Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! – The Rapture
Who originally sang backing vocals on The Rapture’s 2008 song ‘No Sex for Ben’?
CORRECT.
“We hung out with him a bunch because he was obsessed with The Rapture and would open his shows with ‘House of Jealous Lovers’. He sang on ‘No Sex for Ben’, which was produced by Timbaland, and then they were taken off the finished song. We went in and he’d stacked up these beautiful ‘90s R&B-style vocal harmonies. It was a strange time. Justin was trying to start a record label and wanted to sign us, and we were in the same orbit as him, Timbaland and The Neptunes for a while.”
Which two bands did The Rapture play between at Glastonbury 2003?
“No idea – I would just be guessing!”
WRONG. The Raveonettes and Grandaddy.
“That was the year Bez joined us onstage. Someone drove him, crashed into the front of the stage, then he got out of the car and left it there and had a trash bag filled with shitty weed that he shared before taking me to a Joe Strummer shrine. I have a signed pair of maracas from Bez. He kept getting on the mic and yelling ‘Manchester/New York crossover!’. That was his big contribution! [Laughs]. He was cool.”
The Rapture’s debut, ‘Echoes’ was rated NME’s second Best Album of 2003. Who beat you to Number 1?
“The White Stripes’ ‘Elephant’. I’ll never forget that!”
CORRECT. It seems you needed the DFA-produced ‘Echoes’ as an outlet…
“I did. ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ was all the pressure I’d faced growing up. When I was a kid, my dad told me he didn’t want to be my dad. And he said he felt I was his romantic rival more than his child in my relationship with my mom. And I was upset about it and ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ was an almost ejaculatory protection of my spirit. DFA at the time was a complete recreation of my family, except James Murphy was my parental figure. For two years, he would deliberately make me upset. He saw me as a super-sexy young guy who was really upset and he wanted to capture that on tape, so he’d wind me up on purpose, then say ‘Go record the vocal’. Which was cruel! Listening to ‘Echoes’ is like watching somebody chew glass.
In Meet Me in the Bathroom, The Rapture’s split from DFA after ‘Echoes’ leaves hurt on both sides, with Murphy forming LCD Soundsystem and vowing to destroy you. Have you ever properly talked about it with him?
“I’ve seen James many times since then and we’re cool. But we set up a performance space to hurt each other. When we signed the record deal with DFA, James’ description of it was: ‘We’re going to tie our left hands together and in our right hands, we’re both going to have knives. And that’s how we’re going to keep each other honest.’ That’s how he described our relationship – and he was one of my best friends! That was the game. It was similar to how when playing tactile football with my dad was a kid, he’d win every time, then kick sand in my face. As I’d cry hysterically, he didn’t care – as long as he was the best! I haven’t sat down and talked through the nitty gritty of all this with James, but when I see him, I give him a hug.”
“At some point our relationship turned. We were collaborating and then I became his enemy and he wanted to erase me. Ten years ago, I told him: ‘You won! Your band is more popular than my band forever and nothing will ever change that. Are we cool now?’ And he was like: ‘Yeah, we’re fine’.”
The Rapture opened for the Sex Pistols in London in 2002. Name their three other support bands?
“The Libertines and…. all I remember was people throwing bottles of piss at the stage!”
WRONG. It was indeed The Libertines – but also And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead and Dropkick Murphys.
“When we played the Sex Pistols show, I liked the energy. Their audience loved us because we were confrontational enough, and I thrived on hostility. At the time, I would put on lipstick and invite the audience to attack me, so I could get into the persona of my parents fighting or this dramatic re-enactment of my childhood and channel all of that. I’d get high by having people project hate and jealousy on me.”
In 2004, The Rapture played the NME Awards Tour alongside Funeral for a Friend, The Von Bondies and Franz Ferdinand. What city did it open in?
“Oh my God! Somewhere in Wales maybe? There’s no way I’m going to get that one!”
WRONG. Newcastle.
“My mom was British so Newcastle Brown Ale was a drink that was part of my teenage years. I remember being mad at Franz Ferdinand on that tour because we were DJ-ing at an afterparty and Alex [Kapranos, Franz frontman] asked me how I would describe The Rapture’s music. And I replied: ‘We just make music for girls to dance to’. The next week in NME, the big pull-quote was: ‘Franz Ferdinand – we just make music for girls to dance to!’. I thought: ‘you fucker!’ [Laughs]”
Complete the following lyrics: ‘But is it lyrical genius or crap rock poetry’…?’
“’I say the lineage runs Morrison, Patti Smith and me‘ – from ‘Whoo! Alright – Yeah… Uh huh.’”
CORRECT. Did Patti Smith ever hear it?
“Patti was off the map at the point, otherwise a publicist would have probably been like: ‘There’s this stupid young kid band that references you. You should talk to them’.”
“I remember Fred Schneider from The B-52’s was a The Rapture superfan and would call me up and be like ‘Hey, it’s Fred from The B-52s’ and he sounds exactly like what his voice sounds like on record! [Laughs] When we played in Athens, Georgia, which is their hometown, he took me to this club and put on ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ and wanted to dance with me but I didn’t want to dance to my own song! But then I made the DJ play a B-52’s song and we danced to that. Afterwards, Michael Stipe arrived and Fred introduced me and Michael was not having it. He said: ‘I don’t care who this fucking dude is! I have no interest in meeting him at all.””
