oh the Razorblade

INTERVIEW PARTE 1
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JULIAN Casablancas, savior of debauched New York City rock ’n’ roll, is sober now and living in Los Angeles. The shaggy-haired frontman of the Strokes, who not so long ago could be seen stumbling home from East Village bars around dawn, a rightly sloppy paragon of the city’s resurgent downtown scene, is currently renting a white Spanish-style house in the Silver Lake neighborhood. He just bought a car for $1,000: a ’92 Cutlass with a garish neon-green-and-gray paint job. He likes driving around and listening to the radio. He likes the sunshine. He is smitten.

“It’s fun; I won’t lie,” he said on a recent visit back east. “L.A.’s kind of, like, seven really cool towns. It’s so laid-back. If you go in the right spot, you can walk around, and you don’t need a car. It’s a lot easier to eat healthy. And the weather!”

The move is temporary — probably — but it’s emblematic of the changes in his life in the last few years: from wild-living rock star to steady artist and mindful family man, with he and his wife, Juliet, expecting their first child. On Tuesday his first solo album, “Phrazes for the Young,” will be released on Cult Records/RCA. Cult is his own, newly started and self-financed imprint, with a handful of bicoastal employees. He wrote and arranged all the music and played much of it himself. In Los Angeles he’s been getting a band together and prepping madly for a tour that will include a series of residencies with elaborate stage shows. Evident ambition has replaced obtuse ennui.

“With this record the goal was always to try to take, like, cool, underground-type music and try to make it popular somehow,” Mr. Casablancas, 31, said over a late Saturday dinner at an Italian restaurant in the East Village. Far from the disaffection of the Strokes’ records, “Phrazes” seems mostly well adjusted. “I’m a happy guy,” he said, offering a dimpled grin.

Still, he added: “I never wanted to do a solo record, to be honest. I just felt like I had no choice.”

When the Strokes released their debut album, “Is This It” (RCA), in 2001, they were hailed as a second coming of the Velvet Underground, an association fueled as much by their skinny-jean look as their stripped down, guitar-driven sound and deadpan vocals. That “Is This It” came out just a few exhales after Sept. 11 gave it added cultural weight: more than one critic saw it as an urban gathering point, Springsteen anthems from the indie set.

This was a heavy burden for five wan prep-school guys. Seemingly half their intended audience went into automatic backlash mode, carping about authenticity. The group — which includes Fabrizio Moretti, the drummer; Albert Hammond Jr., the rhythm guitarist; Nick Valensi, the lead guitarist; and Nikolai Fraiture, the bassist — responded in appropriately blasé fashion: with drunken nights, celebrity trysts and fights, behaving like the baby rock stars they were. For a myth-making moment, nothing could’ve been better.

Asked to describe their early days, the Strokes’ manager, Ryan Gentles, who accompanied them on their first tour, said, “I don’t know how to answer that without writing a dissertation.”

Though they didn’t quite realize it at the time, the success “happened fast,” Mr. Gentles said. “All over the world kids were reacting, and coming from where we were, just making the record on Avenue A and Second Street, in that little basement studio, that was really powerful.”

“Is This It” went platinum, but their next albums — “Room on Fire” (2003) and “First Impressions of Earth” (2006) — were less well received, each selling around half as much as the preceding record. And the group tussled over creative control; it was all with Mr. Casablancas. Though he was married — his wife had been the group’s assistant manager — and had given up drinking by “First Impressions,” the burnout was evident. “I’ve got nothing to say,” he sang on “Ask Me Anything.” “I’ve got nothing to give.”

As he struggled, his bandmates worked on solo projects and formed side groups; several also married or started families. Though the members, who met through various prep schools, had originally represented themselves as a buddy unit, now they seemed to be splintering. (Through representatives, the other Strokes declined to comment for this article.)

“I was a monster,” Mr. Casablancas said of his drinking. “I want to casually have a glass of wine or whatever; level-headed adults do. But I can’t.”

After the Strokes returned from a Japanese tour for “First Impressions,” they announced a break, and Mr. Casablancas retreated. “I was kind of like broken for like six months,” he said. “I just literally, today, for the first time, don’t feel hung over.”
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Repito:
changes in his life in the last few years: from wild-living rock star to steady artist and mindful family man, with he and his wife, Juliet, expecting their first child

O_O wow
un mini Julian?
una mini Juliet?
...

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