Photo by Michael Edwards

In the 10 years since the release of Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol's debut LP has been certified gold, topped numerous year-end critics' lists (including our own), inspired countless imitators, and probably soundtracked more than a few makeout sessions amongst well-groomed and sullen indie rock fans. But it never fails to remind you of whence it came. Suffused with faded glory, existential longing, and an irrepressible belief in itself, Bright Lights simply was how most people inside and outside the five boroughs visualized New York City in 2002: living with the heavy burdens of 9/11's fallout but still intoxicated with the possibilities the city and the future had to offer.

In fact, the album is so inseparable from time and place that it often threatens to be viewed as public domain, siphoned from the ether of downtown Manhattan, rather than having been meticulously crafted from untold hours of rehearsals. This oral history isn't meant to deconstruct that idea, nor is it meant as a straight chronology or a song-by-song analysis. Rather, it's an attempt to reintroduce the people who made it and take you through the five years between Interpol's formation at NYU and the August 2002 release of a record that still resonates to this day, even for people who are too young to remember the fall of the Twin Towers, or never lived anywhere near them.

The four members of Interpol are each intriguing in their own right, and they complement each other well. Guitarist Daniel Kessler is the brain trust, the one whose industry experience and musical ingenuity shaped the band and guided them through precarious beginnings. Lead singer and guitarist Paul Banks is the acerbic and somewhat reserved frontman, protective of his curiously quotable lyrics and the band's public persona. Drummer Sam Fogarino is nearly a decade older than the rest of the band and was the last to join-- a jocular rock lifer and proud chef who now lives in Athens, Ga. And then there's bassist Carlos Dengler, aka Carlos D: flamboyant, divisive, prone to virtuosic verbal flare-ups. Dengler's hedonistic social life quickly became a notorious talking point in indie rock; as of 2010, he is no longer a member of Interpol.

Photo by Michael Edwards

Kessler, Banks, and Dengler convene at New York University in 1997.

PAUL BANKS: I decided to come to NYU the moment I set foot in Washington Square Park. I was like, "Fuck it, I hope I get rejected everywhere because I gotta live here."

DANIEL KESSLER: Paul and Carlos weren't looking to be in a band at all. Paul was a songwriter and into his own thing; Carlos had kind of given up playing music.

CARLOS DENGLER: I finished high school in Lawrenceville, N.J. I was a metalhead back then, into all the typical shit: drinking Budweiser by the railroad tracks and listening to Metallica, just going crazy on that level.

But I came to NYU determined to be a scholar. I was very focused on my major, which was philosophy. If you had stopped me on the street when I arrived at NYU in 1996 and asked me, "Hey man, what's your plan?" I would've been like, "Well, I'm going to graduate from NYU with honors, and then find a grad school for continental philosophy. I want to read books for the rest of my life and be really fucking smart, and no one's going to be able to tell me what to think or say, because I'm going to be able to unravel whatever they think they know."

DANIEL KESSLER: Paul and Carlos happened to be open to the idea of joining a band, and I think they liked the songs I'd been working on. It was so much more important to me to find people that had the same sensibilities, versus how good they could play their instruments.

CARLOS DENGLER: When Daniel and I met, his story was, "I'm just playing with a drummer [Greg Drudy], but we need a bass player, would you be interested?"

DANIEL KESSLER: I just had a feeling about most of these guys. Consequently, I assembled people who didn't know each other, really. Carlos and Paul might've recognized each other from a class or something...

PAUL BANKS: Well, Carl-- I call him Carl-- was living in my dorm. I had totally eyeballed him because he was walking around in something like a monk's outfit: a skin-tight black shirt and a giant crucifix. I've always been a big fan of eccentric people, so I was like, "I fucking love that dude, he's got balls."

