, because one of your kind of key theories in this book is that The Strokes are a gang. You literally, you literally pin them for gang activity on the record.

Correct, I reported them to the NYPD for that.

So, breaking that down further, like what makes them a gang? What makes a band a gang as opposed to, I don't know, is it are there other bands that apply? Does DEVO apply because they're all in suits? Does Sonic Youth apply because they're maybe a little bit more casual with how they present themselves?

I mean, I think the gang idea with a band is the idea where each person is important, and you can name each person, and it's not just the singer and a bunch of other people who are interchangeable. I mean, one of the things that makes the Strokes unique is that they have maintained the same membership over their entire run. Now, Nick Valencia didn't tour with them this summer. I don't know what's going on with that. There seems to be weirdness between him and Julian going back a while now. But there's weirdness with Julian and a lot of people in The Strokes. So I don't think that's necessarily unusual. I don't know if Nick Valensi just wants to make records with Ringo Starr now. I doubt that that's what he wants to do. But yeah, I think that idea of, like, a band as a unit and just being able to picture people, like all the people in the band together - I hate the word iconic. I feel like that's so overused. Now we, we describe so many unnecessary minor things as iconic, but I do think that The Strokes in 2001, when you see them in the "Last Nite" video, or you see them in the $2 bill concert that was on MTV, those are iconic moments that, like, burn in your memory. You can picture what the band looks like. You can picture each member and how they interacted. And it's still something that informs how people think about The Strokes, even though it's 25 years later and they've moved on, and they put on other records that people care about. I mean, I think that's true for every significant artist, really, that the visual part is important. As much as we like to feel like it's all about the music, it's shallow to care about that. People generally are drawn not just to attractive people, but to distinctive-looking personalities, to cool-looking personalities. And I think that era of music, one of the things that distinguished it is that you did have these bands that almost felt like they had costumes or dress like they had costumes or dress codes. Very distinctive looks. And The Strokes changed more over time than, say, Interpol did. But there's still an aesthetic to The Strokes. You still want Julian to stand next to Albert, with Albert to his left. And you want Nick Valensi on the side; you want Nikolai Fraiture on the edge of the stage, stoically playing bass. That's what the Strokes are, along with their distinctive musical sound. So yeah, I think their identity as a band is still unique, because there aren't that many bands from this century that kind of have that same stature when you see them on stage. That's The Strokes; it's not like The Killers, where it's Brandon Flowers, and you've got Ronnie, the drummer, and then there's like maybe guitar techs playing with them now, or bass, as they've got like various people coming in and out. It doesn't really matter who else is in that band.

Well, you just mentioned them. Do you feel like Interpol still has that at this point? They just dropped a new record that I personally, I perceive as being one of their best in a while, just like The Strokes with The New Abnormal in terms of like kind of coming back to a certain level of creativity.

I mean, I don't think Interpol has it as much as the Strokes, but they certainly have that. I saw them at Madison Square Garden four or five years ago. Car Seat Headrest, I think, was opening, and they're famously popular in Mexico now. I mean, they can play Mexico City for huge crowds. Yeah, they have that same thing from that era where it's not just, these guys on stage and cargo shorts and T-shirts and just interchangeable dudes on stage. I mean, it's Interpol. They have a certain look to them. I will say that losing Carlos Dengler for me personally is a big change musically and visually. I mean, his basslines were just so integral to Interpol's sound. I mean, it's just his look. I remember I saw Interpol very early on, right before Turn on the Bright Lights came out, at this bar in Milwaukee. It was a very striking scene seeing these very New York characters just among rumpled flannel shirt-wearing Milwaukeeans drinking beer. Carlos D definitely did not look like everybody else in the bar, like when he was getting his whiskey or whatever after the set. It's like, that guy's a rock star. He looks like a rock star. He's not famous yet, but he's a rock star already, and he will be very soon.

A couple more kind of major topics off of the book I wanted to get from you because you do kind of go into, again, this kind of theory and this hope that a lot of writers and publications put on The Strokes in terms of saving rock and roll. And I feel like you acknowledge that there was actually a lot of very popular mainstream rock music happening at the time that was being overtly ignored in service of that narrative? I guess my question is, if The Strokes actually did reach that level of hype and reach that level of fame that was anticipated for them at the time, what would that have even looked like? Would all of those kind of Strokes copycat bands have gone triple platinum? Would The Strokes have had three albums that sounded like Is This It? Would there not have been a break period? It's, what would the run have even been at that point, in theory?

Do you mean, what would they have had to do to achieve that?

Yeah, or what could have happened, and what would have actually needed to be done in order to have actually fulfilled that promise?

