The Strokes, dude

“Julian was very nervous. He was very apprehensive about that record; he really, really wanted it to be successful. I felt like he was under a lot of pressure. I felt like he wasn’t a hundred percent happy with it. I felt like maybe he wanted it to sound differently…Maybe more of a step forward. Maybe not a Gordon Raphael record. I invited him to the book release party for my novel and we wound up at the Library afterward and after that, we ended up with these two girls back at my apartment doing coke all night. I can’t remember their faces or names. They were hipster girls. I don’t know whose coke it was. It wasn’t mine. But Julian, he kept playing the album on my little red boom box. And he kept going, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ And I was like, 'It sounds really great, man. It’s going to be great.’ Because I thought it was a great record. And he kept going, 'I don’t know.’”