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Franz Ferdinand DVD Comes Complete With Cheesy Karaoke Videos
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Actually, if you're Franz Ferdinand, once you're up, you're not up. After the KROQ visit, the bandmembers retreat to the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip, where they return to their beds.
By mid-afternoon, they stroll into the plush hotel lobby, girlfriends, managers, roadies in tow. Just as their shuttle van pulls up, drum tech Andy Knowles triggers a beat on a keyboard sticking out of his suitcase and goes into a song-and-dance routine that has Kapranos highly amused. This is the same guy (the touring drummer for Kapranos' girlfriend's band, the Fiery Furnaces) who later calls McCarthy a "silly sausage."
The mood is much lighter than six hours ago, and not just because of the sleep. Franz have received some invigorating news from home.
"It's pretty exciting at the moment," says Kapranos. "We just heard that our record went to #1 in the U.K. and seems to be top-five around the rest of the world as well."
"Number two in Deutschland," adds a proud McCarthy, who grew up in Germany.
"Who's beaten us, Celine Dion or something?" Kapranos asks his friend.
"Bon Jovi," McCarthy replies. "But Celine Dion and Franz fits in really well, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah, but Celine Dion's got longer arms than us," the singer says. "You ever notice that Celine Dion has very, very long arms? It's what makes her so expressive when she's singing, waving those long arms about."
"It's what makes the hits," jokes McCarthy, his early morning stubble still present.
Outside of this peculiar conversation, the band never mentions album sales or anything relating to success or expectations the rest of the day. The sophomore slump, it seems, never crossed their minds.
"I don't understand this idea of there being pressure to write a second record," Kapranos says. "It's like, say you're really into football or baseball or something like that. It's like saying, 'Are you really under pressure to go to the second season?' No, you don't. It's something you really enjoy doing, so you look forward to going to do it rather than dreading it."
"It was more like a holiday for us," McCarthy says later of the You Could Have It So Much Better sessions. "We like writing music and we like drinking wine and drinking beer."
"Sometimes whiskey as well," Hardy clarifies.
This afternoon, the band is visiting a fellow Scot, Craig Ferguson, and his TV show, "The Late Late Late Late Late Late Late Show," as Kapranos jokingly calls the 12:35 a.m. program.
As the van travels south toward CBS Studios, Hardy buries his head in his book, Thomson and McCarthy chat up their wives, and Kapranos stares out the window, reflecting the palm trees on his black sunglasses, which apparently he misplaces at least once a day (as he did at KROQ).
Kapranos, bone-skinny with pale skin and a biting smile, sports a vintage yellow T-shirt that reads, "Too Black Too Strong! Kingsboro Old Timer's Day Basketball Camp." Like most of his clothes, at least when he's not being dressed by hot French designer Hedi Slimane, it has a thrift-store look to it.
For "The Late Late Show" taping, the singer changes into the same red-and-black striped shirt Franz wear in the "Do You Want To" video, an unofficial uniform that Kapranos claims came together when he and Thomson bought the same shirt at the same time in different countries.
"I was in New York at the time and Paul was in London and I think it was within hours of each other we went into separate second-hand shops in both cities and bought exactly the same shirt, so there was some kind of fate involved," the singer says.
Once past the pack of soccer moms and Marines lined up for "The Price Is Right" and inside CBS, Kapranos marvels at the cast photographs on the walls. "Is 'Arrested Development' on CBS?" he asks one of network's publicists. "No," she answers awkwardly.
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Photo: Epic
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