Formed in New York City, USA, in 1999, by the end of the following year the Strokes were being hyped as the most important rock band of the new millennium and hailed as the second coming of the Velvet Underground. Other, less forgiving critics dismissed them as a group of rich kids offering a pale pastiche of any number of great guitar rock bands.
Julian Casablancas (b. 23 August 1978, USA: vocals), Nick Valensi (b. 16 January 1981, New York, USA; guitar) and Fabrizio Moretti (b. 2 June 1980, Rio de Janerio, Brazil; drums) first began playing together at the elite Dwight School in Manhattan. Casablancas later attended Le Rosey, a boarding school in Switzerland, where he first met Albert Hammond Jnr. (b. 9 April 1979, USA; guitar), the son of singer-songwriter Albert Hammond. The two met up again at the end of the 90s when Hammond came to New York City to study at the Tisch School of the Arts. Casablancas and Hammond began rooming together and put together the Strokes with Valensi, Moretti and Nikolai Fraiture (b. 13 November 1978, New York City, New York, USA; bass), the latter a long-time friend of Casablancas. All five members enrolled in college, but were soon lured away by the promise of rock 'n' roll fame. They made their debut at The Spiral in New York on 14 September 1999, and had soon built up a reputation on the city's East Side club scene. The band's demo was picked up by the UK label Rough Trade Records and released in January 2001 as a three-song EP called The Modern Age. A major label bidding war ensued for the US rights, with the quintet electing to sign with RCA Records. Despite being forced to remove a track called "New York City Cops" from the US version of the album, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the band's debut Is This It was enthusiastically received by the music press on both sides of the Atlantic. The video for the single "Last Nite", directed by Francis Ford Coppola's son Roman, was given extensive rotation on music channels. Roman Coppola was also hired to direct clips for other singles released from the album.
Although barely rising above the sum of their influences, the band members' youthful passion and exuberance ensured iconic status for the Strokes following the release of Is This It. They toured extensively and were rarely out of the headlines, with a number of celebrity relationships threatening to overshadow the band's music. They returned to the studio in 2002 to begin work on their new album with noted producer Nigel Godrich, but these sessions were later scrapped and Is This It producer Gordon Raphael brought in as a replacement. The heavily-hyped Room On Fire was eventually released in October 2003, but almost inevitably the album failed to live up to expectations. Although sticking close to the blueprint established on Is This It, the new songs lacked the melodic spark and intensity of the earlier material. The band continued to generate extensive column inches, however, and their 2003/2004 tour was played out in front of sell-out crowds.
In September 2005, the Strokes' new single "Juicebox" was leaked online. Their third album, First Impressions Of Earth, followed at the start of 2006 and in October Hammond's solo album was released to highly upbeat reviews.
