Nikolai Fraiture

Nikolai Philippe Fraiture (born November 13, 1978 in New York City, United States) is the bass player for the American indie rock band, The Strokes. Fraiture grew up in New York City with his Russian mother and French father and speaks fluent French. Nikolai has an older brother named Pierre and a younger sister named Elizabeth. He met future bandmate Julian Casablancas while attending the Lyc├®e Fran├ºais de New York. Fraiture received his first bass at 18, when his grandfather gave it to him as a graduation present, but Fraiture gave it to Casablancas. It was a year later that he picked it up and began to play seriously. Fraiture also attended Hunter College with Strokes'' guitarist Nick Valensi. His bass guitar work is featured very prominently on many of The Strokes songs and is described as being the driving force that leads the melody or chorus. The most notable examples would be on their debut album Is This It where many of the songs are built around the bass guitar. Jared Followill from Kings Of Leon cites Nikolai as his main influence and that "Is This It" was one of the main reasons that he wanted to get into a band; he states, "The title track was one of the first basslines I learned ... I was just 15 at the time."