Yeah, I really don't think they could have done anything different to change their path. I actually think that they ended up with maybe the most interesting and long-reaching act. I think that if they had been a more conventional band, and they had just done Is This It again, even more than Room on Fire, which, again, I don't think is as similar to Is This It as the trackers say, but let's say that they just made a bunch of records like that. I actually think they would be, in a way, a more forgettable band. I think that in a way, the path that they took makes Is This It all the more singular. If they hadn't made First Impressions of Earth and all these other records, I think it would have maybe been perceived a little bit differently. I just think with The Strokes, the world was just changing. They arrived at a point, just in time, to capture the press's attention and to get signed to a major label, even with a record that really does not sound like a major label record. Especially if you compare it to other big-time rock records, like other records coming on RCA in 2001. It's nothing like that. They arrived at a moment where it was just under the wire for a rock band of their kind to get that kind of attention, and things were changing, I think, pretty rapidly, and they would have changed regardless. I think it was bigger than The Strokes. And that's something, again, I think I was interested in writing about: the changes that have happened in culture and music since then, which, again, I think is tied to the media, but it's also tied to popular tastes. And it's tied to generational sort of perspectives; it's different for someone who is probably even just five or six years younger than me. I was the exact right age for a band like The Strokes to matter to me. Because I was 14 when Nevermind came out, which was the perfect age for that. I was 24 when Is This It came out. Again, I'm right in the same age group as the people in the band. But if I was 18, 19 years old, I probably would have been more into Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory or Something like that.

Like me.

Yeah, exactly. That would have been more music that would have made sense to me. But I was just old enough where, like, The Strokes weren't an alternative. They didn't sound like a grunge band, but they had a lot of the same philosophy as people like Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain in terms of their relationship to the mainstream, in their relationship to music, and like how they thought about different genres. And this idea of just valuing a band like The Velvet Underground and what they represented. If you're a little bit younger, do you care as much about The Velvet Underground? Or is it more about the big hip-hop and metal records that were happening at the time?

Well, it's funny because there was one point in the book now that I think about it more: you sort of describe how it was foolish of music writers or people pushing this band to presume that people were going to hear them and upon impact, they were going to go from, maybe Linkin Park listeners or Eminem listeners to, Strokes listeners and sort of have this transition. And yeah, I mean, in theory, that is kind of foolish to just think somebody would hear a band like that and be like, oh, well, I'm just, switching this off and I'm sort of discovering what cool is and now I'm just going to be into this. But simultaneously, you did kind of inadvertently describe me because I did like Eminem when I was in eighth grade and I did like Linkin Park in high school, but also in high school, I liked The Strokes too. So it's like, and I saw no reason not to enjoy all of them at the time. I mean, as I got older and I was in college, obviously I continued listening to The Strokes and I sort of got a little tired of, I think, the lack of subtlety and nuance that was in the new metal music that I also enjoyed in high school and some of the mainstream hip-hop that I enjoyed in high school. And I also kind of transitioned into a lot of underground rap and electronic music as well and weird singer-songwriter stuff. So I mean, The Strokes did kind of win out in the end because they're one of the few bands from that time I'm still listening to. So it's like, the transition kind of happened, but it was not instantaneous. It was long tail.

Right. And I would propose that you, you were probably a more adventurous listener than a lot of people at the time. So you going from The Strokes to Eminem would be more natural. I mean, I'm sure other people had that too. But that section you referenced, I was just talking about how, when Nirvana supposedly displaced hair metal. There was still more of a connection musically between what Nirvana and Poison were doing than, with The Strokes and say, Limp Bizkit. Nirvana and Poison, Kurt Cobain and Bret Michaels, they both loved Aerosmith when they were teenagers. They had that 70s rock thing in their DNA and they obviously took it in much different directions, but there was still some kind of commonality continuum type thing that they could draw from. Whereas, with The Strokes and a lot of the new metal stuff, I think, it was more about, the old rock continuum versus, what became like, I think, the new hybrid of rock and hip-hop continuum. It's kind of two different things that start happening in the mid-90s where it feels like there's a break. And it's why a lot of those early 90s alternative rock bands felt almost instantly passe in a lot of ways once this more kind of dynamic music took hold. A lot of those early 90s bands started sounding pretty old overnight, just from one album to the other. And when you would compare, like, a Counting Crows album, they go from August and Everything After to Recovering the Satellites. And this thing in 93 is a huge hit, but now you're competing against Korn and you're Counting Crows. It's like being in an army and having a pop gun versus, a cannon. You're not going to compete with the teenage audience. This other thing is just so on a sonic level, it's just so visceral and overwhelming, and if you're 13, it's like, and you have it in your headphones, one versus the other, it's kind of hard for the other thing to compete, I think.

