Julian Casablancas: Difference between revisions
American singer (born 1978)
Julian Fernando Casablancas (born August 23, 1978) is an American singer, best known as the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the rock band the Strokes, with whom he has released six studio albums since their founding in 1998. Casablancas released a solo studio album, Phrazes for the Young, in 2009. That year, he founded the independent record label Cult Records,[1] which has represented artists the Growlers, Rey Pila and Karen O.[2]
Since 2013, he has been the frontman of experimental rock band the Voidz. The band has released two studio albums, Tyranny (2014) and Virtue (2018).
Early life[edit]
Julian Fernando Casablancas was born in New York City on August 23, 1978,[3] the son of American-Spanish businessman John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, and Jeanette Christiansen (née Christjansen), a Danish model and the 1965 Miss Denmark who later became an artist.[4][5][6] When Casablancas was eight, his parents divorced. He once stated that he wanted to be closer to his father, which “translated into teenage rebelliousness”.[7] His mother later married Ghanaian painter Sam Adoquei,[8][9] who helped shape Casablancas’ early musical taste by exposing him to music such as The Doors, which was markedly different from the mostly Phil Collins-influenced music he listened to as a child.[10] He has several half-siblings, including an elder sister from his father’s first marriage,[11] and three other siblings from his father’s third marriage.[12]
Casablancas met future Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture when they were six years old,[13] while both were attending the bilingual French school Lycée Français de New York.[14][15] When he was 13, his father sent him to the Institut Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland, to improve his grades, where he met future Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.[16] He later returned to New York and attended Dwight School with two other future Strokes bandmates: guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fabrizio Moretti.[16][17] He never finished high school, but took a GED and continued to take music classes at Five Towns College, which he later said was the first time he enjoyed himself in class.[18][19][20]
The Strokes (1998–present)[edit]
Upon meeting future guitarist Nick Valensi and drummer Fab Moretti at Dwight School in Manhattan, the three began to play music together. He reconnected with guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. when the latter moved to New York. The band was formed in 1998 when Hammond was accepted into the band,[21] with Casablancas as the lead vocalist and main songwriter and Nikolai Fraiture on bass.[22]
The band began rehearsing a fourteen-song set which included “Alone, Together”, “Barely Legal”, “Last Nite“, “The Modern Age“, “New York City Cops”, “Soma”, “Someday”, “Take It or Leave It” and “This Life” (an early version of “Trying Your Luck”). Most of these songs now feature different lyrics. A demo sent to the newly reformed Rough Trade Records in the UK sparked interest there, leading to their first release via the website of the UK magazine NME, who gave away a free mp3 download of “Last Nite” a week prior to the physical release as part of The Modern Age EP in 2001. The EP sparked a bidding war among record labels, the largest for a rock and roll band in years. Shortly after, the Strokes’ critically acclaimed debut album Is This It was released.
The band has received the highest of praise for Is This It, and it set the stage for what people expected to “save rock” in the new millennium.[23] Though some would argue that such statements left unreasonably sized shoes to fill, the Strokes are still highly recognized as one of the most influential garage rock bands of the early 2000s, paving the way for many new alternative bands to come.[24]
However, the group found it difficult to replicate their early critical success.[25] In an excerpt from Lizzie Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001–2011 – named after the Strokes’ track – Strokes guitarist, Albert Hammond Jr., comments, “With Room on Fire [2003], people were giving us shit because they said we were sounding too much the same. With the third album [First Impressions of Earth], we were getting shit that we don’t sound like Room on Fire. We got fucked by the same thing twice!”[26]
After the release of the two other albums and several major tours, the band took a five-year break, then returned with their fourth album Angles in 2011.[27] The five-year hiatus was said to be the result of conflicting solo projects, sobriety issues, and unspoken emotions. The Strokes’ drummer Fab Moretti said the band struggled to process such “subconscious volcanic emotions”, partly because they were still “children” at the time.[26]
Although their creative processes has been critiqued by outside observers as “a…