‘Are you guys aware of the craziness you’ve created here?” a British journalist asked a dazed-looking Julian Casablancas in 2001. The exchange is included in the documentary Meet Me in the Bathroom. The only words the Strokes frontman could muster were: “It’s crazy and bizarre.” When Yeah Yeah Yeahs landed on UK soil a year later, it was more of the same. “I was not prepared for it at all,” says Karen O, the lead singer, in the film. “We were drunk on the ravenous fanaticism.”
Meet Me in the Bathroom is based on Lizzy Goodman’s 2017 book of the same name, which is subtitled Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011, but ends up being as much about the UK. New York birthed these bands, but British media, fans and record labels lapped them up with such relish that they became stars here first. Summing up the book, Rolling Stone US concluded: “The UK might have done more for New York bands than New York did.”
In the early years of this century, flying to the UK to try to break through became a common strategy. Interpol did it; LCD Soundsystem’s first show was not at a hip Brooklyn loft, but in London, at the club night Trash.
The culture shock for travelling bands was no doubt amplified by the fact it was still technically illegal to dance in numerous New York venues due to the city’s prohibition-era cabaret law, which was not repealed until 2017. Conversely, fans of guitar bands in the UK, malnourished by post-Britpop dirges from David Gray and Travis, were unhinged and sweat-drenched. “The Strokes were terrified of all of us,” says Mairead Hayden from the London-based DJ duo Queens of Noize. “They couldn’t handle how up for it British people were.”
The New York groups were hugely influential, too. Subsequently, a wave of guitar bands exploded in the UK, including Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, the Libertines and Razorlight.
As Meet Me in the Bathroom hits cinemas, figures from the UK scene reflect on drugs, drainpipe jeans and dancefloor fillers.
The chart-topping band
Johnny Borrell, Razorlight
At the end of the 90s, the concept of being in a band was abhorrent because of where Britpop ended up – it was the most tedious thing you could do. I was playing with the Libertines, who were like a skiffle band at the time, and also playing acoustically. We were completely in our own world.
Then, suddenly, these American bands all came over. Peter [Doherty] saw the Strokes, fell in love and was like: I’m gonna make the English Strokes; fuck the skiffle thing. So there was this moment of: let’s get over ourselves, it’s OK to be in a band again.
I have nostalgia for the early days, but I have very mixed feelings about after we became huge. It was very organic at the start, but every revolution eats itself. All the copycat bands came. It went from being pure and genuine to suddenly becoming like the bloated carcass of Britpop all over again.
The photographer
Dean Chalkley
I started shooting for NME in 2002. It was an explosive scene. Take Junk Club in Southend-on-Sea – gritty and grimy, barely lit, with dark walls, but what a place. The atmosphere in this subterranean collection of rooms in the bowels of the Royal hotel was breathtaking. When I first went down, I felt so moved, that this was the actual resistance right in front of my eyes. This little club and the kids who went there – the Horrors, These New Puritans, Neils Children, Ipso Facto – epitomised this punk attitude that was going on.
Fashion was a big part of it: tight drainpipe black jeans, fitted suit jackets with sleeves a bit too short, thin braces, hats, super-pointed winkle-picker boots, heavy eye makeup, knackered dress shoes with gaffer tape wound round. Once featured in the NME, these fashions translated to the catwalks. Then, not far behind, were the high street brands.
The boys’ club infiltrator
Mairead Hayden, Queens of Noize; later managed Florence Welch
What a special time. People had no inhibitions, just loving music and wearing really bad clothes. I’m glad it wasn’t well documented – it was carnage. I met Tabitha [Denholm] at a party and stayed at her house for three days until she agreed to DJ with me. Our first gig was with the Libertines at the ICA [in central London]. From then on, our feet didn’t touch the ground.
We were shoddy DJs, but had a message of: you can do it; it doesn’t have to be this boys’ club. It was nuts what we got away with. We were given a TV show, a column in NME, a BBC 6 Music show. Nobody would give us those gigs these days.
Florence sang to me in the toilet of a club and I’d never heard anyone like her. I had to manage her – I’d already been to indie university doing all the other stuff. We then went on an epic journey and did three records together. Now I’m managing HotWax, who are playing with the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs this summer. It’s all come full circle.
The club promoter
Matty Hall, White Heat
White Heat started in 2003 to connect all the new music we loved back to Gang of Four, the Clash, New Order. It was a place where you’d find the Horrors having a chat in the toilets, or catch an impromptu set by the Pun Lovin’ Criminals, featuring Alex Turner and Dev Hynes playing classics by the Strokes and the Walkmen. A lot of the songs we played – Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD, etc – are still stone-cold dancefloor killers that can hold their heads high against the Cure or Joy Division.
I can’t imagine people going out religiously every Tuesday now. Jobs were maybe a bit more easily available then – the joke was you could be sacked from one cafe in the morning and be working at a new one by lunchtime. Everything was much cheaper, too; your rent definitely wasn’t two-thirds of your income.