No, it's true. And as somebody who also liked Korn as a teenager, I've been kind of enjoying the new Chat Pile album and how obviously Korn influenced a lot of parts of it are, but that's another conversation. I think the last thing I want to pick your brain on, and this is, big, big, big, big topic right now. And being a little bit older, which I say, complimentary, in a complimentary fashion, you can maybe contextualize this a little bit better, but I'll say, at least for me, when I was a kid who first started getting into music, The Strokes were the first example in my mind growing up of, oh, this is like a band whose kind of background is getting exposed here, and it's like a Nepo baby thing, which you talk about at length in the book. They come from privilege. They're not actually these bad boys. They're kind of dressed up in a certain way, and they're playing, pretend or whatever because they went to private school, this, that and the third. And that's obviously been, a characterization that has dogged them for a long time, and it sort of feels like since that time, and again, for contextualization, I don't know if there's any earlier examples you might want to cite in terms of being relevant, but it seems like since then that conversation, the Nepo baby conversation, has gotten even more vital and bigger and louder so that can become even more of a detriment to an artist's success, possibly, especially if they get tagged that way super early out of the gate, maybe around the same time that The Strokes did in their career. Obviously, major example being Stella Lefty, who you refuse to talk about, which I won't force you to talk too much about Stella Lefty. But with that being said, I guess I wanted to get your take on, how that conversation has shifted over time to where it is now, because at least from my perception, with The Strokes being that first example for me, it feels like that convo has gotten so much louder and more important to audiences. And I wanted to know, from your perspective, why you think that is? And is it being made to be a bigger deal than it should be?

Yeah, I mean, I think there have been examples of that, like throughout rock history. I mean, like Mick Jagger, I remember people talking about him, like he went to like London School of Economics, and I think he had like a pretty privileged background. And Joe Strummer of The Clash, like had a similar, very privileged background. And there's, I think, numerous examples of that. But you're right. I mean, I feel like in the past, if it was acknowledged at all, it was pretty quickly set aside. And people didn't really care if you were actually a great artist. It didn't really seem to be something that people cared about. And it's become much more overt now. And I do think you're right that the Strokes are the beginning of that conversation really starting to have a central place in music culture. I don't remember the term Nepo baby being used in 2001, but, like, rich kids was definitely used. And I feel like the conversation was the same without the term. We were talking about Nepo babies without having that coinage in the part.

Do you think that may have been emphasized at the time? Because I know a lot of conversations in the indie scene in the early 2000s were like around authenticity between music writers and the blogs and so on and so forth. There was like this sort of focus on what we perceive to be authentic.

Yeah. I think like in the nineties, it was more about like record companies putting bands together or not to circle back to Pearl Jam, but that was the big thing with them early on that they were made up of members of other bands and then they got put together and then their, their rise was pretty fast after that. And that was always, the knock on the knock on them from people like Kurt Cobain that they didn't have indie cred, even though the individual members had played in various sub pop bands in the eighties. But I think, now it really feels like it's tied up in this bigger conversation about just manipulation of the public in general, the chaotic good story, or any sort of story about, making artists seem like they're more popular than we feel like they ought to be, or that they really are this - this sense that artists get shoved down your throat, a common thing that you hear now is I never even heard of this person and it could just be a matter of you not having paid attention before. And now, now you're paying attention, and you've noticed them, but you know, we've also seen enough evidence that there actually is real behind the scenes chicanery going on. So when you couple that with the widening gap in people's economic status is this idea that it seems like the rich get richer and that it's harder for regular people to make a living in the arts or in media. I think that just feeds into this resentment going on. I mean, I think when The Strokes came out, clearly there were people who resented them because Julian Casablancas's dad was a very wealthy man who ran this modeling agency. I think it was also a feeling that he used his marketing know how to help The Strokes. And in reality, it doesn't seem like they even had much of a relationship at the time. So I don't really know how much that actually was a reality, but yeah, I just feel like now, people feel like, like it's impossible to have a career as a musician if you're not rich. So to see someone like Stella Lefty who, I guess, her dad's like a billionaire. I don't know what his. Is he like a hedge fund guy?

Groupon guy. He's the Groupon co-founder.

I think it's part of this larger thing that is bigger than music. That this idea that we're all living in the same world, but it's hard to make a living now more than ever. And this is just a symptom of it. So yeah, it's like bigger than pop music, I think.

Well, Steven, thank you for taking the time. Is This It is out now; go and read it! Get some thoughts on The Strokes. Get some thoughts on the five-by-five continuum on bands as gangs on the rise and fall of rock, relevancy and a host of other things because you dive into a lot of stuff in the book. Also, all the different versions of the strokes, pick up the book and find out who the British Strokes are. You don't mention any of them by name, but there's the French Strokes. There's the Swedish Strokes, the Scottish Strokes. Your Southern Strokes pick was really interesting, but there's many different kinds of Strokes that we talk about in the book and you can learn about what they all are and who they all are when you go pick up the book. Steven, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to me.

Oh, it's always a fun time to talk with you, Anthony. Thanks for having me.