The Strokes guitarist has swapped hellraising New York for clean-living LA, become a father and collaborated with a poet on his new solo album. Life, he says, is a new kind of complicated
Albert Hammond Jr is standing in his backyard in Los Angeles, talking to me on the phone. “You want the camera on?” he asks. “OK. I don’t like it but let’s do it.” He holds his mobile low, so his face is elongated; his curly hair is wet and shaggy, a hedge-y halo. I watch him move between outside and in (“I need to pace to think”), sunlight flashing. It’s around 9am. Hammond Jr is after some rays, so he keeps lifting his face upwards, exposing his shoulders. Full disclosure – and some readers may need to be sitting down for this – he has his top off.
Given that Hammond Jr, as guitarist for the Strokes, is usually associated with the scuzzy glamour of downtown New York, with a once well-established drug habit and a tight-trousered all-night social life, this west-coast incarnation might come as a shock. But nobody stays the same, despite what fans may wish. And he hasn’t gone bland. At one point, I tease him that his breakfast is very LA (he’s having sweet polenta porridge with almond milk and fresh berries), and he jabs back: “Do you mean LA like it’s awesome, healthy and great?” He can be spiky, when he thinks you’re being obvious. Mostly, though, he’s warm, quite serious. Thoughtful.