CARLOS DENGLER: I showed up at [Daniel's] apartment one day when he was throwing a party. I was on my way to go out to a club that night, and I came in full neo-priest goth-punk regalia, with a skirt and makeup. The poor guy was very confused. I'm sure he had been saying, "I found this bass player! My band's actually going to happen!" And then I show up, and everyone sees this quasi-drag queen. I definitely remember him going, "This is not how he looked when I found him in class!"

PAUL BANKS: When I talked to Dan, he was like, "You should come see this rehearsal." So I went and opened the door and there's that guy. I was excited to see Carlos in the room, dressed like a cool dude. They were already rocking "PDA".

CARLOS DENGLER: My very first experience playing with anybody in the band was just with Daniel at Funkadelic Studios, which was a real cheap place where anybody could just rent a room. We hit it off right away in terms of songwriting cohesion. It was very clear from the moment when we played "PDA"-- boom, it took off.

"I totally eyeballed Carlos because he was walking around

in a skin-tight black shirt and a giant crucifix. I was like,

'I fucking love that dude, he's got balls.'" -- Paul Banks

DANIEL KESSLER: We all moved towards a model, which was: I play something, then Paul does something, then Carlos does something, and then Greg chimes in, and so forth.

PAUL BANKS: I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter.

DANIEL KESSLER: There was a moment where Paul was playing, and the song sounded good, but he wasn't singing. We were having a hard time figuring out how it was all going to fit together. Then he and I had a conversation, and he was probably going to leave the band. But I was like, "Wait a minute, I really want to play with Paul, what if he just sang?"

PAUL BANKS: I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it.

DANIEL KESSLER: Carlos, myself, and Paul went to the smallest room-- like a closet at Funkadelic-- and played a very slow song, and then Paul just started singing. Me and Carlos just looked at each other, like, "Holy shit, man."

PAUL BANKS: My vocal style was affected by New York City: When you get in an 11-by-10 room with a drummer beating the shit out of a kit, shouting becomes the M.O.

Lyrics ended up usurping any of my poetry writing, which is all lost now, anyway. There was one moment early on when I was walking down the street in front of my dorm, and this crazy woman passed by a girl in front of me and said, "Put a lid on Shirley Temple and you'll be rid of the devil." I was like, "Fuck! Thank you crazy woman. That is the shit!" That line made a play in [Interpol EP's] "Specialist", at the first part of the bridge.

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Favoring suits and severe haircuts, Interpol developed a sartorial aesthetic that flew in the face of the jeans-and-leather jacket style pervading New York, and rock as a whole, at the time.

PAUL BANKS: We take the look seriously, and I think every band should. To phone-in any facet of the artistic idea is contrary to my overall philosophy.

CHRIS LOMBARDI [co-owner of Matador Records]: That's how they rolled, and it wasn't a bad look-- it's not like they were wearing clown suits. They were well-behaved gentleman, which was refreshing.

CARLOS DENGLER: You know the infamous tale of [Daniel] approaching me in our World War I class about my shoes, right?

DANIEL KESSLER: Carlos and I sometimes have a similar aesthetic as far as clothes. In that time period, I was already wearing fitted clothes and button-down shirts with black trousers.

CARLOS DENGLER: We were refugees from the goth scene who had grown disenchanted with it and then discovered this new mod scene that afforded us the same kind of attitude of dressing up. Looking extremely metrosexual, if you will, was still important-- but it was a little bit more serious and less science fiction-y.

PETER KATIS [producer, Turn on the Bright Lights]: They pulled it off because they were comfortable in it. Carlos had one alternate uniform, which was tracksuit pants and a black Duran Duran T-shirt. That's all I ever saw besides their regular snazzy outfits.

**Photo by Michael Edwards

Finding their way in the late 90s, the band took in all of the nightlife downtown Manhattan had to offer.

DANIEL KESSLER: I was living in the East Village and sharing a decent, one-bedroom apartment with roommates, dividing it with drywall. Paul and Carlos both lived there, too, bouncing around to various addresses. I went to bars and clubs in the East Village, back and forth between the old Brownies and Mercury Lounge. A lot of them are not there anymore. That's just the nature of that city.

