The British Indie Disco has a long tradition.
Dating back to the days of Orange Juice and New Order, through The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays,
it was Guitar Pop that moved you, that you could dance to.
But after the death of Britpop there was little to groove to.
You can sway and sob to Coldplay, you can do a hyperactive pogo to The Libertines
but you can’t dance.
In 2004 Franz Ferdinand reignited this shimmying fire by again colliding jangle and funk.
And they did so with the best love as a battlefield metaphor this side of Pat Benatar.
This is New British Canon and this is the story of “Take Me Out.”
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Franz Ferdinand formed in Scotland in 2002, within the interconnected Glasgow art school scene.
Singer and guitarist Alex Kapranos had been a fixture of the scene since the early 90s,
booking shows and playing in various bands, from the jazzy film-noir lo fi of The Karelia,
to the antsy ska-revival of The Amphetameanies
He and future Franz drummer Paul Thomson met while both playing in the John Peel approved
The Yummy Fur in 1997.
However, the amount of success these projects had was very limited.
"I was about to give up before this started.
I didn't have a proper job or anything, I didn't know what I was gonna do.
I was just starting to think it was a bit fruitless.
I really wasn't enjoying making music much."
Nearing thirty years old, as one last ditch attempt to make a life out of music,
Kapranos decided to form a new band, and went about collecting members with similar ideals.
Kapranos met Bob Hardy at a party via an ex-girlfriend.
Hardy was not a musician, instead an art graduate, but after an argument over the essence of
art, Kapranos convinced him to join his new band and taught him how to play bass.
The last piece of the puzzle was Nick McCarthy.
Having studied piano and jazz bass at the Munich Conservatoire of Music,
McCarthy moved to Glasgow, and met Kapranos at a party after trying to steal his vodka and getting into a scuffle.
After the punches had been thrown, McCarthy would become the band’s second guitarist.
The group got their name after a discussion about a racehorse called The Archduke,
which led them onto the subject of The Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
the man whose death triggered World War I.
And liking the alliteration, they took his name for themselves which further fuelled their ambition.
"I like the idea that, if we become popular, maybe the words Franz Ferdinand will make
people think of the band instead of the historical figure."
Musically Franz Ferdinand were kicking back against the indie bands they saw around them,
with obscure reference points, overindulgent compositions and a Fall-esque need to be avant garde.
With a focus on writing actual songs with pop choruses,
the essence of the Franz Ferdinand manifesto would be “Music girls can dance to.”
"It seemed ridiculous that you would go to a club to dance and a gig to either stand
around with your arms folded or mosh about, throwing yourself violently into others.
Bands were just playing to other blokes in bands, knowingly cross-referencing each other's music,
but never playing any tunes.
We wanted to change that - we wanted to make people dance."
Putting their own separate spin on the parallel New York dance-punk scene,
Franz Ferdinand were taking the electronic disco of Giorgio Moroder and playing it as a flesh-and-blood rock band.
They would soon get compared to angular post-punk groups like Gang of Four, Wire and Joy Division,
but their true forefathers were a lot more Scottish,
the funky-yet-jangly Postcard Record bands like Orange Juice
and Josef K,
as well as Pop Aural signees The Fire Engines.
The Franz Ferdinand look was also important, brushing off the casual jeans and trainers
of the post-Britpop set, and instead going with razor-sharp side partings, self-tailored
dress shirts and pointy shoes.
Even their clothes were angular.
By May 2003, word had gotten around to the nation’s A&R men, trying to sign this danceable new band.
Though courted by majors, the band went with independent label Domino,
mostly due to owner Lawrence Bell’s unshowy tactics.
"Lawrence had a totally different attitude from all the other labels.
He never said he'd buy us some big fancy meal - he cooked us dinner instead.
We liked him and we liked his ideals."
The label would release the Dart of Pleasure EP in September 2003,
which would give the band their first taste of national music press exposure,
music critics obsessed with the title track’s all-in-German chant coda, written by the formerly Munich-based McCarthy.
It would peak at number 44 in the UK singles chart,
but it would be the band’s second single that would realise Kapranos’ dream of a career in music.
For their debut album, Franz Ferdinand relocated to Malmö, Sweden to record with Cardigans
producer Tore Johansson.
He had been impressed with the quality of their demos, in spite of their lo-fi nature.
"The demos had been recorded very simply in rehearsal rooms and kitchens,
so they were very rough, but they worked well.
The album is just kind of a luxury version of that.”
While the short-story punk storm of “Jacqueline,”
the fluid sexuality of “Michael”
and the bitter cynicism with starry eyes of “The Dark of the Matinee”
would all win the band favour, “Take Me Out,” with its defiant start-stop-edness was always going to stand above.
Surprisingly, the concept for the song came from Kapranos’ watching 2001 sniper-thriller
Enemy at the Gates; wherein Jude Law’s Soviet marksman faces off against Ed Harris’ Nazi
sharpshooter in a duel to the death.
With the help of this metaphor, Kapranos captures the very complicated emotion of wanting to
take that chance on love, but not wanting to leave yourself exposed to hurt and rejection,
but doing so in very few words, cutting to the heart of matter.
