Strokes to Put Out "Fire"

Two years ago, the Strokes' first album set off the New York Rock explosion -- their second arrives into the resulting inferno. Room on Fire, the follow-up to Is This It, will be released on October 21st.

After scrapping initial sessions with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, the five-piece worked again with It producer Gordon Raphael. But Room On Fire trades in some of its predecessor's roughshod sloppiness for calculated musicianship. "We spent a lot of time looking for specific sounds," drummer Fabrizio Moretti told Rolling Stone.

Fire's eleven songs include the rave-up "Meet Me in the Bathroom," a live standard, but also tinges of reggae and the soul ballad "Under Control" -- "our first more mellow song," according to guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.

The Strokes are planning a run of club dates in advance of the album's release, as well as a month-long Tuesday-night residency on Late Night With Conan O'Brien in November.

Room on Fire track listing:

What Ever Happened?
Reptilia
Automatic Stop
12:51
You Talk Way Too Much
Between Love and Hate
Meet Me in the Bathroom
Under Control
The End Has No End
The Way It Is
I Can't Win

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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