10. InterpolTurn On The Bright Lights
Really very fortunate to get to know those guys as well – over the years, Sam Fogarino, the drummer, and I got to be pretty good friends. It was funny because he and I had met years prior. He was an assistant on a photo shoot I was doing. It might have been in 1998 in New York and we met then and he reminded me of this before Interpol and all that. He was from Florida and moved to New York and then we stayed in touch and got to be friends. Became acquaintances with Paul Banks as well and he’s a sweet guy, a very thoughtful guy, an intense guy – a lot on his mind, thinks a lot, in a good spirit.
Interpol defined that era. It was Interpol and The Strokes obviously. I didn’t understand The Strokes, but Interpol immediately – some of the Joy Division stuff, of course, everybody starts somewhere but that record is so deep, so New York, so timely given everything that happened in 9/11. New York changed after 9/11. I was living there and what happened is that it brought people together. I think everybody saw for a moment how brief it all is and people started being very, very nice to each other, ’cause that was at the end of the Wall Street run. If you remember that whole Wall Street – people lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills and hookers on every table – this awful shit that that was, and that event, this record, the timing, the way it all comes together, it really was a moment in time when there was a very clear definition of New York and a soundtrack.
That was the same time I was into dance music and that soundtrack of New York was very different – you know Deep Dish, Sasha & Digweed you know – all the people that came to Twilo to DJ, the big, big days of the club DJs – there was that and there was Interpol hanging out at Brownies down in East Village.
