Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos: ‘I had to disguise myself to go Christmas shopping in Glasgow’

Alex Kapranos was born in March 1972 in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire. He moved to Scotland as a seven-year-old and from the early 90s became a key figure in the Glasgow music scene, playing in bands including The Yummy Fur and putting on club nights.He formed Franz Ferdinand in 2001 and, three years later, their second single Take Me Out became an international hit while reaching number three in the UK chart.

The band’s self-titled debut album went on to sell more than three million copies worldwide and won the 2004 Mercury Music Prize. They’ve since released a further five albums, as well as an album as FFS – a collaboration with Sparks.

Speaking to the Big Issue for his Letter to My Younger Self, Kapranos reflected on the influence of his dad, how success affected him and the joy of fatherhood.

When I was 16, I was obsessed with my guitar, and with writing and recording songs. My best friend at school was Andrew, who I’m still really good friends with. I came to Glasgow when I was 10 and Andrew and I were the geeky, awkward, misfit kids. We bonded because we both had academic dads and we’d both been sent to school with a briefcase, which was a good way to get a doing. I remember we took our briefcases and we went sledging on them. So we became good friends and we got into playing guitar about the same time. I played him The Beatles, and we got obsessed with them. 

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Andrew and I wrote so many songs together, but we weren’t interested in playing live at all, because we had gone to see Huey Lewis and the News – Back to the Future was my favourite film. We were right at the back in the bleachers and the sound was fucking horrible. And the vibe wasn’t good. I remember standing at the train station afterwards saying that was a bit rubbish. So we came to the conclusion all live music was rubbish. 

A big driver for playing the guitar and playing music was my dad. My dad had been in beat groups in the 60s. He used to play in the working men’s clubs around South Shields. So there was always a guitar in the house and he was always playing Buddy Holly and Bo Diddley and Rolling Stones songs. So I always knew that music wasn’t just something that came out of a box in the corner of a room. It was also something that came out of a human being. I managed to talk my parents into getting me a guitar when I was a teenager. But my dad had flunked all his exams when he was at school, and then he decided to give up the band because he wanted to be an academic. And in his mind, that’s what I had to do as well, right? And so he was both the person who introduced me to the world of music and showed me the joy in that, and the figure of authority I had to rebel against.

We felt like a very ordinary family in some ways, but a very abnormal family in others. My dad’s Greek, so I had two different experiences going on simultaneously. We would go over to Greece, and I would see my Greek family. And I always knew about my Greekness. There’s a song on the new record called Black Eyelashes, where I talk about my identity for the first time. It’s something I’d never really addressed, I’d always shoved it under the carpet of my memory, a mixed-up sense of identity. I would go over to Greece and my Greek family would say, ‘Yeah, you don’t look very Greek. And you don’t really speak Greek. So how can you properly be Greek?’ 

From 1991, I was putting bands on in the 13th Note [live music venue in Glasgow]. That became my life for a good few years. And I really, really loved that. There was something very special about that place and time. There was a real community, like a social identity that was unique to that geographical place and moment in time, and it was so incredibly fertile. So many bands came through, not just the big names like Stuart Braithwaite [Mogwai] and Stuart Murdoch [Belle and Sebastian] and Urusei Yatsura and Bis, who went on to have a cultural impact on the wider world. But there were loads of other bands who were making really, really great music. It was a remarkable moment in time and a wonderful experience. 

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When I was 27 I was in this other band called The Blisters, and we put a record out on Roadrunner. I think it sold maybe 20, maybe 25 copies. Of course, we were immediately dropped by the label. And I remember turning 27 and just thinking, blimey, I’m supposed to be dead by this age, having already made a huge artistic statement. And I remember feeling quite bleak about it for a wee while, and then realising that nothing had really changed since I’d been 13 or 14. I still loved writing tunes and playing them with my pals and I was playing with loads of different folk, some of whom came to be part of Franz Ferdinand. I’d got to the point where I’d presumed that I would never pay my rent with money from music. I’d always presumed I’d always have to have another job or do some other kind of hustle to cover that. But as soon as we started Franz Ferdinand it got a bit weird – the first single went to number 44 in the charts. And that kind of blew our minds. Not the indie charts but the actual charts with George Michael in them. We couldn’t believe it. 

With the second single [Take Me Out, which reached number three in the UK Chart] it went kind of mental. And thing is, I didn’t really have the time to think about it. It was just going so crazy. I wasn’t really thinking about anything. I almost got bankrupted because I was so busy, I didn’t pay any bills. I didn’t go home, and I didn’t pay my electricity for a year. They were going to take me to court. So it was a really intense, very crazy year. Much of my life went on pause and that goes for friendships, relationships, everything that’s going on in your life, it just kind of stops dead. Very weird. 

I would tell my younger self to stop being such a perfectionist and to enjoy a little bit more. I was really, really harsh on myself. I was desperate to attain some kind of artistic purity, and I had a clear idea in my head of what it was that it should be. I would come off stage, and all I could think of was how I’d fucked up, how I’d made a mistake there, or how I hadn’t delivered a vocal the way I wanted to. I would really punish myself, and I would never allow myself to just let go and enjoy the joy of the performance. A few years later, I learned to not give a damn about the trivialities that most folk in the audience don’t give a shit about.

People do recognise me sometimes. I found it quite a shock at first. I guess I hadn’t really thought through that side of it. I remember coming back to Glasgow in 2004 and I wanted to do my Christmas shopping – I was trying to go into town, and it was a nightmare, the band was everywhere. So people knew my face. I remember trying to disguise myself, borrowing a pair of specs and sticking on a big blue puffer jacket and combing my hair back from my face, but it didn’t stop people coming up. They just came up and said, ‘You’re that guy from that band – why are you wearing a big puffer jacket. Why have you got specs on, why are you wearing your hair in that stupid way?’ So, that didn’t work.

I became a father last year, very late in life. It was something I wasn’t expecting. It really had an impact on me, and it’s made going on tour very difficult; saying goodbye to the wee guy is really painful. Before my boy was born, lots of people were saying to me, you’re gonna have so much love for your kid. It’s gonna be incredible. But I wasn’t really prepared for how overwhelming it would be, how much love I had for him. 

On the album I write about having the human fear, the big existential fear we all have. Moments of introspection can easily overwhelm us, the fear of non existence or the futility of it all. And I was prone to that. I can’t deny it. And I used to kind of hate myself for submitting to it. But when my kid was born, I felt this overwhelming sense of love and I realised it was an unfamiliar kind of love. It was a love I’d never known before. I thought I knew what love was but this was a different feeling. And somehow it made all my usual fears feel kind of insignificant. They seemed really trivial in comparison to this sensation. And that felt liberating. I don’t think I’ve ever known a joy quite like it.

Franz Ferdinand’s new album The Human Fear is out now. They will play three dates in the UK in March as part of a world tour.

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