We revisit a special 2005 interview with the LCD Soundsystem and DFA founder.
In the early 90s, a young college student from New Jersey was studying English at NYU.
His name was James Murphy and he wanted to be a writer.
Listen to the LCD Soundsystem J Files right here.
When a friend of Murphy’s invited him out to Los Angeles for a visit, he had no idea he was about to be offered one of the biggest gigs in television history.
"My friend was getting married and he was like, 'My fiancé is going away for a couple of weeks, will you come out and hang out with me and make sure I’m doing the right thing?;" Murphy told Zan Rowe in 2005.
"He had a family friend who was a manager and we all went out and had lunch for no business reason.
"She was like, 'I manage this show, it’s all set in New York and we need a New York writer. The only writers are the producer and the star, and they need help. They need someone else to write shows.
"You would be getting 35 thousand dollars per script for now, but it would go up if the show gets picked up.'
"I thought it was the It’s Garry Shandling’s Show which was on at the same time," Murphy recalled. " I was like, 'Yeah, I love that! I love the theme song'. And I started singing the Gary Shandling theme song. And she just kind of stared at me.
"I didn’t know why she was staring at me until a couple of years ago.
"They sent me scripts and a letter saying, 'Hey, how’s it going? How’s your cat? Where’s the script?' And I was like, 'I’m gonna totally get on that, dude.'
"I think I smoked a lot of pot and made coffee and then I started a band and just forgot all about it and never did it because I'm a genius.
“It’s Garry Shandling’s Show got cancelled and I didn’t think any more about it. I was like, 'Oh that would have been funny.'
"Then my folks passed away and I was cleaning out the boxes of my stuff and I was like, 'Hey, there’s that letter… holy crap it was Seinfeld. Oh my god. The most successful television show in history. I would have been the first staff writer.'
"The only consolation is I would have been the most insufferable bastard ever. I would have been such a coked up arrogant jerk. As it is, I’m not coked up. Kind of a dumpy, arrogant jerk I guess."
Luckily for James Murphy, his back-up career turned out alright.
The rise of LCD Soundsystem
In January 2005, LCD Soundsystem released their long-awaited debut album.
Frontman James Murphy had been at the forefront of the New York scene since co-founding the DFA label in 2001.
While Murphy was putting out club singles like 'Losing My Edge' and 'Yeah', DFA was also producing and remixing artists like The Rapture, Hot Chip and Le Tigre. It was an exciting time.
Then LCD Soundsystem finally put out that first record, taking this blistering New York-centric scene to the world.
By March, they were one of the most anticipated acts at SXSW, on a line-up that included other newcomers like Bloc Party, Wolfmother, Kaiser Chiefs, M.I.A. and Hot Chip.
The night after LCD Soundsystem's sweaty, packed out gig, James Murphy caught up with Double J’s Zan Rowe at a Cuban bar in Austin to talk about the show.
"I thought it was really good," he said. "I was really, really drunk but it was fun.
"We’ve never played here. I’ve been here twice before in different bands for different things, but it was the first time we’ve ever played in Texas. It was fun.
"There was not really a soundcheck, and it was kind of sloppy and we were drunk and belligerent, and people were yelling, and it just seemed to be a nice coupling. If we were playing a really meticulous show at 1 in the morning in Austin it wouldn’t make much sense."
While Murphy once considered a career as a writer, music was part of his life from an early age.
"I first started playing music when I was 4 or 5," he told Zan.
"I was 12 or 13 when I first was in a band. It was 1983 and it was a punk rock/new wave band that played a lot of Violent Femmes songs and stuff like that. I think we played 'Space Age Love Song' by A Flock of Seagulls. It’s a really good song!
"Some of the stuff I listened to as a kid I just think is garbage. I just was dumb. But some of it really grabbed me.
"Some of that stuff I go back to really strongly, but I also have different periods in my life that were musically really important. If you’re the kind of person for whom music saves your life – which was me – some of that stuff is written on your heart.
