Franz Ferdinand is indisputably one of the most electrifying live bands around, but there’s one thing lead singer Alex Kapranos will never do onstage: Take off his shirt. Although prodded to do so by an overzealous fan at the recent Coachella music festival in Indio, Calif., the frontman for the Scottish rock band did not buckle to peer pressure. In fact, he caused a mini-outrage when he refused to doff his clothing.
Among the post-Coachella headlines? “Franz Ferdinand Singer Refuses to Strip.”
Phoning from a stop on the band’s current American tour, which brings the group to Roseland on Thursday, Kapranos would like to set the record straight.
“Sometimes the Internet music sites don’t report news, they report third-hand gossip,” he says with a laugh. “I was saying hello to a few people in the audience, including some girls in front who were waving a big Scottish flag for us. And then there was a guy with a sign saying, ‘Show us your boobies!’ And I said, ‘Oh, you don’t really want to see my boobies. There’s not a lot going on there.’ And that was it. It was a throwaway comment. I don’t normally show off my boobies at gigs.”
OK. So there won’t be a “Franz Gone Wild”-style display of man breasts when the band hits New York for its sold-out show. Nor will there be livestock.
“I saw Of Montreal [at Roseland] last year, and it was so good,” Kapranos says. “They had a live horse onstage. It was amazing — I’ve never seen anything like it.”
So Franz Ferdinand has never had live animals onstage?
“Apart from the band members, no,” he replies.
But what can fans expect? A hot, wet, full-on dance party.
“Sometimes when we’ve been touring big arenas and festivals, we have a great yearning to play for a few hundred people at a sweaty little gig,” Kapranos says. “New York audiences are cool. It’s one of those cities where people are spoiled when it comes to bands. Sometimes if you go to cities like that, there’s almost an unsurpassable level of coolness, where the audience is impossible to impress because they’ve seen it all before.
“But that’s not the case with New York,” he adds. “If you give it to them, they give it back. People go for it. They dance. They lose it because they love the music. They know how to party as well. I really look forward to playing in New York.”
Full disclosure: Kapranos may be biased because he’s a part-time New Yorker, dividing his time between flats in his native Glasgow and Greenpoint, Brooklyn. When he’s not chilling at home, eating at Diner in Williamsburg, listening to one of his all-time favorite albums — the Beatles’ “White Album” or the Specials’ “Specials” — you just may spot him cruising the streets on his vintage Schwinn.
“My favorite thing to do in New York is ride my bike around the city,” he says. “I love riding over the bridges, through Brooklyn or up into Queens. I like going to Astoria because of all the Greek restaurants and delis. My father’s Greek, and sometimes it feels more Greek than Greece itself.
“And there’s always a block in Manhattan that will surprise you,” he says. “When you’re on a bike, you’re close enough to everything to absorb it all. It’s my favorite way of picking up the flavor of the city.”
And by the way, if the band does happen to play its rather amazing cover of Britney Spears’ “Womanizer,” you may think it’s yet another ironic statement from a band celebrated by irony-loving hipsters. But you’d be wrong.
“That wasn’t a joke,” Kapranos says. “I think one of the reasons Britney Spears does so well is she gets some of the best songwriters to write songs for her. [With] ‘Womanizer,’ it doesn’t matter if a band like us plays it or a pop person like Britney sings it — it’s gonna sound like a good song because it is a good song.”