The fan
Laura Snapes, deputy music editor, the Guardian
I randomly bought NME in 2003 and discovered a whole world, despite living 300 miles from its epicentre in London. I papered my walls with Razorlight, Franz Ferdinand and the Libertines; I drew Pete Doherty and Carl Barât’s tattoos on my arms and got one of their red military jackets at my first Reading festival. This got me my first boyfriend – the only other kid who walked around Truro in one.
I hoarded gig tat – setlists, drumsticks, half-drunk water bottles – and longed to visit Camden and see a guerrilla gig by the Others on the tube. I knew so little of London that I thought the Razorlight lyric “don’t go up the Junction” was a euphemism for avoiding unwanted pregnancy, rather than a reference to the geography of east London. At 16, I almost got to interview Johnny Borrell, but he wasn’t keen (I got the drummer instead). I went home and poured his snaffled water bottle down the toilet in a fury.
When I finally made it to Camden, at 18, I found no indie thrills, just the smell of wee and incense. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
The hyped band
Dominic Masters, the Others
We were business-savvy and organised. I had a lawyer before I had a manager and knew my ambition was to get the band signed to a major label. It was a very prolific time: two albums in two years, three Top 40 hits, being given the John Peel award for innovation at the NME awards in 2005. Vice gave us 10/10 and NME said we were “Britain’s most worshipped new band”. Q magazine weren’t so favourable – but subsequently the magazine died along with their hatred.
There was a lot of jealousy from bands – genuine shock and disapproval that I had got us signed to a major – but a lot of their anger helped to sell our records and got the band’s name out there. After our first album, Vertigo Records let go 26 of the 28 new bands on the label and we moved to an indie, Lime, which kept us going until 2007. When we couldn’t secure an advance for the third album, I went back to work in 2008. I’ve no regrets. We’ve had extended breaks, but never really gone away – we’ve just finished our fourth album, Look at You All Now.
The steady hand
Gary Powell, the Libertines
We were front cover of NME before we had a release out – that makes no sense. I tried to keep level headed, but I was an idiot as well. Peter [Doherty]’s ascension became stratospheric and it became less about the musical attributes and more to do with being tabloid fodder – that did Peter and Carl a disservice.
We should have stopped and taken a breath, but we didn’t. We were put on a conveyor belt. That’s got more to do with how we ended up taking a 10-year hiatus – we never fell out. Things were bad with drugs in the band before, but it’s nice to say no to the afterparty. Fifteen years ago, we would have been at that party and likely thrown out of it. Now, I just want a few drinks and to take my ass to bed.
The one who didn’t quite fit in
Eddie Argos, Art Brut
We had great new bands in the UK – Mclusky, the Parkinsons, Ikara Colt. Things were about to get interesting and then, oh, the Strokes are here – handsome boys with guitars again. They had no effect on me – but I was obsessed with the Moldy Peaches.
Art Brut formed in 2003, but never slotted into any NME scenes. I was quite mean about other bands and got a reputation, but it was funny. I’d sing outside Razorlight’s dressing room: “Oh oh oh, oh … no one likes you in America,” or deliberately mistake the Bravery for the Killers at festivals and then sing: “It was an honest mistake …”
I look for positives now, but then I was always looking for a fight – I got into actual fights with Bloc Party and the Magic Numbers. But it was principled, too. The line: “Stay off the crack!” in our song My Little Brother is about the fact loads of kids were doing crack. That wasn’t good.
The view from afar
Victoria Hesketh, Little Boots; formerly of Dead Disco
It was mind-blowing seeing the Kaiser Chiefs serving pints in Leeds one week and being signed the next. We thought: if they can do it, so can we. There was a real scene. The label Dance to the Radio put out a sampler album of Leeds bands, but you could only get a copy if you went to the showcase gig. All the A&R men from London had to come up to Leeds – it was empowering to make the London big cats come to us.
It was a good place to start. There was no bullshit and you had to get your hands dirty; you had to drive to play Club NME in Stoke on a Tuesday and get drunk dudes shouting at you. You had to earn your stripes, especially for girls, because they had to give as good as the boys. Whether or not that’s a good thing, it’s how I came up. It definitely made me resilient.
The elder statesman
Edwyn Collins, with his wife and manager Grace Maxwell
Maxwell: The idea Edwyn was this massive influence when he was younger isn’t true. It was such a struggle. You couldn’t get Orange Juice records, they were deleted.
Collins: I’d go to Camden market and they would be selling bootlegs.
Maxwell: Nobody is bootlegging you if they aren’t interested, so we licensed it all to Domino. This is when people started to really discover Orange Juice and Edwyn was being asked to produce bands like the Cribs. But as much as you had people like Alex Kapranos namechecking Edwyn, the internet was the great revolution in people hearing the music. He’s now got this elder statesman reputation, but there used to be a lot of roasting. NME once said something like: Edwyn Collins – promised much, delivered little.
Collins: Nowadays, the groups worship me. Genius, they say!
Maxwell: Honestly, he can’t put a foot wrong. The only person left slagging off Edwyn these days is me.
Collins: Cheers for that, Grace.
• Meet Me in the Bathroom is in UK cinemas from 10 March
