“He was in a state”: Why did Nigel Goldrich only last 10 days with The Strokes?
After their 2001 debut album, Is This It, The Strokes might just have been the hottest band in the world.
They were the saviours of modern rock and roll, proving that the critics were completely wrong in believing that a new millennium meant a detachment from the genre’s traditional values. We weren’t going to hurtle into a digital dystopia where guitars were no longer in vogue; instead, we were going to go back to the lo-fi worlds of garage rock and sing along to Julian Casablancas’ distorted vocals.
Is This It was the perfect distillation of that idea. The band stripped down production and opted for punchy sonic ideas that captured the slacker rebellion that was rising. Ultimately, it served as the blueprint for the sounds that would follow in the next ten years. In fact, whatever record you think fits underneath the indie sleaze umbrella simply wouldn’t have existed without it.
So what always comes after an all-killer no-filler debut album?
An insurmountable level of hype that renders its follow-up record into a state of perennial threat. The story was no different for The Strokes, who tried to surf on the wave their first album had built with a relatively swift follow-up in 2003 with Room On Fire. While a worthy sophomore record, the general consensus was that it was the Is This It formula watered down, which, really, is no insult given how concise their debut was.
Ultimately, the outcome wasn’t surprising given the fact that The Strokes took their energetic Is This It live show back into the studio with the producer of their first record, Gordon Raphael. But the initial plan wasn’t to reunite with Raphael. In fact, The Strokes first set out to change tack completely and recruit Radiohead’s quiet pioneer Nigel Godrich. But sadly for the music industry, the collaboration simply didn’t work out.
“The tryout lasted ten days,” said Steve Ralbovsky, The Strokes’ A&R man. “They worked on ‘Meet Me In The Bathroom’ and one or two other songs. It was so hard going method-wise for Nigel. He wanted to record a certain way, and Julian wanted to record a certain way.”
“Poor Nigel Godrich was in a state,” continued Ralbovsky, “He didn’t want to let anyone down, but he felt like, ‘Maybe they’re not ready, maybe I’m not the right guy for it’… They just weren’t ready. They had to do it themselves.”
It’s perhaps the sorest musical tale of what could have been. The Strokes emphatically announced themselves on the world stage with their debut album and really, never managed to top it with a subsequent record. They became trapped in the echo chamber of their own success and lost all ability to conjure up a fresh and innovative sound.
If any producer was to change that in the 2000s, it would have been Godrich, who had a proven track record of helping bands pivot their sound, and while The Strokes might not have liked it because they would have had to abandon their trusted sonic blueprint, they would have loved the long-term outcome it would have provided.
