‘Meet Me In The Bathroom’ Sentimentally Looks Back At NYC’s Early 2000s Rock Scene

In November 2001, my rock band left Brooklyn for a 5-week U.S. tour. The terrorist attack that felled the World Trade Center was still on our minds, having witnessed it first hand two months earlier. Everywhere we went, we had the same conversation. “Hey, you guys are from New York? Can I ask you something?,” it would begin. With some trepidation, we would assume they wanted to talk about September 11th and make us relive that terrible day. To our surprise, the question was always the same, “What’s up with that band The Strokes?” 

Both the band and attack loom large in Meet Me In The Bathroom, the new music documentary based on Lizzy Goodman’s oral history of the same name which chronicled the New York rock scene of the early 2000s. Currently streaming on Showtime, it was directed by filmmakers Will Lovelace and Dylan Murphy, who also helmed the LCD Soundsystem concert film Shut Up and Play the Hits. Affectionate and funny though perhaps a bit too long, it covers the basics of the era and the major musical players, or at least the ones that actually sold a significant number of records.

The story begins 23 years ago, at the false dawn of the new millennium. In rock time, 23 years is at least four generations’ worth of bands, scenes and style. The perpetual apocalyptic mindset of the 21st century was waiting in the wings, as the insurgent media fear machine warned of a Y2K global computer shut down that never occurred. Within two years, other unforeseen events would forever change the city and the world. 

A montage of the Big Apple’s rock past flashes by — drag queens and skinheads, Blondie and the Beasties, Wu-Tang and Lou Reed. While the book gives a more expansive view of the era, the film focuses on The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol and LCD Soundsystem. Most walked in the well worn path of outcasts and artists who came to the city seeking reinvention. Their music often looked to the past, late ‘70s post-punk being a particular fetish, but made something new of it.

The characters we meet occupy a panoply of narrative cliches; the tragic hero (The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas), the iconoclastic pioneer (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O), the misunderstood genius (LCD’s James Murphy), along with various villains (Courtney Love mostly) and fellow travelers (The Moldy Peaches, TV On The Radio, The Rapture). This isn’t a put down, it actually makes the overall story more engaging. 

Anyone familiar with the life cycle of music scenes knows they all follow a similar pattern. Hip young musicians arrive with a unique look or sound, their innocence and enthusiasm already infected with the pride and ambition that will one day consume them. Local sensations become celebrities on Main St. as the bespoiling influence of drugs, money and sex run their course. Death goes to the winners. The losers go on reunion tours. 

According to the documentary, a small coterie of misfit kids played shows together in Downtown Manhattan before being driven over the Williamsbridge Bridge by the September 11 attacks where they found, “potential and freedom,” in the words of Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase. Like Jimi Hendrix, punk rock and grunge before them, the first found fame in the fad-conscious UK, which they were then able to convert into lucrative recording contracts, hailed as the best new thing since the last new thing. And then it all went wrong, wonderfully foreshadowed in the film by the use of Frank Sinatra’s forlorn classic “It Was A Very Good Year.” 

Issues of creative control and industry expectations took their toll on The Strokes with alt-country troubadour and canceled groomer Ryan Adams blamed for turning them on to heroin. Karen O blanched from the “predatory gaze” of the press and the physicality of her performances resulted in injury and fatigue. Interpol complains about their album being leaked on Napster, which seems a weird hill to die on in 2022, but also illustrates how record sales would soon diminish for artists from all backgrounds. Like the tortoise beating the hare, only James Murphy seems to pull ahead, leaving the recording studio to step into the spotlight as a bandleader. 

Gentrification would be the final nail in the coffin. Just as rising Manhattan rents sent cool rock bands into the bowels of Brooklyn, they would soon be priced out of there as well. Some, like Karen O, fled the city. Other less fortunate souls were forced to move to Queens. It makes for a nice bookend even if it creates a false sense that the scene is dead. In fact, the city is still teeming with exciting new musicians while the bands profiled have moved into the fruitful “legacy act” phase of their careers. 

Being a native New Yorker and local..excuse the expression…scenester, it’s hard for me to be completely objective about Meet Me In The Bathroom and not start nitpicking its various omissions and inaccuracies. That said, it’s good and entertaining and provides a decent overview of a particular part of the city’s music scene at a particular moment in time. Using archival footage, audio interviews, and extended performance footage, the filmmakers create a dreamscape of memory that’s cloying and sentimental, but also earnest and moving.     

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.