“But Michael fits into the same poetic rock fraternity as Patti Smith. He grew up reading about her and we all fit into this history. For me, the culmination of my dreams was I moved to New York because I read [oral history of punk] Please Kill Me, and now other artists moved there because they read Meet Me in the Bathroom.”
Which 2009-2013 British superhero series was The Rapture’s ‘Echoes’ used as the opening theme for?
“Misfits.”
CORRECT.
“It was a big thing, but I’ve still never seen an episode of it!”
Which household chore did David Bowie claim he used to listen to The Rapture while doing?
“Laundry.”
CORRECT.
“And Our Lord and Saviour David Bowie also said he listened to us while driving his car around. It was like a god came down from Mount Olympus and said: ‘I have a personal relationship with your music’. It disorientates your entire world because what other affirmation do you need? He called up one day saying: ‘I’m playing in New Jersey, and I want you to come and see me’, and we hung out. As a kid, ‘Ziggy Stardust…’ was my favourite ever record, so meeting him felt like a major compass shift.”
What is the B-side of The Rapture’s 1998 debut single ‘The Chair That Squeaks’?
“Oh! ‘Dumb Waiters’!”
CORRECT. A Psychedelic Furs cover.
“When we toured with The Cure, we played that song every day and Robert Smith pulled me aside and told me really liked the Psychedelic Furs and they were an influence on him. I would just eat pizza with him every day while he graciously answered every one of my superfan questions! The idea was if we covered a song with a saxophone on it, eventually that would manifest in us having a saxophone in the band. I wanted everything that might make indie music fans barf in one band – cowbell, dance music and saxophones. British people got it, but I remember meeting Thurston Moore and he was really confused: ‘What are you guys? You’re popular but I don’t really know why. You sound like something that should be at Danceteria!’. He liked krautrock, but he did not like fucking cowbells! [Laughs] But us and DFA had a contrarian spirit. I mean, DFA had business cards that just said ‘Misanthropes’ on them.”
In 2010, what did The Rapture’s Gabe Andruzzi say your album ‘ In the Grace of Your Love was going to be 100 times better than?
“iPads?”
CORRECT.
“We used to tell people all kinds of outlandish shit, like [former bassist] Mattie [Safter] and Gabe were cousins. It was fun to play around with your celebrity cartoon personalities.”
What do you recall about ‘In the Grace of Your Love’?
“If ‘House of Jealous Lovers’ was my mum is trying to kill herself and I’m going to scream into a mic, then ‘In the Grace of Your Love’ was that my mom had already died [in 2006] and I was going into dark churches crying every day. The impetus of the record was to transform suffering into joy. It was a rebirth and also about letting go. Whereas James Murphy was always trying to make me upset in the studio [producer] Philippe Zdar was trying to love me and be the dad I wanted to have. It’s full circle. ‘Echoes’ and ‘In the Grace of Your Love’ are two sides of the same coin.”
Any chance of another The Rapture album?
“I would love to. With The Rapture, the main thing is Vito [Roccoforte], the drummer and my best friend… growing up, I didn’t have any food in the house because my mom was mentally ill and my dad was away being a college professor, so I would go to Vito’s house to be fed. He’s like a brother. When my mom died, he stopped talking to me for 17 years. We went to therapy a few years ago before we played some reunion shows, because he was mad at me for walking after after ‘In the Grace…’ to get sober and find myself. I remember turning to the therapist and saying to her: ‘Am I allowed to say how I feel?’ She said absolutely not, he’s not listening to you, you need to tell me and I’ll translate. And he got angry and fired her. And we played the reunion shows with me throwing up and stuff. He’d ignore me and we’d stay in separate hotels and it was very painful. He told me he didn’t want to work on our relationship now or ever. The door’s always open, and I’m ready to do more music with him when he’s ready to have an open dialogue.”
“I would love The Rapture to be part of my life. The thing I would like to accomplish before the end of my life is to heal the relationships with Vito and – to some extent – James [Murphy].”
Bonus question! You’re in the new Meet Me in the Bathroom film. But for an extra half-point, can you guess who the following bizarre anecdotes from Lizzy Goodman’s original oral history are about? You need only identify one to score the point.
I: Who is the Interpol member that Kings of Leon nicknamed ‘The Mortician’?
“[Laughs] Carlos [Dengler] was the most ridiculous one – was it him?”
CORRECT.
“Talk about being a cartoon character! He had a gun holster with no gun in it. We used to have friends who would come make fun of all the scene bands before our gigs, like The Strokes, but their biggest target was Carlos. He loved it and was the biggest fan of it. He would come to our shows, not to see us play, but just to see our friends make fun of him. He was an incredible sport about it!”
2: The member of The Libertines that The Strokes’ Nick Valensi mistakenly thought had “sexual undertones” during his first encounter.
“The drummer? [Gary Powell].”
WRONG. It was Pete Doherty.
3: The pop star James Murphy once took a meeting with about producing?
“The whole thing about Meet Me in the Bathroom is it feels like a ridiculous thing that happened before the internet. And when some of those people die, I’ll have warmth towards them and vice-versa. We’ve been cemented in a movement and have a camaraderie with the other bands.”
The verdict: 6.5/10
“A solid D Minus! [Laughs]
NME Screens: Meet Me In The Bathroom will take place on Thursday March 9 at Rich Mix in Shoreditch, London. Tickets are free, and sign-up is available via DICE.
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Gary Ryan
NME
