So when what was to become Franz Ferdinand got together, I’d been in loads of bands. That’s when I was first playing gigs and things. I’d been playing in bands since I was in my late teens. It was all about songwriting in the beginning.ĪS: What do you remember about the early days of the band, how you got together?ĪK: Well, you know, the band was very much, I guess like a lot of bands are, a social experience as much as anything else. It was just about expressing the ideas and the melody being good, rather than necessity complex. It was: am I communicating the thing I want to communicate? Is there a good tune there? The same with the voice, as well. But I was never impressed by that stuff, I didn’t really care. I had pals who were incredible guitarists who could move their fingers fantastically quickly up and down the fretboard. And I was always more interested in writing songs than I was in being a virtuoso guitarist or being a virtuoso singer, or anything like that, you know? I just wanted to be able to express myself and learn enough guitar to do what I wanted to do. It was one of those things that just clicked really quickly really, really early on. So, I’m really thankful for that book because it did drive us on to write our own songs. They’re in the wrong keys for the original songs. But let’s just take the chords we know and we’ll make our own songs because then nobody can tell us we don’t sound right.” The funny thing is when I went back to that book and I picked it up a year ago, or whatever, I realized all of the transcriptions are totally wrong. I remember saying to Andrew, “Listen, we can’t play these Beatles songs. We could work out the chords but when we tried to play along with the records, it just sounded completely wrong. And I said, “Oh, this is the book that Andrew and I used to try and play the songs from.” And that book had a big impact on us because we couldn’t play the songs. And my girlfriend had it recently, I found it on the shelf of her flat. I remember we both tried to play Beatles songs from this songbook called The Compleat Beatles. And we both started playing guitar about the same time. There was quite a-my friend Andrew and I used to walk to school together. That was my main drive, was writing music. And then after a while, I realized I wanted to write, as well. I just wanted to be able to do that, myself. I wanted to play the guitar and I guess initially I wanted to play songs that other people had written. I always loved music and I wanted to play. You can create it yourself, you can make things yourself. It’s like having somebody that cooks in the house-you know that food’s not something you just buy at the supermarket shelf. Because if you have somebody around you as a kid that plays music, you realize that music isn’t just something that comes out of the speaker, which is mysteriously just there. Yeah, that’s my first experience of it all, that kind of stuff.ĪS: From there, how did you improve, how did you get better and how did you think about your singing voice?ĪK: Well, you know, I guess my dad having a guitar was a big privilege for me as a kid, and seeing him sit there and make music. So, he used to like playing Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly and that kind of thing. He used to play in Beat groups in working man’s clubs around South Shields and the Northeast of England in the 60s. Then there was the music that my dad played, as well. Then there was the music they both loved, like the Beatles. When I hear it now, I get brought straight back to that place. And it’s very hypnotic dance music from Crete. I also have a very, very vivid memory of being on my father’s shoulders, being spun around the living room, listening to music by a guy called Yannis Markopoulos. So, I was always aware of them and those Greek melodies and Greek kid’s songs. My dad’s Greek and he used to sing me a lot of Greek songs when I was a kid. American Songwriter: When did you first find music, when did it first enter your life in a significant way as a young person?Īlex Kapranos: Well, I guess, like for most people, the music I discovered was the music that was brought to me by my family.
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