The producer Gordon Raphael’s uncompromising production for The Strokes in the early noughties redefined rock’n’roll for a new generation, and gifted the world with an album that was so quintessentially evocative of the smart sneering wit of The Big Apple that one of its tracks, New York City Cops, had to be removed post-9/11. He has recently revisited the New York scene that made him an indie music icon, recording a mammoth twenty-three undiscovered NYC bands in a mere twenty-seven days in the same radical and quick-fire approach he took to producing The Strokes’ culture-shifting back-to-basics breakthrough. Alongside this project Raphael has also been working with creative health charity CULTUR.ART on why the arts – from music and film to fine art and gaming – can be vital for our physical and mental wellbeing, which is perhaps fitting for a man whose life has been guided by an unwavering belief in the power of music, no matter the setbacks he faced along the way. We caught up with him at a CULTUR.ART symposium at The Social in London to talk about his career, his recent ambitious musical undertaking and the importance of creativity for mental health.

Your work with creative health charity CULTUR.ART encourages people from outside the arts to start creative journeys in music and beyond. What are your first memories of being a musician?
When I was in eighth grade, I met this kid who was already a very accomplished guitar player and composer. He’d already written a shoebox full of cassettes worth of original songs. I joined his band, and I’ll never forget the feeling at age 13 of stepping on a stage and playing a piano with electric guitar and drums, and just relating to the audience and hearing that sound, and feeling that surge of power and fun that happens from being in a live performance like that.

Your work with CUTLUR.ART focuses on how the arts can be vital for our physical and mental wellbeing. How important is music in that regard?
Music brings people out of their houses into an establishment, and they are unified by the sound – they’re inspired, they’re filled with energy. There’s something about
not only music as an art form, but also as a public ritual where people are performing music, and people are hearing music as an audience in a group setting. I think that’s
very interesting. There are certain things that are very hard to communicate. But if you can write a song and put in some really powerful emotions and tell a story, it
allows for a form of communication that’s beyond words.

‍One thing that stands out from your memoir The World Is Going To Love This is how for decades before your first major success you never gave up, what
made you persevere?
I’m very encouraged by the power of music. And that’s what leads to perseverance. I’m a producer, and I’m a musician but that all came from being a fan of music. When I was a little kid and somebody would play me a song that resonated with me, it would be one of the most exciting feelings in the world. So, when I go out and I meet
somebody that is that good and I get to record them and work with that music, it is beyond exciting. It’s like this is my purpose. I was in probably 22 bands before Sky Cries Mary and none of them really got much attention. Then, all of a sudden, I joined Sky Cries Mary in 1991 and we got record deals and publishing deals and went touring and made six albums. And then I recorded hundreds of bands. But then I met The Strokes, and, suddenly, I’ve got gold records and platinum records, and I’m in demand to produce other people. You just never know when one thing is going to blow up, and, suddenly, it’s like, ‘Yeah this is what I’m doing it for, I knew this was
going to happen.’

So much has been said about The Strokes debut Is This It. As its producer, what do you think made it resonate so much?
The musicianship and the incredible dedication they had to performing everything to a very high level, plus the song writing is just so interesting and so controlled. Then, of course, there are Julian’s vocals, and his lyrics, and the way he’s delivering all of that is completely innovative and shockingly fresh. Even to this day. On the album
here are literally 10 audio tracks. It’s so minimal. There’s not one bit of reverb, not one bit of doubling the vocals, and no effects whatsoever – no tambourine, no harmonies. It’s so real. It’s just the essentials. For the vocal sound, my first impulse was that I wanted to do something very different with them, so I used my experience
with industrial music. I showed The Strokes what completely distorted vocals were like, and they didn’t like it. They didn’t want to go for that. But they suggested I wound it back a bit to moderately distorted vocals. So it was a mixture of my tendency for this extreme industrial sound, and them picking up on that and pushing it where it needed to go.

Over 20 years on from redefining NYC rock’n’roll with The Strokes, how do you feel about the NYC rock scene today?
Because of the pandemic there is an outburst of new musicians forming bands and taking rock music very seriously on a very high level, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. Maybe it was the severity of having to stay home for a couple of years and not go out when these people were sixteen and seventeen years old. Right now, this group of people seems particularly on fire for rock music and playing in incredible bands and shows. It certainly wasn’t that way at the turn of the century, in the early 2000s. There weren’t that many about.

Find out more about CULTUR.ART here and keep up with Gordon Raphael on Instagram.