FRANZ FERDINAND: No Time For Satisfaction

Franz Ferdinand has arrived.  Arguably the most popular UK import not named Coldplay, Scotland’s famously stylish art-dance quartet has put the sneer back on the face of rock and roll, becoming the rare band to conquer the American masses with little more than unashamedly immediate hooks, theatrically preening live shows and smartly biting songwriting.Franz Ferdinand has arrived.  Arguably the most popular UK import not named Coldplay, Scotland’s famously stylish art-dance quartet has put the sneer back on the face of rock and roll, becoming the rare band to conquer the American masses with little more than unashamedly immediate hooks, theatrically preening live shows and smartly biting songwriting. Along the way, they won the coveted Mercury Award, and their animated video for their breakout “Take Me Out” made the song a hit and the soundtrack to pitching changes in baseball stadiums across the country. Now in the middle of their world tour for their second release, You Could Have It So Much Better, simply getting 20 minutes on the phone with lead singer Alex Kapranos is an ordeal involving weeks and layers of publicity and record label people.  “Sorry about all this.  This has been a crazy day,” says a flustered tour manager three hours after our original interview time has fallen through. Today, Kapranos has reason to be cocky; he has earned it.  But if all of the attention has gone to his head, today he’s not showing it.

“Well, people like it, and I’m glad,” he laughs when asked what he thinks about the stir over their latest release. “I think I’d be more surprised if everybody hated it.  But then again, you can never presume that people are going to like anything that you do, can you?  I’m chuffed that people like it, definitely,” he says, admitting that he has to make an effort to not get too swept up in the current wave of Franz-mania. “If I do see an article, I scan through it just to get the general gist of it, but I don’t pay too close attention, I’m afraid.  I think if you start doing that when you’re in a band that has a lot of things written about you, you could spend the whole day reading that stuff, and I don’t think that would be healthy for anybody,” he says disarmingly.  “I’d much rather read a book or watch a film or talk with my friends or have a drink than read about myself.  It’s bad enough that I have to talk about myself all day, let alone having to read it back again.”

For someone who revels in rock star postures and flashes of wickedly sinister wit, off stage Kapranos is incredibly candid and approachable, admitting that he couldn’t be happier that his band has capitalized on the momentum established with their first album and delivered a follow-up that not only revisits the darkly giddy art-rock of their debut, but expands the template with a series of sonic and thematic departures. While some critics have suggested that You Could Have It succeeds largely because it’s a careful rehashing of an already proven formula, Kapranos disagrees.

“I wouldn’t say there’s anything in particular that we learned while we were making the first record,” says Kapranos, the veteran of numerous stalled indie rock bands and no stranger to the recording process, “but I’d say thinking about what we did with the first record did influence what we wanted to do with the second. So, for example, the first record is very fun and pop and immediate, but we wanted to make the second record have a little more depth to it and for it to have a dynamic range and come up and down a little more.  I suppose that’s why there are songs like “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” and “Fade Together,” which are a little more sensitive than anything we’ve done before.  Then songs like “The Fallen” and “You Could Have It So Much Better” are a little more full-on than anything on the first record.”

The relative merits of their recording work aside, there is little denying that Franz Ferdinand benefits greatly from the era of the music video. Their latest, an extravagant ensemble cast production for the first single, the glammy dance tune “Do You Want To,” is iconic eye candy, three minutes of gloriously over-the-top posing and art gallery hijinx that ends in paint-splattered models and a kick line. “We wanted to recreate things that we’d seen at parties,” he explains. “The song’s about some things that people were saying to me at a party in Glasgow, and there were things that we’d seen at art openings and things like that, parties where we’d go to get free drinks,” he laughs, admitting that the video also helped them poke fun at their art school pedigree.

“The song is sort of taking the piss out of art a little bit, as well.  Someone actually did say that line to me about parties: “I love your friends; they’re all so arty,” he says, recounting the song’s most snide couplet. “And I hate that word: arty.” It’s a terrible, terrible word, and it makes me cringe whenever it comes out of anybody’s mouth,” he continues, laughing. “At the same time, it’s a slightly satirical approach to the art world in general.  I wouldn’t say a mocking approach, but satirical, like Nick (McCarthy, guitarist) peeing on Duchamp’s urinal, and Bob (Hardy, bassist) with his Yoko Ono magnifying glass and dragging the naked girls through the paint.  That’s just a bit of fun.”

More than that, though, Franz Ferdinand has returned the video medium to being an art form, not just a three-minute advertisement for a song that needs a visual component to justify its existence.  “Do You Want To” is the expression of a band that is profoundly capable of using whatever artistic medium is at their disposal to express their collective attitude.  In this case, all they needed was a kindred spirit to illustrate their audacious ideas. “It was great doing that video because we did it with Diane Martel, who is an amazing woman, just fantastic.  And usually when we do videos, we usually make a big list of things we’d like to do, just stupid things that we’d like to do in the video. Then we find a director that we get on with, and then the director says, ‘Right.  We can do these two things, but we can’t do anything else.’  Diane turned around and said, ‘Let’s do them all!  Let’s put everything in there!’  And she got it together, and my God, it was fantastic what we managed to do with it.”

