Julian Casablancas Blasts GQ Writer Who Made Him Seem Anti-Brunch

Julian Casablancas Blasts GQ Writer Who Made Him Seem Anti-Brunch

Last month, my friend Zach Baron wrote what I thought was a warm and empathetic GQ profile of Julian Casablancas, whose album Tyranny was about to come out. In the story, after some prodding, Casablancas talked a bit about why he’d moved out of New York City, offering this: “I don’t know how many, like, white people having brunch I can deal with on a Saturday afternoon.” People on the internet noticed that quote, and clowned it. And while Casablancas hasn’t really walked back his anti-brunch stance, he recently had some harsh words for Baron.

In a new Daily Beast interview, Casablancas says this:

God, that quote. People are mad about it! It’s so true, but I guess you can’t say it. That GQ reporter was bogus, anyway. He was a total part-of-the-problem yuppie guy. He was a very nice guy, but I was talking about when I dropped out of high school and when I went to study music, and he had this weird, scary, shallow grin thing going on, and then said, “Oh, I didn’t realize that until my last year at Harvard,” and we were talking about current political stuff. It went over his head. I wanted to say, “Maybe you’ll understand this in a few years,” but I didn’t. Now I wish I had.

Zach did go to Harvard, it’s true. He also put on basement punk shows and wrote impassioned reviews of Dipset mixtape tracks. And he did not grow up with the millionaire owner of a modeling agency as a father. Just saying. I am hopelessly biased on this, though, since Zach was a groomsman at my wedding and I thought Tyranny was butt. Also, brunch is great.

UPDATE: Casablancas stands firm.

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