"That relationship to music is something I think a lot about when we make music. If a kid really likes your record, they’re going to put a lot into that. And you try to make something that deserves that. Or at least is worth it and won’t humiliate them later."
Murphy said this is why it took the band three years to release their first album.
"It was really important to me not to include any of the singles on the record," he said.
"In dance music, what happens a lot is people happen on some sort of 'hit'. Suddenly everywhere you go it’s, 'Here comes the hit! It’s the song of the summer! Ibiza super jam!'
"Then there’s a car ad. Then there's a guy who's like, 'We gotta put out an album because nobody makes money selling 12-inches. So, then this jackass DJ has to cobble together a bunch of outdated trip hop songs and two or three more b-sides and they’re like, 'Here's the album!' and you feel so cheated.
"They clearly had an ad which was the single and they quickly made a product for that ad to function for. And that was something I abhor and never wanted anything to do with, so it was important to me to wait it out. Let the singles be singles.
"Plus, it takes a while to make an album for me.
"It only took three weeks to really do it but we’re busy. We have a label and I DJ and we go on tour and I’m married.
"I’m not like an amped up egotistical 22-year-old that’s like, 'The world wants something from me? Well fuck yeah! Sign me up dude, get me on the bus! I better make a record because I rule.'
"I mean it was just like, what's the point? If I was going to make an album, I felt like there needed to be a reason for it and not just because that’s the next logical step for my careerist ass."
To the outside world James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem’s output in the early 2000s was minimal, consisting of a handful of singles and an album with only nine songs.
But Murphy’s DFA discography was hectic.
The label produced Black Dice and The Juan MacLean, and remixed artists like N.E.R.D., Gorillaz and Soulwax.
DFA opened Murphy's eyes to another side of the music business.
"Being part of a label is one of the things that gives me a different perspective on what it means to do stuff and what it costs and what’s important and what’s not important. But also, just being 35 and having seen how things work to a certain degree.
"I think that makes it a little bit different. It means I will take two years to release an album if I think that’s what’s important.
"I didn’t want to make an album in the middle of 'Losing My Edge' hype. I didn’t want to make an album in the middle of our DFA punk-funk Neptunes hype. It just didn’t seem like a great idea. It didn’t seem that relevant to me.
"All the bands I liked, it took them a couple of records until they got anywhere. And then when people started gravitating towards them you had two or three records to get more of a scope of who they were. Not just one single."
LCD Soundsystem have made a career out of heartfelt party jams.
Songs like 'Someone Great' and 'All My Friends' have become indie-kid anthems for their epic slow-builds and relatability.
Murphy explained that he tried to find what felt right rather than being clever or trendy.
"I like lyrics that are complicated, and I like lyrics that are simple," he told Zan. "I like good lyrics.
"I think that sometimes complicated story lyrics are horrible. And sometimes really dumb lyrics are great. I try to make stuff that makes me happy and I can’t put my finger on why it makes me happy. And sometimes it’s just so dumb.
"I like trying to make lyrics that aren’t really good for songs. There’s a way that you’re supposed to say things in songs that drives me nuts.
"There’s sort of this emotional shorthand that people make lyrics out of. Like, 'I’m writing lyrics' and it’s nothing you’d ever write or say, and I always feel like it sounds so stupid.
"I don’t like wearing somebody else’s hat. All I want to do is have lyrics be very much mine. There’s no other formal requirement. It doesn’t have to be a good story; it doesn’t have to be complicated or simple.
"'Yeah' is just literally, 'yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah' over and over and over and that just seemed to be right and that seemed like almost such a bad idea that I would give it a whirl.
"I think sometimes I fail at it. But it’s just what I’m interested in."
Tune into The J Files for more stories about the most vital artists of our time
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LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy on Seinfeld, singles and stupid lyrics - ABC News
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