{"id":652351,"date":"2026-06-22T15:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652351\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T15:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T15:15:10","slug":"why-did-nigel-goldrich-only-last-10-days-with-the-strokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/652351\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did Nigel Goldrich only last 10 days with The Strokes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nigel<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still \/ Gonzalo Tello <\/p>\n

Mon 22 June 2026 13:00, UK <\/p>\n

After their 2001 debut album, Is This It, The Strokes<\/a> might just have been the hottest band in the world. <\/p>\n

They were the saviours of modern rock and roll, proving that the critics were completely wrong in believing that a new millennium meant a detachment from the genre\u2019s traditional values. We weren\u2019t going to hurtle into a digital dystopia where guitars were no longer in vogue; instead, we were going to go back to the lo-fi worlds of garage rock and sing along to Julian Casablancas\u2019 distorted vocals.<\/p>\n

Is This It was the perfect distillation of that idea<\/a>. The band stripped down production and opted for punchy sonic ideas that captured the slacker rebellion that was rising. Ultimately, it served as the blueprint for the sounds that would follow in the next ten years. In fact, whatever record you think fits underneath the indie sleaze umbrella simply wouldn\u2019t have existed without it. <\/p>\n

So what always comes after an all-killer no-filler debut album<\/a>? <\/p>\n

An insurmountable level of hype that renders its follow-up record into a state of perennial threat. The story was no different for The Strokes, who tried to surf on the wave their first album had built with a relatively swift follow-up in 2003 with Room On Fire.\u00a0While a worthy sophomore record, the general consensus was that it was the Is This It formula watered down, which, really, is no insult given how concise their debut was. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, the outcome wasn\u2019t surprising given the fact that The Strokes took their energetic Is This It live show back into the studio with the producer of their first record, Gordon Raphael. But the initial plan wasn\u2019t to reunite with Raphael. In fact, The Strokes first set out to change tack completely and recruit Radiohead\u2019s quiet pioneer Nigel Godrich<\/a>. But sadly for the music industry, the collaboration simply didn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tryout lasted ten days,\u201d said Steve Ralbovsky, The Strokes\u2019 A&R man. \u201cThey worked on \u2018Meet Me In The Bathroom\u2019 and one or two other songs. It was so hard going method-wise for Nigel. He wanted to record a certain way, and Julian wanted to record a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

\u201cPoor Nigel Godrich was in a state,\u201d continued Ralbovsky, \u201cHe didn\u2019t want to let anyone down, but he felt like, \u2018Maybe they\u2019re not ready, maybe I\u2019m not the right guy for it\u2019\u2026 They just weren\u2019t ready. They had to do it themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s perhaps the sorest musical tale of what could have been<\/a>. The Strokes emphatically announced themselves on the world stage with their debut album and really, never managed to top it with a subsequent record. They became trapped in the echo chamber of their own success and lost all ability to conjure up a fresh and innovative sound.<\/p>\n

If any producer was to change that in the 2000s, it would have been Godrich, who had a proven track record of helping bands pivot their sound, and while The Strokes might not have liked it because they would have had to abandon their trusted sonic blueprint, they would have loved the long-term outcome it would have provided.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still \/ Gonzalo Tello Mon 22 June 2026 13:00, UK After their 2001…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[92249,33891,96,153579,3583,219400,25566,128,219401,25567,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-652351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-2000s","tag-alternative-rock","tag-entertainment","tag-garage-rock","tag-indie","tag-indie-sleaze","tag-meet-me-in-the-bathroom","tag-music","tag-nigel-godrich","tag-the-strokes","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}