CARLOS DENGLER: I was not interested in finding out which bands were playing at Mercury Lounge. I didn't really get into the indie music that was prevalent at the time. There were lots of kids around me at NYU that were very indie-centric-- I might even throw Daniel under the bus on that one.

PAUL BANKS: People used to go to the Pyramid and a place called Bar 13 on Sundays. It was like a hipster mecca where people would come and dance to soul music and wear suits. I found out later the Strokes always hung out there.

CARLOS DENGLER: This was before hipsterdom exploded in Williamsburg; what became hipsterdom was called the mod scene back then. There were lots of clubs that were focused on garage rock and soul from the 60s. And there was an extremely popular Britpop night that I went to religiously. For me, it was the best of both worlds, because I could hear goth-y 80s British rock like the Cure mixed in with Pulp and Suede.

"We never saw ourselves as a New York-style band--

we saw ourselves as an inspired band." -- Carlos Dengler

Interpol found themselves somewhat at odds with New York's prevailing musical trends-- just how much was debatable.

CHRIS LOMBARDI: I remember hanging out with Stuart Murdoch from Belle and Sebastian around this time, and he asked us, "So, all the good bands are in New York these days?" He wasn't joking. There was this idea that New York was-- no pun intended-- the ground zero for all the creative juices that were flowing in America. It really was all these indie rockers hanging out, pouring drinks. It was a total scene, for sure, and Interpol were a part of that.

PAUL BANKS: Although other bands were happening-- I know Daniel and Sam were bros with [Nick] Zinner before the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and I was in the same bars with the guys from the Strokes-- there wasn't a group of people being like, "We're part of the scene."

CHRIS LOMBARDI: At the time, I don't think they were anyone's favorites in the city.

PAUL BANKS: It really wasn't until the Strokes broke that anybody started talking about the New York scene. There was some protection in the idea that there was this romantic moment happening among musicians, but that didn't really exist. But still, alongside the Strokes, there was TV on the Radio, the Walkmen, Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs-- that shit's all real and it was all coming out at the same time. So, historically, it was definitely a scene, but not the kind of scene where we were all feeling it at the time.

CARLOS DENGLER: We were always surprised about how much the New York label was attached to us because we never saw ourselves as a New York-style band-- we saw ourselves as an inspired band.

**Photo by Samuel Kirsenbaum

Interpol made self-released demo EPs between 1997 and 2000 in the hopes of catching labels' attention. Meanwhile, the roles of each member began to form.

DANIEL KESSLER: Those first couple years we just tried to climb the ladder, opening for other bands, starting a mailing list. We got to open for Mogwai at Bowery Ballroom in early '99, and that was a big deal.

PAUL BANKS: Basically, every band that makes it has some dude with some sense of business. I don't know if our band would've been so successful were it not for Daniel's insight into how things really work.

SAM FOGARINO: I've always respected Daniel. Back then, he was in his early 20s and he really came off as a guy who had it together, more than most middle-aged men I knew.

PAUL BANKS: I was sort of in la-la land: "Let's get wasted and make rock music." That was as far as I thought about it. Daniel was the one who was diligently saying, "We should make a demo, send it out, play shows but not too many shows, get on shows with touring bands that are coming to New York." I was just like, "Cool man, that sounds good."

CARLOS DENGLER: It never occurred to me to promote Interpol at the goth clubs, because I thought it was a little too indie for those people. But as soon as I started going over to the mod scene, I started printing out flyers; before Myspace, you flyered.

PAUL BANKS: I had to muster something inside to say, "OK, let's go do this in front of people." One of my favorite memories of those early days was playing in front of 35 people and looking over at Carlos in his whole getup, just rocking out like it was a fucking arena filled with screaming people. I thought, "That's odd." [laughs] The bravado was out of sync with my personality and the amount of people in the room. Back then, I looked over and was like, "What are you doing, man?" But as time went on I admired his commitment-- that guy had his performance shit down from the first day. I realized that the dude's a star.

