More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 26 - September 2, 2017
Before the Strokes, were there any bands at all?
PAUL MAROON: We had a bird, too. We had a parakeet. It was the five of us and a parakeet called Kim. WALTER MARTIN: Then Kim died. PAUL MAROON: I was the only one that liked Kim. Part of the reason Kim died young is because she had to deal with us. It was really hard on Kim. Kim didn’t want to live if that was what it was going to be like. WALTER MARTIN: She died the day we moved out, as we packed. Literally. PAUL MAROON: Kim is buried in Grant’s Tomb right next to Grant. I remember the guard asked us what we were doing and we told him, “We’re trying to bury our parakeet next to Grant,” and he
...more
Matt was amazing. He was a force of nature. He’s a kinda short, skinny little fella but he was like Animal from the Muppets on the drums.
JAMES MURPHY: New York was fucking horrible and I thought that was the most exciting thing in the world.
New York I Love You
SAM FOGARINO: I wish I could say I didn’t remember Kokie’s but I was very familiar. I was like, “This is . . . No way, for real? It’s called Kokie’s and you can go in and there’s coke booths for you to do your coke in?” God, I love New York.
New York I Love You
FABRIZIO MORETTI: They had a whole code, a whole code that was much older than we were. They were rebellious in a way that I had only seen from them. Like, I didn't know what being rebellious was until I met them. I drank my first beer with them. I smoked my first joint with them. It seemed like they had an understanding of what it meant to really, like, live in New York City. Yeah. And I was this kid who always—I didn’t feel like a Brazilian, I didn’t feel like an Italian, and I certainly didn’t feel like an American. So I was walking around trying to find my identity through New York City,
...more
New York I Love You
FABRIZIO MORETTI: I loved music. And I played the drums. Well, I pretended like I played the drums. I still pretend to play the drums. Tomorrow I’m going to learn.
FABRIZIO MORETTI: And I had curly hair but I cut it short, until I saw Albert walk in with curly hair and it was long. I thought, “Wait, I could do this?” I wanted to look like Kurt Cobain, but I didn’t have the hair for it. Albert gave me wings. He gave me hair wings.
DANIEL KESSLER: To this day, Paul’s a pretty tardy person. Back then, as an eighteen-year-old, we were in this French class together, and he’d come in, and it would be a crazy tale about why he was late. It really did happen, in a way, but it was part of his disposition, too. PAUL BANKS: I’m a mess sometimes. DANIEL KESSLER: But he always carried himself with an air of confidence, an air of belonging; even as an eighteen-year-old, he wasn’t awkward or shy. We talked about music for a minute, and I could tell we didn’t aesthetically have a lot in common. PAUL BANKS: I listen to old hip-hop.
ADAM GREEN: Paul from Interpol played acoustic at Sidewalk. PAUL BANKS: I definitely played at Sidewalk back in the day and saw the Moldy Peaches there. I played a song called “On the Esplanade” and some guy called out, “It’s pronounced ‘espla-NOD,’” and another guy called out, “You look like Luke Skywalker.”
KAREN O: The beauty of New York, the genius of New York, is that you can leave your house and run into someone and hang out with them, and then they take you to the next place and you run into other people and before you know it, you have a posse. And you’re launching into the night until four in the morning on some adventure.
New York I Love You
Like a lot of boys, he could express his feelings only through Lou Reed simulation.
FABRIZIO MORETTI: I never felt comfortable. Ever. I felt stressed out most of the time.
My New York is Interpol.
New York I Love You
Three days of therapy a week for twenty years gives you serious weapons.
ANDY GREENWALD: The thing that makes pop music so great is the way it parallel-parks on the bleeding edge of cool: nothing could be better at this moment than this beat, this feeling, this chorus. It takes something ephemeral and impossible, and for three to four exhilarating minutes, it makes it accessible and real.
KAREN O: We wrote it in Nick’s room with the blue drum machine and a four-track recorder. I was really lovelorn at the time. “They don’t love you like I love you” was straight from a love letter and I just plucked it out of there because I thought it had a good ring to it. Just a simple statement that really stuck with people. You know, I say “love letter” but it was a fucking e-mail. Motherfucker. You know what? I’m going to rewrite history right here. I wrote it with a quill. It was a feather quill, written in blood.
JACK WHITE: We all had a lot of opinions and worries about what was happening and what was the right next thing to try; it was powerfully exciting and energetic. People really loved music all around us and you could really tell. You can’t manufacture that kind of energy in the world of the arts; it has to be decided by the mob and god herself.
PELLE ALMQVIST: I realized something very important: a musical movement is a style of pants. Think about it: San Francisco 1967—you know what pants that is. New York, 1977—you know what pants that is. Disco? You know the pants. There were baggy pants and ripped jeans in the nineties. Nirvana had them, Soundgarden had them, and Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, they all had the same pants. They don’t really sound that much alike but they had the same pants, so obviously it’s a musical movement! Then there was Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. They had the same pants. It was obviously a musical
...more
PELLE ALMQVIST: The VMAs felt kind of corny, but we got to meet J.Lo.
BRANDON FLOWERS: Being from Vegas, I was intimidated by New York. I’m still intimidated by New York. It’s New York!
KAREN O: I always felt like because I was a woman I just had a completely different perspective. I felt like my brain literally worked differently than everyone around me, which was all men. And so therefore I was not beholden to the rules of the game, which is a big thing in the rock world. It’s very dutiful. There’s a legacy that is laid out. There’s a cannon of rock, and a lot of men worship that and kneel at the alter of that. I didn’t have to play by those rules. I mean, I felt super, super isolated and super lonely because I could never really fully relate to my male bandmates and peers.
...more
ANDY GREENWALD: What I remember most is Ezra saying, “We are making this so it will be played on Hot 97. This isn’t a joke. We love Usher.” And frankly the single best thing about being alive now is hearing Rostam produce, like, Carly Rae Jepsen. It’s some of the best pop music of my life.
KAREN O: Every now and then I’ll hear, “Thank you so much, you really got me through high school.” Or “Thank you, you really got me through freshman year of college.” Or “Thank you so much, you really . . .” I have heard that from fans who don’t really know what to say to me and I don’t know what to say back, except for “Oh, really? Thank you! I’m happy I got you through that.” But really in my head I’m like, “I manifested that shit for you! I wanted to get in there like a motherfucker and that’s what I did.”
PAUL BANKS: Having outside interests helps. Now I paint and surf. I just paint realism. I just do portraiture, it’s just reproductions. My dad asked me, “So do you plan on doing anything original?” And I was like, “Nope.” I’m not trying to make any statement with painting, I just like to paint.
I don’t make music for myself. I make music to fight.
