Interview: Julian Casablancas

On November 3rd, The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas is going solo with Phrazes for the Young, a dizzying record full of stacked-up vintage synths, programmed drums, and his trademark caustic one-liners. In the extended Q+A from our interview with him for the Rebel Style page of the November issue, the 31-year-old talks Bruce Lee Vs. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, trying not to sound like Phil Collins, and finally getting sober.

Julian Casablancas, "11th Dimension"

You did a show with your new band in Japan. How was it?

It was cool! It was weird.

Why was it weird?

Playing with new musicians, playing songs people didn’t know…I’m trying to learn to have fun on stage, too. I over-think stuff a lot.

Why a solo album? What did you need to say outside the context of The Strokes?

Huh. Well, I can’t say I specifically wanted to say something outside the context of The Strokes. For a long time I didn’t want to do a solo thing, but there comes a point where everyone else is going outside of The Strokes and The Strokes filtering process. And, as I was writing, some stuff felt like Strokes stuff and some felt like, "I just want to do this however the hell I want to do it." I don’t want to say it was an experiment, but it is nice to build things from the ground up. I did that a lot with The Strokes, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that.

This album has very specific iconography surrounding it. Why is that important?

It’s not essential. The music is the most important thing. But I always want all aspects of any album to be cool—I just think it makes people excited. With The Strokes, there came a point where we were compromising on videos and stuff like that…It was just kind of like, "Let’s just hire a professional man!" And that’s cool. I understand and respect them and love them, but I always enjoyed doing that side of things without people being like, "Oh no, I don’t like that." So this time I wanted to do every detail.

Were there movies or albums or books that you were referencing?

Yeah, there’s always stuff. For the video—the album trailer—for example, we were thinking of the movie Game of Death. That’s the Bruce Lee movie where he has to go up to different levels and he fights Kareem Abdul Jabbar at the end. We were thinking about that and Choose Your Own Adventure. And I made some mock records—I collected a lot of my favorite songs and then put them all back to back and then emulated the vibe of that.

What about with your own personal look?

I always reference Mad Max when I think about what I want to wear. But it’s a fine line between that and Edward Scissorhands.

Does the fact that you’re in a band affect the way you dress?

When the Strokes first started playing gigs, instead of getting into costume for the shows, we talked about how we should dress every day, in real life, like we’re playing onstage. I don’t really care about clothes, but it’s about wearing something that gives you social confidence. Or maybe helps you pick up chicks. I don’t know. Whenever I go to shows, I end up looking at what shoes the guy onstage is wearing and the jacket he’s got on. And when you know everything’s gonna be under scrutiny, it makes you feel more comfortable if you have cool stuff.

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To go for it a little bit.

Yeah.

**How did you develop the sound of this album? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard. **

"Unlike anything I’ve heard…in a bad way!" No, I’m kidding. A lot of the music on the album has a lot of different rhythms going on—I’d collected a bunch of drum beats. It’s tricky, because you can fall into Phil Collins territory pretty easily. Not that he’s bad. But yeah, I was into that complex percussion thing. I’m still trying to figure it out—there are so many ways you can go bad.

One knob twiddle and it all collapses.

Totally! You’d be surprised. You change the sound of one keyboard and it’s just like, "Wow, this sounds bad." And not Michael Jackson bad, either. But yeah, it collapses. Like Jenga. Terrible analogy. Sorry.

The album title is an Oscar Wilde paraphrase?

Yeah. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book Phrases and Philosophies for Use of the Young, but it was so exciting when I found it. The format is just a bunch of quotes, which I thought was really rad. But then, well I don’t want to say I was let down, but he’s incredibly witty and it had a cynical, humorous, winking, we’re-all-just-dogs-who-can-talk vibe. So I ended up working from what I wished it was. The idea is that there’s so much knowledge wasted from generation to generation. I was just summoning that yearning for consolidated wisdom.

It also fits with the retro-futuristic vibe: Taking something from the past and pushing it forward.

Totally. Yes. I love that stuff. You know the way they designed the future in the 1960s? Cars just looked better back then. Let’s just make cars look like that, now. All those concept cars? Why did they not make those?

How has New York changed for you now that you’re older?

I think all of Manhattan has pretty much become a bar-slash-nightclub-slash-restaurant. There were always pockets of that. But now every corner of Manhattan is that.

Is that uninteresting to you or interesting to you?

It is what it is. I don’t know what to say. Would I prefer it was some kind of urban wasteland? No. But I think about leaving sometimes.

Do you go out much or tend to stay in?

I don’t really drink. When I did, the bars I liked were dingy, crappy shitholes. Now that I’m not drinking it’s like, "Oh! They’re playing acoustic guitar!" I’m kidding. I’m exaggerating.

It’s gotten all adult contemporary?

Ha. I don’t mean that. There aren’t actually acoustic guitars. I just go hang out with people at quiet places. Rather than places to get wasted.

How has not drinking been?

Creatively, drinking was becoming a hindrance. I always promised myself, "If it starts affecting the music, I’ve gotta chill out." But if I didn’t drink I felt sick, you know? It was so nice to automatically feel happy. I miss it every day [laughs].

When you were drinking heavily were you less prone to work on music? Or was the work just not as good?

It just mirrored one night of drinking itself. There’s a time where it’s fine and maybe even heightens your senses—and it’s always nice to mess with perception. But then once you overdo it, it gets ugly. And there was no in-between for me. And then once the desire to play music goes away and what you’re doing is sloppy it’s like, "Ahh, god."

**Well we were surprised and psyched when we heard about the solo album. **

Thanks, but just a warning: It’s only 8 songs. I don’t want to kill your buzz.