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By 2000, Interpol had released a limited run of the Fukd I.D. #3 EP on UK label Chemikal Underground. But shortly thereafter, original drummer Greg Drudy left the band to focus on his own projects. Kessler soon reached out to Sam Fogarino, an acquaintance who worked at a vintage clothing store.

CARLOS DENGLER: Greg was great. But when I think back to some things that were happening backstage, I cannot conceive of him having gone through what we all eventually went through. The tours and the albums and the interviews-- the whole life. I think he knew that somewhere inside of his soul.

PAUL BANKS: When I say I had a cosmic confidence that we were capable of writing good music, I'm speaking about that time when we met Sam. Greg is actually a really great drummer and a great guy. I never want to sound like I am belittling his contributions in the early days, but when Sam joined, there was an immediacy of, like, "Here we go."

DANIEL KESSLER: When Sam joined we were reborn and became a much better band.

SAM FOGARINO: We met up for a drink, and they explained where the band was, how they were doing well in the city. I was playing with a [folk-pop] outfit called the Blasco Ballroom-- the music was great, but I wanted to start playing rock music again.

CARLOS DENGLER: We met Sam at a bar in the Lower East Side, he seemed really cool and he was obviously older than us. We were like, "Wow, this guy has tons of experience, he knows everything." He struck us as a professional immediately. And then we went to seem him play in Blasco Ballroom and we were like, "He's fucking good."

SAM FOGARINO: Their former drummer was capable, but he was kind of sterile. He locked it in, but it didn't have any swagger-- and that's what Dan was really looking for.

CARLOS DENGLER: All of a sudden, Sam walks in the room and we start playing the exact same songs we've been playing, but it's like [racing car noises]. I was really giddy!

PAUL BANKS: It could have everything to do with the fact that he was a guy who had been in rock bands for a decade, and he was cooking food off of a gas grill in a fucking empty warehouse because he was a lifer. And that was something I was keenly aware of: Now, we were all giving everything for this.

SAM FOGARINO: I was already in my early 30s, starting to go, "What am I doing?" I wasn't going to go back to school and get a square job or anything like that, but something had to change. I was unhappy in my marriage, and retail, and being in the band I was in. It had to go either way, and sure enough, it did.

CARLOS DENGLER: We had this ritual where we would rehearse and then all walk back to our apartments together through the East Village. After we first played with Sam, Daniel and Paul were talking about something on the way home, and I had to interrupt them: "I appreciate what you're discussing right now, but you need to talk about the fact that our songs have never ever sounded this good before." They agreed. And then I was like, "Can we have him come on board, please?" I was desperate, you know?

SAM FOGARINO: There hadn't really been an official entrance into the band until couple of months in, when they were like, "We have a show booked on May 1, do you want to play it with us?" I was thinking, "How awkward can you be?" [laughs] I had been coming to this band's rehearsal space for three months-- I want to play!

CARLOS DENGLER: For me, it was like having John Bonham in the band, like the best of both worlds: I can be in the pure universe of floating melodies and melancholy textures, but underneath I get my Bonham fix, where I can land my bass notes. It was fucking magic.

SAM FOGARINO: On my way to the first show, I was wearing my favorite ad hoc mod suit-- you know, a JC Penney special from 1965 or whatever-- and I had this sinking fear that they would be dressed in track suits, or baggy jeans. I walked into the makeshift dressing room at the Mercury Lounge, and lo and behold, everybody had a similar thing going on. I just kind of smiled at everybody, and it was either Carlos or Paul that gave me the nod of approval.

**Photo by Andrew Zaeh

In April, 2001, Interpol traveled across the Atlantic to play a small UK tour and record a session for legendary BBC radio figure John Peel, who had caught wind of their demo tape.

CARLOS DENGLER: Our assumption was that we were going to go there, show up, and hopefully there would be people at the shows-- not necessarily to see us, because who the fuck were we, but just people to play to.

