The Strokes' 'Is This It' Is The Great Dividing Line in My Life
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I live in New York City because of The Strokes. It’s just that simple. In my small town in Michigan, a life-altering schism occurred when Is This It, the gloriously unglossy debut album by the legendary New York rockers, which released in America on CD 20 years ago this weekend, first made its way onto my iPod. I was in high school, and everything I wanted for my future shifted as a result.
I was late to the party, and physically far removed from the skyscrapers of New York City. I’d only been there as a child, or seen the city in movies. I was 17, and I wanted to be a sports reporter. Heck, as far as I was concerned, New York City wasn’t even a fully realized, real place, but more a mythical, far away land. The scene in Mason, Michigan (population: 8,000) couldn’t exactly compete with the Big Apple, either. Musical variety was most commonly found hours away via weeknight shows in Detroit or Grand Rapids, places wholly different from the cornfields of my hometown.
By the time I stumbled upon the band’s legendary debut, the Strokes had been The Strokes, a world-beating, game-changing rock band, for more than a decade. But Is This It became the first step in a musical education that now stretches all the way out to my Brooklyn apartment, a long way from the winding country roads of my youth.
Whether or not you’ve spent much time reflecting on it, I’m certain your life has been altered by a collection of songs: Let It Be by The Beatles (or The Replacements!), Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan, David Bowie’s Hunky Dory … you saw the world one way before giving it a spin, and after, well, you get the picture, right? Is This It shaped mine, altering my entire vision for my future irrevocably.
I’d listened to my fair share of classic rock and local alternative radio growing up, but hearing the relentlessly energetic “Last Nite” or the propulsive earworm “Hard To Explain” felt like picking up a rock n’roll dispatch from another planet. It was raw, unprogrammed, and reverb-free. All grit, and no gloss. I couldn’t get enough. It was seriously cool, as well as somehow classic and undeniably fresh.
At the time of its release, Is This It was a far cry from the nu metal on the radio or the chart-topping pop hits of the day, like Korn, Limp Bizkit, or the Backstreet Boys. The album was bold and urgent. It burned with the same frenzy as Television, another great New York City band, which partly defined the sound of the '70s in Manhattan, and echoed the city’s rock clubs from decades before.
Julian Casablancas’ raspy vocals were perfectly in step with the incredibly tight guitar interplay of a formidable trio: Albert Hammond Jr., Nick Valensi and Nikolai Fraiture. Together, they sound like the plugged-in version of spontaneous combustion, distilled song after song after song.
The album made a splash in NYC’s burgeoning indie rock community at the time, shaping what would become an entire scene.
These days, I can tell you the names, places and people that changed the rock world two decades ago, nearly by heart: Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Paul Banks of Interpol, and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. Their songs are now a fixture in my own life. But they didn’t change me. The Strokes did, fundamentally. I wouldn’t have broadened my musical horizons without the rousing stomp of “The Modern Age” or the bittersweet nostalgia of “Someday,” though.
Is This It is 36 minutes of rock n’roll perfection, scuzzy and grainy and frozen in time. To sound like every adult that annoyed me growing up, they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
Legend and debate swirls to this day around the album, from the cover photo to its release date. Is This It first hit Australia on July 30th and featured a famously racy cover photo by celebrated Strokes photographer Colin Lane, but the U.S. CD features a colorful photograph of subatomic particle tracks, plus a different track list. (It released sans the rager “New York City Cops.”)
The U.S. vinyl release of the LP was September 11, 2001, adding to the mythology; the CD would follow on October 9. The Strokes were a New York band with a purely New York City sound standing proud, soundtracking the weeks and months following the worst terror attack in the nation’s history on a street-level. They even played a hugely memorable Halloween 2001 show at Hammerstein Ballroom.
But enough with the logistics. When I first heard Is This It, I was aware of precisely zero of the above. It didn’t matter. It still became the only thing I wanted to listen to, over and over and over again. Mowing the lawn? The Strokes. Driving to practice? The Strokes. For a while, any time I listened to any music at all, I listened to Is This It.
Soon enough, I packed my iPod with ripping garage rock by this scruffy, denim jacket-clad, Converse-wearing band, like the criminally underrated First Impressions of Earth (2005) and of course, 2003’s Room on Fire.
I love each album for different reasons, be it Room on Fire’s statement-making lead track “What Ever Happened?” or the collection of razor-sharp, oddly prescient lyrics on First Impressions (listen to “Ize of the World,” where Julian howls about “citizens to terrorize, generations to desensitize”). And yet, Is This It remains my top pick, an indelible masterpiece, one that I still play almost every single day.
