Published by NME, posted on Slacken_Ties 03/08/2005
Cutting a dash across the hallways of Heathrow, Franz Ferdinand are in a distinctly shambolic transit. Tired & emotional after the transatlantic flight from New York & in a quiet panic about missing our connecting flight to Cologne, the group's patience is further tested when drummer Paul Thomson & his wife Esther - who steadfastly refuses to purchase a mobile phone - go missing. Worse still, singer Alex Kapranos is keeping a distance from guitarist Nick McCarthy after a drug-addicted row over farting on an aeroplane.
"We'd both taken a Valium, just to get to sleep," bemoans a disgruntled Kapranos as manager Cerne Canning desperately tries to track down the AWOL drummer. "But I guess it must have had a pretty relaxing effect on his arsehole because he was farting all night. Really fucking dreadful ones."
Nick McCarthy grins guiltily from a safe distance. He is, it would seem, human after all. As the darkly enigmatic Keef to Alex's showboating Mick, McCarthy is shrouded in an unmistakable mystique that he didn't create, but manages to maintain well enough. Onstage, he zings around in fleet-footed abandon, pulling all the wrong moves, but looking indisputably cool with it. Offstage, he is Franz Ferdinand's quietest member, & prone to random disappearance at any given time. Yet if the Kapranos/McCarthy axis is what drives Franz Ferdinand, it's nevertheless been balanced delicately in the past. With Alex's escalating fame & perceived position as the band's most intrinsic cog, are there ever any pangs of jealousy on Nick's part?
"I'm a fan of straight talking, particularly if it's someone you're close to," says Alex of his relationship with Nick. "You end up despising people if you've got a grudge against them & never let it be known. It's better to have it out in the open. Everybody knows that, it's obvious! But we're lucky, because I feel closer to the other three guys in the band than I ever have. We've had so many intense shared experiences & I'd never want to sacrifice that very special friendship you get to have with someone when you do something like this."
"Of course, Alex is the one most people are interested in," muses Nick a few days later from the relative comfort of the studio we've snuck into at the German TV station the band will later perform at. "That's just natural, he's the lead singer, you know? I don't try to be 'mysterious' or whatever, Alex is just better in interviews. I'm perfectly happy just writing the songs. That's what I like doing most anyway."
The events of the last eighteen months may have strengthened their friendship, but the cultural schism between Nick & his bandmates still persists, largely because the diminutive guitarist is the very definition of a 'dark horse'; while the rest of the band share a decidedly British appreciation of deadpan humour, Nick raised largely in Munich, & while grew up playing in indie bands, Nick earned his stripes in avant-garde jazz collectives. It's a left-field spirit that's stuck with him; in his Franz Ferdinand downtime, McCarthy records out-there singles under the name of Box Codax. The two songs he plays us - 'Boys & Girls' & 'Red Wine in Tunis' - are unsettling electro-lounge krautrock, sung in German accents, & have more in common with insane Euro-poppers Stereo Total than Franz Ferdinand. Intriguing though the songs are, they do nothing to dispel Nick's image as Franz's wildcard. Or, as he comes to define it, "The Wacky One".
"God, I'm so tired of that!" he shakes his head. "I remember once, it was our first time playing T in the Park, & I wore a pair of tight red trousers & a blue & red sleeveless top. Outfits like that are where the whole 'wacky' thing comes from. So I try not to do stuff like that anymore."
Of Box Codax & his off-duty activities, he says, "I like doing other things; I don't want to be only doing Franz Ferdinand. Box Codax is just some home-recording nonsense, but I quite like doing it. It's good to have other things going on. I've written some music for a few of the little arty films my girlfriend does, too. I've played in a few weird krautrock & electro-punk bands, but I've also always had this love of jazz. Well, maybe 'love' is the wrong word. I'd never listened to jazz in my life before I started studying it, so I had to start listening to it & obviously I had to start liking some of it as well.
"But it's weird, because a lot of the time I'll feel excluded from the other three because they'll be laughing about something I can't understand. For example, I have no idea who Noel Edmonds is. The other guys were having a laugh about him the other day. I'd never heard of Mr Blobby, either. It seems like all they ever talk about is British culture. But it's fine. Here in Germany, I've got the upper hand. Do they know what The Harold Schmidt Show is?"
The Harold Schmidt Show, for those of you who are unversed in the ways of German television, is a sort of Late Show with David Letterman knock-off that is, apparently, one of the highest-rated shows in the country. They don't often have bands on, but the producer is a massive Franz Ferdinand fan & wanted to book them for his 40th birthday. After Schmidt has evoked sufficient applause with his jokes about (we think) Rastafarian internet cafe employees & introduced the band as being from Liverpool, Franz take to the stage to debut another new song, 'Evil & a Heathen'.
