Franz Ferdinand

“The song is about the scene in the book where Margarita first flies above Moscow and she destroys all the apartments of her lover’s enemies—or all the critics who were destroying his work. And that works on so many levels, because Bulgakov was talking about the hypocrisy of the anti-capitalist system at the time, and how everybody was a capitalist at heart anyway. He was also talking about the censorship of the time, as well, and his frustration at wanting to cover a religious topic and write about Christ as being an historical figure. And because he did that, he was totally abused by the critics. And you can see his personal frustration coming through in that scene, where it’s almost like a fantasy of this great lover destroying these people on his behalf. It has this incredible intensity, that scene, and it’s very romantic, as well.”

Kapranos can probably relate quite well. At 29, the singer has been kicking around the Glasgow art and rock scenes for nearly a decade, in various projects that failed to fully materialize. His smooth Bryan Ferry-chic singing style (juxtaposed with jarring, jittery rhythms and guitar riffs reminiscent of Sire Records, circa 1978) is rooted in such disparate undertakings as The Chateau, a local warehouse/nightclub/art gallery the group fixed up, then operated for a couple poorly paid years. Its parties (which, of course, featured many a Franz Ferdinand appearance) were the stuff of Glasgow legend, consequently. Kapranos sighs, “We had a lot of trouble with the police. They found out we were running a bar there without a license, and that we were in a building that was unsafe—the stairs were collapsing, it was a total fire hazard.” With a wry chortle, he recalls the night of The Chateau’s first all-out raid. “The police were coming up one seven-flight staircase, but they were a little bit unhealthy, these guys, and were gasping when they got to the top. But someone had gotten there before ’em and warned us, so we had the booze going down this even more dilapidated staircase out the back. So by the time the police got to us, we didn’t have any booze, so they dropped all the charges against us in the end.”

The next Franz Ferdinand locale, an old jail across town that they renovated, had a center ex-courtroom that, according to Kapranos, “was even more dangerous, with this huge ceiling that must’ve weighed a ton, just a ton of plaster. And bits of ceiling had fallen away, so there were these great big gaping holes where the plaster had fallen down, and we worried that any day the whole thing would come crashing down and wipe out half the artist and music community of Glasgow. But for some reason, it didn’t.” Hanging out, often residing in a former prison, he adds, might account for the anxious, pent-up pacing of Franz Ferdinand songs like “Jacqueline,” “Take Me Out” and “Darts of Pleasure.”

Wordplay in these tracks typically has visual references. “And I suppose some films have influenced that,” admits Kapranos, a well-rounded aesthete. “Movies like Peeping Tom, for instance, which is totally amazing and is finally being recognized as a real classic.” He adds another Michael Powell film, A Matter of Life and Death, “wherein David Niven is a pilot who doesn’t die when he’s supposed to. He’s supposed to be taken to heaven, but the angel misses him in the mist, so he has to argue in heaven that he should remain alive. I also love Hitchcock’s voyeuristic films, like Frenzy and Rope, where the guys decide to be as evil as possible, totally cold and amoral. The murder they commit isn’t brutality—it’s just completely amoral, which is fascinating.”