Nick Valensi - Biography

Nick Valensi (born Nicholas Valensi; January 16, 1981) is a guitarist for the American Indie rock band The Strokes, in which he primarily plays lead guitar and occasionally rhythm guitar.

Early life

Valensi was born in New York City. From French and Jewish origins, his father is a New York native and his mother, Danielle, is of French descent. Growing up, he had spent every summer at his grandfather's place, near Bordeaux, until the age of 16. He has an older sister and a younger sister. He was once quoted as saying, "I always thought I wanted to be able to play any song you could name. But once I started playing with Julian, that's when I really started to understand music." Nick attended Hunter College with Nikolai Fraiture.

Instruments and influences

Valensi's main guitar, which he uses for nearly every live show and recorded song, is a 1990s Epiphone Riviera with Gibson P-94 pick-ups. In a 2004 interview with Epiphone, he called it "the greatest guitar never made" because Gibson had never produced a semi-hollow with P-94 style pickups, except for the fully hollow ES-330 and the Epiphone Casino. He has several models in different colours (all with P-94s), including multiple naturals, one in vintage sunburst, one in red, and a 12-string elite in red. In 2005, Epiphone released a signature model of his guitar, the Elitist Nick Valensi Riviera P-94, and followed it up with a standard model Nick Valensi Riviera P-94 in 2007. Back-up/warm-up guitars include an Epiphone Dot fitted with 2 P-94s, an Epiphone Casino, an Epiphone Sheraton, and a Gibson Faded Special Double Cutaway with 2 P-90s. Valensi often borrows fellow Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s backup guitars, which include a Gibson Les Paul Jr. and a Les Paul Special. New guitars used for the First Impressions of Earth tour include a Les Paul Custom in black, a Fender Telecaster Custom (which he can be seen using in the music video for Under Cover of Darkness, and a Duesenberg semi-hollow. Valensi's main amplifier is a 2x12" Fender Hot Rod DeVille, used with Fender 4x12" extension cabinets during live shows. He also recently purchased a Carr amplifier to use on the last few stops of the First Impressions tour. His pedalboard consists of a Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde Ultimate Overdrive pedal, Boss TR-2 Tremolo, Vox Cooltron Bulldog Distortion, MXR Micro Amp (2) and a Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner. He has also been seen with an Electro Harmonix Memory Man and a Boss Blues Driver.

His recent pedalboard consists of a Fulltone GT-500 Distortion/Booster, a Korg Pitchblack Tuner, A Visual Sound Visual Volume Pedal, a Visual Sound Double Trouble dual overdrive, a Maxon Distortion Master, an Electro-Harmonix XO Holy Grail Reverb, an Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man, and an MXR Micro Amp Boost. He uses a Fender Super-Sonic 100-watt head into two Fender 2x12" cabinets.

He cites his influences as The Velvet Underground, The Cars, George Harrison, Slash, Bob Marley, Blondie and Jimi Hendrix.

Personal life

In Summer 2006, Nick married his girlfriend of five years, Amanda de Cadenet. De Cadenet published a book of photographs entitled Rare Birds in 2005, which includes several pictures of Valensi, whom she refers to as her "muse" on her website.

Valensi has described his wife as "The coolest person I know."

Amanda de Cadenet gave birth to their fraternal twins, Silvan and Ella, on October 19, 2006.

Collaborations

Nick Valensi sung backing vocals and played guitar for Devendra Banhart's song "Shabop Shalom" on the 2007 album Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. Furthermore, he contributed backing vocals on the self-titled debut album of his bandmate Fab Moretti's band, Little Joy.

He also played guitar for Regina Spektor's song "Better", which was released on her album Begin to Hope and also published as a single in a slightly different version on which the guitar parts are rearranged.

He appears in the video for "Adam & Steve", a song by Devendra Banhart's side project Megapuss.

He appears in the video for "No One's Better Sake" by Little Joy as drummer.

He plays guitar on Sia's album We Are Born and has also written several hooks and melodies on it. Sia has also stated that she and Valensi are planning to write songs together for other artists.