From Swiss boarding school to Manhattan garage rock!
Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr, met in the super expensive boarding school Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, also known as the School of Kings.
Here they became roommates, and one assumes, we’re up to no good as they planned their future as rock stars, rather than lawyers, businessmen, or politicians.
Fast forward a few years and they’d formed a band in New York City, where they’d be seen either rehearsing or gigging most nights around Manhattan.
They must have picked up a thing or two about how to build not just a band but also a brand at the boarding school in Switzerland as how they engineered a bidding war for their first deal, connected with NME magazine and Rough Trade Records in the U.K., was very sophisticated.
After an EP release and refining their live set, they were ready to put together the critically acclaimed debut Is This It? Bankrolled by RCA Records, with the monster hit Last Nite as the lead single, it was an instant worldwide success.
This tune had such an impact that it sparked a garage-rock revival in the early 2000s, enabling U.K. bands like The Libertines and The Fratellis, Swedish The Hives, Australian The Vines, and of course American The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Black Keys to join the bandwagon.
This garage-rock party train would roll on until around 2008 when the recession hit and overindulgence became less popular.
The Strokes aren’t just their worldwide smash hit Last Nite, it’s also worth checking out the tunes The Adults Are Talking, Someday, and Hard To Explain. And don’t forget their version of Marvin Gaye’s Mercy Mercy Me!
The Strokes tunes | Related pages
Last Nite
| C5 | C5 | C5 | C5 | D5 | D5 |
Last night she said, “Oh, baby, I feel so down”.
| G | G | Em | Em/D |
“Oh, it turn me off, when I feel left out”.
Mercy Mercy Me
| Emaj7 (Emaj9) | Emaj9 Emaj7 |
Woah, oh, mercy, mercy me.
| C#m7 (C#m9)| C#m9 C#m7 |
Oh, things ain’t what they used to be, no, no.
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