As I listened to Is This It, I dreamed up my own New York City in my mind, with visions of rock concerts, skyscraper vistas, an apartment filled with band posters. It’s not unlike the sensation Lizzy Goodman describes in the '00s NYC rock oral history Meet Me In The Bathroom, in which The Strokes are front and center. Goodman moved East from Albuquerque for college after dreaming of the city for years, writing: “New York, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, was where I was from, I just hadn’t gotten there yet.”
It might be my favorite book.
My trajectory in life became a little more clear in 2011, thanks to a stint at a college radio station and a job at the student newspaper at Michigan State, where I was attending school. New York City felt far removed from snowy, quiet winters in mid-Michigan. But that spring, I made it a point to watch the band on Saturday Night Live—I felt the energy of the city burst through my TV. I was fully onboard and in awe. The Strokes, on SNL? How very New York. The seeds of an idea were planted. What would that be like? What would it feel like to live there? And how on Earth could I possibly make it happen?
The desire blossomed across the next year or so. The movie montage portion of this story would cut to me alone in my dorm writing papers and listening to The Strokes, watching the iconic music video for “Someday” over and over … and over. That video became the world I wanted to live in: The denim jackets, the quiet, sweet yet sad perspective of the song, the sensation that this band just might be the coolest on the planet. (I found out years later the video was filmed in Los Angeles, but thankfully, it was only after I’d packed up and relocated.)
It burned inside me like a fire, through late-night, post-work campus walks and busy days. Other people were starting to notice as well. I had a friend who visited New York one summer who told me, memorably, “Everyone here dresses like you! You’d fit right in.” This was a good sign, assuredly, though also an acknowledgement that I was hardly in my element at home. And the road to get to NYC still felt mighty long.
Still, I broke in my denim jacket, just like Julian. I worked tirelessly at the student paper, started a style blog, and learned how to pitch and write menswear stories (I’m still learning, for the record). I later spent evenings at a local newspaper internship listening to the police scanner, writing crime stories and playing The Strokes at the same time.
If you guessed that fashion jobs are in short supply in Michigan, congratulations, you guessed correctly. So come senior year, I sent out hundreds upon hundreds of job applications in a bid to get to NYC—an experience I have to imagine is not unlike throwing a paper airplane into the Grand Canyon. I had a whopping total of one (!) interview with one (!) company for a fashion PR internship. It felt a bit like an Is This It moment, one proper chance to turn a dream into a reality.
If you’re younger than 18 and reading this, I regret to inform you that this feeling, of waiting and wondering, gripped by uncertainty and anxiety, is one that you will, unfortunately, one day know. I didn't have to stew in it for too long. I landed the internship, sold my car, packed two suitcases and a duffle bag, and 10 days after graduation, arrived in New York.
I’ll always remember that first, breathtaking view of the clear, bright blue May skyline, riding into Manhattan from LaGuardia in a classic yellow cab. My first apartment, scarcely big enough to fit a bed, was waiting for me. The Strokes were the perfect soundtrack.
I was no longer just reading about the band or watching YouTube videos: I was in the building, at the bar, smiling through the lights up at the stage during shows by similarly driven, up-and-coming bands. I still can’t believe it, if I’m being honest. I’ve had the chance to see Jules & the band live, at locales close to home (Governors Ball 2016), undeniably memorable (New Year’s Eve 2019, Brooklyn) and far afield (London’s All Points East, 2019). (The lasting power of Is This It becomes crystal clear when 40,000 passionate British fans are singing the band’s guitar parts at the top of their lungs. It’s magical.)
My dream-like map of New York is now made permanent, from concerts at The Strokes' birthplace Mercury Lounge, long nights downing beers at former Strokes hangout 2A, and of course, cab rides with an unabashedly cinematic quality, Is This It in heavy rotation. It was the soundtrack heading home after my first fashion week runway show and after the first time I interviewed a menswear designer (fellow Midwest transplant Todd Snyder, as luck would have it). It’ll probably be my soundtrack tonight, too.
When I think of how I ended up in New York City, I think of some very fortunate breaks, a whole lot of late nights writing, dogged determination in the face of rejection, my trusty denim jacket, and a certain band that changed everything. Walking through the East Village in the fading Friday evening light after a fashion event the other week, I came across a spray-painted message on the sidewalk. “Dream Until It’s Your Reality,” it said. Imagine that. I snapped a photo and looked skyward briefly. I couldn’t help but smile. I hit play on “Someday” and walked off into the night, towards a bar where a rock band used to hang out.
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