That attitude, that willingness to grin at the sacred cows of art, infuses everything they do. And as serious and cocksure as their creative personas seem, Kapranos admits that much of the artifice is just a continuation of the performance illusion. “Do You Want To” allowed them the opportunity to not only poke fun at artistic pretensions but also add to their myth, all the while winking at their audience. “We were having a bit of a laugh at ourselves, as well.  Just because you’re in a band doesn’t mean you have to take yourself seriously.  In fact, it means you shouldn’t take yourself seriously at all,” he says, loading those words with emphasis. “You’ve got to be able to have a laugh at yourself or else you’re going to be lost.”

Presumably, among the lost are those who maintain the rock star posture without realizing that it’s actually their privilege to be asked to entertain their audience. �I do have a problem with a lot of contemporary videos,” he says, excitement in his voice. “Sometimes I feel like bands get handed these treatments, and it says ‘The Blah Blahs will look very cool, and lots of cool stuff will happen to them and make them look even more cool.’  It’s just slick filming, trying to make people look cool, and that’s just boring,” he says with disdain. “I’ll tell who used to be good in videos, the Beastie Boys.  They always did amazing videos.  You felt the intensity of the entertainment; whether it was “Sabotage” or “Fight for Your Right to Party.”  Those were great, wonderful videos, and we wanted to have a feel of that, as well.  There was no gimmicky camerawork of any of that; it was in the action that was the entertainment.  Even the way we dressed, we combined things that we’d all been wearing and decided that we’d all wear them at the same time and give it the look of a gang,” he says recalling their matching black and red striped shirts and black jeans. “It was fun,” he muses, trailing off.

Of course, simply because they’re so willing to play with their listeners’ impressions, Franz Ferdinand opens themselves up to even more misinterpretation than most bands in their milieu. “You can’t really complain about that too much, can you?” Kapranos says, apparently reveling in the confusion the band’s mixed messages have caused. “It’s funny, I think, partly because we appeared and we had short back and sides haircuts and had tight trousers and wore 1960s ties, everyone assumed that we were into the 1980s.  Since then, I’ve thought, gosh, I wonder if they were actually listening to the music, because there’s very little of the 1980s actually in there.  It’s strange because I know certain songs where I’ll think, oh God, I wonder if people are going to notice the Led Zeppelin rip-off that we’re doing here or the Bob Dylan thing that I’m totally doing here, and people go, ‘No.  It’s the 1980s.’  And I think, hmm, that’s really interesting, because that’s not at all where we’re coming from.  They end up at somewhere else completely.  The other irony is that I couldn’t stand the 1980s when I was in them.  When I was a kid at school in the 1980s, I didn’t like any contemporary music at all.”

The irony, then, is that Franz Ferdinand is no more in step with their contemporaries now than they would have been in either the ‘60s or the ‘80s. Even though the moniker Intelligent Dance Music has already been affixed to a genre of music more notable for ponderously complex soundscapes and decidedly undanceable rhythms, Franz Ferdinand is making smart, conceptual music that is equally at home on the dance floor as it is on the headphones. Given the clever innuendo and increasing sensitivity of Kapranos’ lyrics, you have music that works on multiple levels, equally accessible to the Top 40 fan as it is to the pop classicist.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing, because you can never dictate to people who listen to your music how they should listen to it.  You can never say to them, ‘Oh, there’s a great depth to what I’m doing here.  You have to pay attention to what I’ve done.’  And sometimes you see singers and songwriters trying to do that, and you can’t,” he shudders. “If all people get from our music is some catchy riff that they like to dance to occasionally, or that makes them look up from their job while they’re working, that’s fair enough.  Because for those people, there’re going to be just as many other people who do get what you’re about and who do get the subtle references and who get the more delicate emotion that you were trying to convey in the first place.  Often you find the best music does both anyway.”

Confident, but never complacent, Kapranos says that he’s not willing to declare victory yet in Franz Ferdinand’s conquest of the music-buying masses.  “I don’t think you should ever be satisfied with anything that you do, because if you are, then you’ll never want to do anything again, will you?” he laughs. “So, no, I’m never satisfied with anything that we’ve done.  With our record, yeah, I think it sounds great.  But there’s so much more we can do with the next one!” he continues excitedly, then turns pensive. “But also I look forward to little things like going back to see friends in Glasgow.  One of my closest friends there had a son last year, and I’ve not seen him since he was three weeks old, and he’s going to be a year old the next time I see him.  It probably sounds really daft, but that’s the thing that I’m looking forward to as much as a South American tour.”  That said, just what would constitute success for Franz Ferdinand?

“Oh,” Kapranos pauses, clearly taken off guard. “You know, I’ve never sat back and thought, oh, I’m a success now.  I don’t know if that means I don’t think I’ve had success,” he says, leading into a long, awkward silence. “No, I don’t feel particularly successful, which probably sounds stupid, because we’ve obviously sold quite a few records and got all these prizes and things.  In a way, I’m afraid of the idea of feeling successful, because it’s related to that idea of losing your sense of dissatisfaction, because often your sense of dissatisfaction is what drives you on to do something greater than what you’ve done already.  And I certainly don’t want to stop now.  I don’t want to feel successful.”