Cover Story: The Strokes - Elegantly Wasted

He is supposed to arrive at 9 p.m. when he shows up, it is well after midnight. But he will make up for it by spending the next seven hours and forty-five minutes with me. Not because he likes me or doesn't like me. Just because that is what he does. His name is Julian Casablancas, and if he weren't a rock star, he'd be the neighborhood drunk with a heart of gold.

The lead singer of the Strokes, New York's finest purveyors of coolly detached retro-rock boogie, is blessed with the ability to talk shit. He can hold forth all night, run around in verbal circles for fifteen minutes, lose his place and then start all over again. He doesn't seem to have anywhere to be. He is in the moment. He doesn't even own a cell phone, a computer or a watch. But his intentions are the noblest.

"Doing heroin is like walking around with a terrorist as your friend," he tells a buddy who has started sniffing the dust. Casablancas' cautionary monologue lasts twenty rambling, heartfelt minutes, slurred with his lips two inches away from his friend's. "It's like taking a terrorist around to parties," he continues. "You never know when it's going to blow up on you."

Casablancas is wearing a green work shirt with the words u.s. garbage company over the pocket, and faded black pants. The shirt is the property of his roommate, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. On his wrist, there are three fraying colored wristbands that he has not bothered to remove -- one from a Kings of Leon concert a week ago, another from a Stooges show two weeks ago and a third from a Vines show from who knows when. I will see Casablancas nearly every day for the next week: His clothes and bracelets will not change, though he claims his underwear and socks do. He will end every night in the company of a girl he does not sleep with. And he will talk about everything from strip clubs to night terrors to his hatred of Pringles potato chips. But when it comes time for a formal sit-down, he will give me the worst interview I have ever experienced. It will last seven minutes.