I’m back on Suffragette City…
Ahead of the release of their second album, You Could Have It So Much Better, on October 3rd, the
Alex Kapranos has made no secret of his love of all things Bowie, (a mutual respect that David has made clear too: 10.07.2004 NEWS: DB DIGS FRANZ – FRANZ DIGS DB) and in an interview back in April he talked about some of the things that had inspired him during the recording of the new album:
“We?re listening to a lot of Bowie. A bit of the old glam stuff, but also ?Low?, ?Station to Station? and ?Heroes?. But also it?s good to listen to those records when thinking about producing records as they’re so radical and so adventurous and very inspirational.?
In the same piece, Alex also mentioned his love for Eno-era Roxy Music and how they too have been an inspiration. If these influences are apparent on the record, I for one look forward to the release of You Could Have It So Much Better with much anticipation.
Elsewhere,
Here follows the relevant bit…
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As their silver bus speeds down a dark Dutch highway, half the band — drummer Paul Thomson, 30, and baby-faced bassist Bob Hardy, 25 — have already retreated to the cryptlike bunks that take up the vehicle’s upper deck. Nearby, frontman Alex Kapranos, 33, is awake, if weary. He has fixed his intense stare on a laptop; the glow from the screen flatters his silent-movie-villain cheekbones, but not the dark circles around his green eyes.
Mindful of his sleeping bandmates, Kapranos begins to sing softly, reading the familiar lyrics of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” from the computer: “Oh, leave me alone . . . Oh, Henry, get off the phone.” The band’s sound engineer and I can’t help ourselves: “Hey, man,” we chime in. “This mellow-thighed chick just put my spine out of place,” Kapranos continues, in a sweet tenor that’s missing the snarl of his onstage voice.
“I always thought that it was ‘that mellow fat chick,'” Kapranos says a couple of minutes later. “That would be a much better line.” Franz Ferdinand’s leader is well qualified to make that judgment. After spending most of the last nineteen years either diligently dissecting great rock songs or writing his own, he can offer up expert opinions on everyone from Queen to obscure power-poppers Sparks (who recorded the Franz-appropriate tune “Rock & Roll People in a Disco World”). But tonight’s lesson is a crash course in Bowie, with a final exam on the way: In forty-eight hours, Kapranos has to perform “Suffragette City” for the first time in his life (as a duet with Jake Shears, of American disco-pop act the Scissor Sisters) in front of 60,000 or so people.
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Well, as we all know from aforementioned report on BowieNet, the performance at V was a huge success, with no reports of Alex fluffing the lyric to Suffragette City…unlike somebody else around here! (09.17.2002 NEWS: BLAMMO REPORTS FROM BOWIE REHEARSALS)