DANIEL KESSLER: We were very, very green. We each brought very little stuff, probably one suit, and like a change of clothes.

SAM FOGARINO: The tour ended in London and it was a sold-out show. It was a small room, but it didn't matter. And then going to do a Peel Session? Right then, I could've been like, "OK, I'm done."

PAUL BANKS: We were all in it for good, so it felt very validating. We were playing shows; we were a real band.

CARLOS DENGLER: The UK tour was an epic conquest, but it was the epitome of the DIY experience-- we were staying on people's floors. But that's when I signed my first autograph.

The Strokes had already become the NME media darling, so we were there in the wake-- little did we know that we were piggybacking on something that would ultimately propel us to similar heights. But at the time we were just-- I shouldn't say "we," I was always the hater in the band-- I would say, "Who the fuck do these guys think they are? I've got to go back to my shitty desk job when I get out of here, and they get to go to Sweden? Fuck that. They're not so special."

[While in the UK], we were hanging around smoking hash, and [our booking agent] was like, "Have you heard the Strokes EP?" I was like, "What is this fucking EP everyone keeps fucking talking about?" He puts it on, and I was like, "This is actually kind of good, I have to admit." I did not want to believe that.

DANIEL KESSLER: We all stayed in the one room of the guy who booked our tour; it was a bit humbling. But for the Peel Session, we were in the same room where Zeppelin and Bowie did stuff, and we worked with some of the best audio engineers in the world. I feel like it came out pretty well.

SAM FOGARINO: It didn't get broadcast immediately, but we drove around town listening to John Peel anyway. And that was just a thrill in itself, to realize that a week later he was going to be saying "Interpol" on the air. Those recordings got circulated to different labels, and that's when Matador caught on.

"It felt like a board meeting with four businessmen who happened to be in the business of making music, and who were very serious

about their art." -- Matador co-owner Chris Lombardi

CHRIS LOMBARDI: The first thing they sent me [was their demo]. I had been sent it a couple of times, it was not a pressing thing. Then I brought the CD-R with me on a family trip and I cracked it open in the car, and I came back and called [Matador co-founder] Gerard [Cosloy] and I was like, "Let's talk about Interpol."

CARLOS DENGLER: We would all wait for Daniel to book another show, create another contact, another line of attack. That was our pace. We were like the Knights Templar and he was King Arthur. And then Gerard got wind of a certain Mercury Lounge show that we were headlining, and we got the call to come to his office.

CHRIS LOMBARDI: The first time they stepped in, I don't think they were all wearing suits, but Paul was wearing a suit. They were really fucking deadly serious.

SAM FOGARINO: The situation was totally defused when we saw how awkward Chris and Gerard were. Sitting down at a conference table was nobody's forte. It was kind of uncomfortable, and I broke the ice by talking about an old Bailter Space record, Robot World, that they released in the early 90s. The next thing you know, we're talking about possibilities.

PAUL BANKS: I was a big fan of Matador bands-- I was way into Cat Power at that point-- and I was very happy to be there. Daniel had a master plan.

CHRIS LOMBARDI: It was different than any meeting we'd ever had before. It felt like I was in a board meeting, like they were four businessmen who happened to be in the business of making music, and who were very serious about their art.

CARLOS DENGLER: A couple weeks later, or maybe less, our manager came to our rehearsal space and announced that Matador were interested in signing a two-record deal with us.

PAUL BANKS: We went to this bar in the East Village and toasted to our imminent record deal. And then it was like, "What's the next step? When can we quit our jobs?" That was Carlos' go-to question: "Can I quit my job yet?"

DANIEL KESSLER: To finally have someone say "yes" was a big deal. I would have been excited if we were doing a record with anyone at that point, but I couldn't believe we were doing it with Matador.

CARLOS DENGLER: I'll never forget Daniel slapping his hands on the floor, like the giddiest little three-year-old I've ever seen in my entire life.

Soon afterward, the cataclysmic events of 9/11 shook the band to its core.