walking upstream…
The Strokes
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗The Strokes
sourcesRolling Stone — The Making of New York's Coolest Band, the Strokes With 'Is This It' (formation and early history) · Rolling Stone — Last Nite (Casablancas on the Tom Petty resemblance) · NME — Casablancas tribute to Lou Reed (Velvet Underground influence, corroborating) · NME — Eddie Vedder joins The Strokes for Juicebox (Pearl Jam influence, named song pairing)
In 1998, three Manhattan schoolmates from Dwight School started fooling around with instruments; Julian Casablancas brought in childhood friend Nikolai Fraiture on bass, and Albert Hammond Jr. joined that winter to complete the five-piece. They played day jobs and empty rooms for two years until a run of four Mercury Lounge shows in December 2000 turned heads, landing them a manager and, by March 2001, a bidding-war deal with RCA. Recorded in six weeks with producer Gordon Raphael after the band balked at a slicker session, Is This It sold half a million copies inside five months and was later crowned the decade's best album by NME. Casablancas never hid the seams: asked if breakout single "Last Nite" sounded like Tom Petty's "American Girl," he shrugged, "Yeah, we ripped it off." The Strokes turned confessed theft into a genre-reviving sound.
the sound in question
2001
Last NiteThe Strokes
walk the tributaries ↓
The Velvet Underground1960s · Art rock / Proto-punk / Experimental rock
When Rolling Stone let Casablancas write the Velvet Underground's own entry on its greatest-artists list, he didn't hedge: "The Velvet Underground were way ahead of their time... I couldn't believe this wasn't the most popular music ever made. In the beginning, the Strokes definitely drew from the vibe of the Velvets." He singled out the guitars specifically — "a lot of our tones are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison did" — and confessed he'd had Loaded on repeat while writing his first songs, wishing the band had "copied them more."
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — 100 Greatest Artists ↗
1970
Sweet JaneThe Velvet Underground
2001
SomedayThe Strokes
listen forSet the Velvets' "Sweet Jane" against the Strokes' "Someday": both ride the same unhurried, three-chord chug, the rhythm guitar doing all the emotional work while the vocal stays half a step from bored. Casablancas' flat, unbothered delivery on the verses is the Lou Reed move he named directly — sing the hard truth like it's nothing.
The Doors1960s · Psychedelic rock / Rock
Casablancas told the Doors' own surviving members why he'd asked to interview them: "your band is pretty much the reason why I play music today." He traced it to age fourteen, when his stepfather handed him a cassette of The Best of The Doors — "that was the first music I heard where I felt like I could decipher all the intertwining parts clearly." Drummer Fabrizio Moretti backed it up from the inside, calling the band's earliest original songs "Doors-y, but trying to be classical."
listen: upstream & heresource: Complex — Julian Casablancas of The Strokes Talks to The Doors (Doors influence, origin story) ↗
1967
Break On Through (To the Other Side)The Doors
2001
The Modern AgeThe Strokes
listen forPlay the Doors' "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" into the Strokes' "The Modern Age": both let a taut, locked-in rhythm section carry the entire song while the lead guitar and vocal strain against it, restless and unresolved rather than resolving into a hook — the tension Casablancas said he first learned to hear apart, part by part, off that cassette.
Pearl Jam1990s · Grunge / Alternative rock / Hard rock
Casablancas has said hearing Pearl Jam's B-side "Yellow Ledbetter" as a teenager, traded around on a mixtape, was "literally the moment that changed my life" — and the moment he decided, after concluding his own voice was hopeless, that he'd rather write songs than sing other people's. Years later he pointed to a specific debt: "Juicebox," off First Impressions of Earth, was built out of Pearl Jam's "Not For You." When Eddie Vedder joined the Strokes onstage to play it, he laughed that he "still don't really hear it" but was "more than happy" every time.
listen: upstream & heresource: SPIN via Yahoo — 30 Artists Reflect on the Impact of Pearl Jam's Ten (Pearl Jam influence, origin story) ↗
1994
Not For YouPearl Jam
2005
JuiceboxThe Strokes
listen forLine up Pearl Jam's "Not For You" against the Strokes' "Juicebox": both open on a lurching, minor-key riff that refuses to sit still before the verse locks into a tighter groove, the guitars circling rather than resolving — the specific shape Casablancas pointed to when he named this pairing himself.