And the production and music follows the same mindset, remaining as uncluttered as possible.
"When we're recording, we remove anything that's irrelevant or unnecessary.
Why play a chord when you can play one note?"
Musically, the song’s bravada triumph is the self-assured swing between the simplistic Strokes-alike verses
and the disco stomp of its chorus.
But the two sections' difference in tempo would prove an issue.
Despite the difficulties involved in changing between two separate tempos mid-song,
Franz Ferdinand had played ”Take Me Out” enough by this point that they were able to record
the song live no problem, with no post-production cut-and-pasting required.
The song’s infinitely hummable main guitar riff was inspired by blues player Howlin’ Wolf
and specifically the way he would sing to his guitar and the guitar would “sing”
back in the form of emotive lyrical licks.
It’s catchy danceable beat contrasts with the depressive subject matter.
But as Kapranos states, that contradiction is an essential hallmark in classic pop music.
"To most people it feels like this great life-affirming song, but it's using a metaphor of shooting
each other for the end of a relationship.
I was watching the Beatles Anthology recently, and they were singing 'I'm Down':
You watch them shaking their heads and the audience is screaming.
It was amazing.
The lyrics are saying 'I'm down' -- but the music is saying, 'I'm up,' you know?"
This awkward yet danceable collision of Enemy at the Gates, post-punk, Howlin’ Wolf,
Giorgio Moroder and Beatles pathos should be a mess, but instead is iconic.
“Someone said, ‘God, that song works even though it does everything a song shouldn’t do -
it changes all the time and slows down as well.’
But, that’s exactly what we wanted: to create that lurching feeling you get when you go
on a roller coaster and your stomach falls away.”
In November 2003, the British public got their first chance at experiencing the disco rock
of “Take Me Out,” when Franz Ferdinand performed on the Jools Holland show.
UK Radio stations and music television soon picked up on the song, so by the time the
single was released on the 12th January 2004, it went straight in at number 3 on the UK chart.
Denied the top spot by “All This Time” from talent show winner Michelle McManus
and “Milkshake” by Kelis.
“I feel some sense of achievement that we went through an independent label,
that we’re four guys totally removed from the pop music industry machine.
We don’t have stylists, we write our own songs, we play our own instruments,
we do things completely on our own terms - yet we managed to get into the Top Three of the charts.
We managed to take on that industry and to me that’s really gratifying.
You don’t have to be a sell out.“
Their self-titled debut arrived in February, also charting at number 3,
and remained in the UK charts for 82 weeks;
its two other singles “The Dark of the Matinee” and “Michael” both going top twenty.
Not only did the public have Franz fever, so too did the indie press.
Said Drowned in Sound: “Piece everything together and this is where your mouth might,
quite rightly, start to drool a little.
This is only the beginning and it’s a bloody good start.”
The album went on to win the Mercury Music Prize,
when up against tough competition from The Streets, Amy Winehouse, Snow Patrol and Belle and Sebastian.
The single was a shot in the arm for the UK guitar music scene but also the NME.
Since the downfall of Britpop in the late 90s the magazine had, The Libertines aside,
very few reasons to be excited about British music.
There was the wet acoustics of Coldplay, Athlete and Keane, and flirtations with poptism,
but the majority of front covers were still going to American acts.
“Take Me Out” proved that UK’s post-punk revival could be just as populist and marketable
as The Strokes, Interpol or Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
New British talent like Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, The Futureheads, Maximo Park,
Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Two Door Cinema Club and pseudo-Brits The Killers would emerge in the aftermath,
a new wave of British guitar pop.
With “pop” ceasing being a dirty word:
"You can label 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' whatever way you want: grunge or rock or alternative,
but essentially that's the greatest pop song of the '90s.
That has been, for me, one of the greatest tragedies of recent years,
this idea that if you position yourself outside of the mainstream then you can't play a pop melody."
Oftentimes a band will get hyped in the UK, and that will translate to nothing but disappointment across the Atlantic,
see for example the majority of the New British Canon series.
But Franz Ferdinand’s album went platinum in the US, making its way to number 32 on
the Billboard 200.
“Take Me Out” would hit number 3 on the Alternative chart and 66 on the Hot 100.
Franz Ferdinand were symbolic of a shift in what alternative radio meant.
Instead of the traditional Nu Metal, Pop Punk or Red Hot Chili Pepper songs,
danceable indie rock was starting to trend.
The moment would soon pass, but other similarly groovy guitar pop alternative smashes would
follow in “Take Me Out”’s example:
The quality of the “Take Me Out” itself was shown by the diverse selection of artists
that have covered it since.
But despite it being played almost to exhaustion, both by radio and the band itself,
Kapranos still loves it.
“Take Me Out” endures in Indie Discos the world over as a latter day “Come On Eileen,”
its opening notes ringing out to signal you have less than a minute to get
to the dancefloor before moves must be busted.
It more than exceeded the band’s expectations.
To this day, Franz Ferdinand are still making indie fans get up and dance.
And motivating them to take that shot.
Thanks for watching.
So is “Take Me Out” your go-to Indie Disco staple or do you have another favourite?
Let me know by commenting down below.
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