![]() Hardy's diffidence is in marked contrast to Karpranos, whose answers are intelligent and so well thought-out that you wonder if some of them have been rehearsed. I feel like that fat guy in The Shawshank Redemption who gets into prison and screams 'I don't belong here!'" The only reason I'm here was because it seemed like a different and exciting thing to do. "Did I have any ambition to be a rock star?" he says. Hardy only graduated from college last summer, which may account for hiss slightly nonplussed demeanour in the face of burgeoning superstardom. 3 and has achieved the kind of omnipresence usually reserved for records by Beyoncé Knowles or Missy Elliott. "Take Me Out" was their second single: released in January, it peaked at No. They were formed barely two years ago, and signed their deal with small independent label Domino 12 months later, after 40 record company executives turned up to one show. Whatever the reason, the speed of their rise makes impressive reading. "If anything, I think that we're a lot less pretentious than bands who pretend to be thicker than they are," says Kapranos. It is safe to say this does not happen when you interview Liam Gallagher. The last person who tried got an eye infection because it was so filthy." The shows have passed into recent legend, much to Kapranos' amusement: "We were talking to these 15-year-old kids in Manchester recently and they were saying, 'We want to go and live in the Chateau!' It's this really stinking building, covered in pigeon shit - trust me, you don't want to live there. The quartet eschewed Glasgow's regular gig circuit in favour of putting on multimedia events in a derelict Art-Deco warehouse they called the Chateau. Hardy, meanwhile, met Paul Thomson, 27, when the latter had been working as a nude model in his life-drawing class. ![]() Depending on whose account you believe, McCarthy was either dressed as Adam Ant or a circus ringmaster, and was attempting to steal Kapranos' bottle of vodka.Ī fight ensued, before Kapranos asked McCarthy if he wanted to join the band he was attempting to form with an art student called Bob Hardy, 23, who was learning to play bass. Kapranos, now 29, met Blackpool-born, Munich-bred guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist Nick McCarthy, 28, at a party. Franz Ferdinand have both a striking look and a curious rock'n'roll mythology about them. They arrived during a lull, when new British bands displayed a worrying tendency both to dress like supply teachers and proudly announce that they had formed while studying the rudiments of the music industry at further education colleges. Of course, Franz Ferdinand have had those too. It may even be hotter than a Paris Hilton download and comparable to the oeuvre of the Bay City Rollers, but its angular guitar riffs, disco-influenced beats and clever lyrics about unrequited lust, drunken homosexual liaisons and sweaty goings-on in art-house cinemas do not naturally lend themselves to an acoustic setting. ("Christ," says Kapranos when informed of the latter, "that's a bit nuts.") It may be, as drummer Paul Thomson once suggested, the missing link between Boyzone and Joy Division: "Boy Division". It may be the most exciting thing to happen to British rock Britpop's heyday, the source of 2004's best single - the omnipresent "Take Me Out" - and an eponymous debut album that shifted a faintly staggering 200,00 copies in one month, and the reason the Glasgow quartet have won the coveted title of GQ's Band Of The year. Franz Ferdinind's music may be many things. "This is going to be so awesome!" gushes one magazine rep.Īs it turns out, the experience is awesome only in the way that a sinus wash is awesome. They are to perform a mid-morning acoustic set for the staff of a US rock magazine. Washington Times improbably compared them to the Bay City Rollers), Franz Ferdinand's US record company has devised an entirely new form of humiliation, presumably concealed within the small print of their recently signed contract, rumoured to be worth more than £800,000.
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