It's a raucous, snarling beast that sounds not unlike The White Stripes at their meanest. Over the pounding guitar riff, Alex raises a glass to his inner villain as he drawls, head jerking & lip curling, "I like how you pretend/That the end will be the end/So let's fill ourselves & drink our curse/Until death itself extends". It's Franz Ferdinand at their darkest, gleefully out of place on the watershed-friendly platform of a German TV show, & it's the clearest indication yet of the band's desire to, as Alex defines it, "move on musically, but retain our identity at the same time".
When a band from a background as indie as Franz's (illegal all-night parties in abandoned warehouses aren't exactly Keane's or Bloc Party's forte) rise to such heights so swiftly, the perks of fame are quickly countered by the questioning of credibility. It's clear that the Coldplay-esque levels of enormity the new album could potentially usher in is something the band remain cautious about.
"I'm sure a lot of bad things would come out of that kind of success, you know?" says Nick. "The credibility of a band is quite difficult to maintain at the level of Coldplay. Very few bands manage to do it, very few have any...'indie cred'. My dad was saying to me how much he hated The Beatles in the '60s, & I'm sure there are already people who liked us at the beginning of our career who just feel that we've become too big too soon & that we've taken it too far. Some bands don't even sign to a record label because they feel they're signing their soul away, & there's always a point in a band's career when you think, 'Do I really want to sell my soul to them again?' When we licensed our songs to Sony, that was such a big step. We were worried about signing our songs away to a big corporate company, & we had to be really, really careful. But we still think we can do this in a cool way where we can keep hold of credibility. As long as we're still in control...well, we'll be okay. It can certainly be a dangerous game!"
So what has been Franz Ferdinand's greatest post-fame extravagance?
"Well," hesitates Nick for a while, unsure as to whether to tell his story to us or not, "we did have to charter a plane with The Cure once. We were playing a festival in Europe & all the airports were on strike at the same time, so we had to charter our own jet. It was only a very small one. And it really was the only way to get to the festival, otherwise we would've lost thousands in cancellation fees. It was a pretty cool experience though. The Cure's keyboard player offered to fly the plane if anything went wrong."
Yet it's not just the indie snobs Franz Ferdinand have to contend with these days, but also grunt-rock's lowest-common-denominators & the hired goons of rap superstars. In a recent interview, Kasabian guitarist Serge Pizzorno claimed his band were a band of people, & that Franz were more about marketing than music. In true Kasabian style, this was after Franz had won a glt of fan-voted awards, while Kasabian's sole gong of 2005 went to the marketing men for 'Best Campaign'.
"Here's what I have to say about Kasabian allegedly slagging us off," grins Alex Kapranos as he flicks through NME alights on the page containing Tom Meighan's recent Sounding Off column. "And I quote, 'That's poor as fuck. They're only making music. Slagging off bands is wrong. It's silly, it's college antics, like leaving a turd in someone's bed. It's childish behaviour. I wouldn't want to publicly pick fights with other bands.'"
Then there was Kapranos' recent run-in with Eminem's bodyguards on a TV show, when he poked his head round a curtain to watch D12 rehearse & found himself confronted by several hundred angry pounds of trouble. Alex & Nick's fists flailed once again, as is prone for Franz Ferdinand, but this time in a common cause.
"I don't have a quick temper," protests Alex. "I just have a low bullshit tolerance & like winding up idiots. Sometimes my mouth gets engaged before my brain, so while I was thinking to myself, 'This guy is five times my weight,' I was mouthing off at him anyway. I suppose I was the equivalent of a fly buzzing around his head. The only thing that saved me from being completely flattened was Nick."
So, who came out on top?
Alex & Nick glance at each other & grin, before proclaiming, in perfect unison: "We did!"
Rock's unlikeliest tag-team duo may be, but for now, the Kapranos/McCarthy axis is holding strong. Well, strong enough to mean that whatever cracks are caused when Alex grabs the spotlight or when Nick lets one go on a flight, it won't lead to a break-up. But they'll have to deal with their tensions, because this is only the beginning. Soon, 'Franz Ferdinand ll' will be released, tours booked & America will crack under their diabolical grip. Tempers will be lost & voices raised in anger. This is to be expected - they are only human. We can only hope that this time, Franz Ferdinand will benefit from being a little older & a little wiser.
"I think it's much cooler now that we've written another album & we actually got on really well with each other," muses Nick McCarthy in suitably cryptic fashion. "We know each other better this time around, & we know where to stop now. When things are getting tense & everyone is on edge, I know I can disappear off to a little puppet show or something for a few hours & everything with Alex will be sorted!"
The blueprints have been drawn up & the preliminary transmissions will begin broadcasting over your FM radio any day now. But we'll leave it to smiling villain Bob Hardy for the last word on Franz Ferdinand's evil plot for world domination.
"We're going to need oil, control of the UN, & a computerized voting system whereby any rigging is undetectable...but I think it's doable."