The story of Gordon Raphael, the man who produced The Strokes
Even if you don’t consider yourself a devoted The Strokes enthusiast, it’s probable that you’ve encountered some of their early hits such as ‘Last Nite’ and ‘Someday’. For those who are more familiar with the band’s music, it’s natural to limit discussions about their brilliance to the talented lineup of Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr, Nick Valensi, Nikolai Fraiture, and Fabrizio Moretti.
When Is This It was released, it was like a bombshell of indie excellence. However, even though the album has well and truly solidified its place as one of the biggest staples of the indie revival of the early 2000s, it was rather unremarkably recorded at the time in a basic New York studio by an unknown producer called Gordon Raphael.
In 1986, Raphael relocated to a Seattle church built in 1927. This unique space had a recording studio in its basement and a massive stage on the top floor, with the vision of transforming it into a cultural hub for local musicians and serving as the headquarters for a record label. As Raphael began working on some productions in the studio, an unfortunate turn of events unfolded when the entire building, along with his early tapes and uninsured equipment, was engulfed in flames and destroyed. After this devastating setback, Raphael made the decision to move to New York a year later, in 1987.
For the best part of the next ten years, Raphael edited and recorded art film soundtracks and spent some time in LA working for indie label World Domination before moving back to Seattle and collaborating with a band named Sky Cries Mary, whom he joined as their keyboardist and guitarist. However, after meeting singer Anna Mercedes and realising that Seattle had lost its spark, Raphael returned to New York in 1998.
Raphael’s venture with The Strokes began in typical fashion: a local promoter tipped him off about the band’s search for a producer, and so he went to see them perform live, along with another band called Come On. Afterwards, he invited The Strokes to his home studio, and two days later, Hammond Jr and Valensi were interviewing him at his place. Interestingly, however, nothing unusual stood out to him during those first recording sessions.
“From what they’d told me,” he recalled, “They wanted to have a real, honest, rock-band-playing-in-a-room sound, and so it just made sense to do that. We did three basic takes in one day, vocals and mixing the second day, and fixing and correcting a million details on the third day.”
Raphael also notes how, at the time, Casablancas seemed to be the most reserved of the group and the one who knew the least about music. However, after some requests made by him to alter the process, he realised he actually knew what he was doing: “I thought he was just there to be the singer and a personality,” he said, “And when he said a couple of things during the mix, I tried to give him the line that I know better and this is as loud as this instrument should be. Well, he would say ‘Will you turn the vocal up one point for me, just so that I can hear it?’ It was like ‘Do me a favour, just humour me,’ and when I did that and found he was right, it made me have a very open mind and a great attitude about working with them.”
However, although the process wasn’t anything that extraordinary, receiving a call afterwards about the track earning major praise within the British music press: “I’d been working since ’76,” Raphael notes, “And this was the first time someone had written anything about one of my productions. So, my ears perked up and I thought, ‘This could be interesting.'”
Is This It went on to achieve platinum status in many countries and is widely considered to be a watershed moment signifying the arrival of new-wave indie music. Intriguing, considering that initially, Raphael leaned toward favouring Come On the night they played the same stage as The Strokes. However, fate seemed to have a different plan, as it was the former that saw the potential spark of greatness on the horizon.
