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Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out is not what you thought
- May 1
- 7 min read
It’s amazing that Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand was one, written when the band was still a baby, and two, written as a spoof... it wasn’t really meant to go anywhere.
Franz Ferdinand are immediately listenable and radio friendly. You don’t have to think hard about the music, you can just nod along and appreciate it for what it is. But there’s also often devious little undertones that make you go huh, these guys are actually pretty clever. They’ve nailed this.
And that’s really the case with Take Me Out. That fantastic bait and switch into the riff isn’t just coincidence, it’s by design - to make you dance like mad. But seeing as they wrote this song right at the beginning of their career, let's do a quick cover of how Franz Ferdinand got started.
They formed Glasgow in 2002, with the original line-up being Alex Kapranos on lead vocals and guitar, Nick McCarthy also on guitar, backing vocals, and the occasional keyboard, Bob Hardy on bass and Paul Thomson playing drums.
Alex and Paul had already played together in previous bands in the 90’s. Alex had been given a bass guitar by a friend, and decided for some reason that he was going to teach his friend and co-worker Bob how to play bass. Alex told American Songwriter in 2022 that the conversation went like this:
“Do you want to come over to the flat? I bought a bottle of whiskey. We’ll sit down, enjoy a few drinks of whisky and I’ll show you how to play the bass.”
And that’s really how the band started. They say it was an excuse to hang out, have some drinks, and mess around with some music. At this point, having played in small bands for years, Alex had come to peace with the fact he wasn’t ever going to make his living from it. His music was just for fun.
Then the two met Nick McCarthy. Nick had ideas. Drummer Paul came into the fold and suddenly these drinking/jam sessions were starting to make some actually pretty good stuff. This was a band in the making.
Right from the off, they wanted to make music focussed on making people dance. They looked at the music scene in Glasgow and were bored. They saw a bunch of bands that went on stage and stared at their feet. They wanted to do the opposite.
But also, they wanted to have something in there to make people think. These were artsy boys.
Alex had studied Theology and English, and immersed himself in the Glasgow arts and music scene. Bob had studied painting at the Glasgow School of Arts, Nick was classically trained in music in Germany, and Paul worked as a life model at that same school of Arts.
In short, they were creatives and thinkers. And so they wanted something in their music that made people think. Alex told American Songwriter:
“I want to feel it in my head, as well. I want to be engaged. I want to think about this! Or, I want the music, I want the lyrics to be deeper than some random noises to a dance beat. You know, dance music can have depth to it as well as moving your feet.”
This attitude is really reflected in their band name too - Franz Ferdinand.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the man who was assassinated in 1914, in what is widely called the act that started the First World War. The boys came across it after seeing a racehorse on TV with the same name.
On the surface, especially in the context of their music, it seems like just a catchy name, a bit fancy. Underneath, the historical implications are massive. Very Artsy.
Right, that's enough about the band, let's get on to the song.
As I said, it came about early on in the band’s story AND it’s inspired by something a bit weird.
Alex had recently watched a film called Enemy At The Gates, a film about a Soviet and a German sniper locked in a standoff during the Battle Of Stalingrad in WW2. It’s based on a true story.
He saw these two deadly snipers waiting to take each other out and thought it was a good metaphor for the kind of romantic tension that can occur when no one wants to make the first move. He told the Guardian in 2022:
“You know the other person feels something, but you’re both afraid to make a move. I wrote the lyrics about the craving to release that tension – “Take me out” being a plea to end it.”
When I found that out, it blew my mind - I'm just a cross-hair, I'm just a shot away from you - that’s literally about a sniper rifle… how bizarre!
Anyway. he and Nick were sharing a flat at the time, and set to working on the track with a basic keyboard, the kind that comes with basic pre-programmed tunes built in. Nick started playing a melody over one of those presets and came up with the first few chords of the verses.
Alex started singing some words over this melody, presumably just feeling it out, and then Nick came up with the chorus using another of the keyboards presets, and a different chord progression. Simple as that. Alex came up with that iconic guitar riff at the same time he was figuring out the lyrics, literally as they were coming out of his head according to him.
He wanted to emulate some bluesy artists he liked who used that call and response technique where the vocal and the guitar line answer each other. And it just, quote, “popped out”.
What is it with bands coming up with massive songs almost by accident? Well, that’s not really strictly true. They knew they had the bones of a song, but when they brought it into the rehearsal space with the band, they just couldn’t get it to work.
They already had the ‘i know i wont be leaving here with you’ part, which they felt was an obvious bridge between verse and chorus. But the tempos were all wrong.
Often, a tempo change in a song is a good thing, as it would become for this song. But here it was just off kilter. When they played it at the right tempo for the chorus, the verse was too fast. If they reversed to fix that, the chorus was too slow.
If they tried somewhere in the middle, the vocal sounded right, but the music was off. So Alex suggested they play all the verses at the beginning at the tempo that sounded right. Then do the little bridge, slow everything down, and then drop the chorus. And they caught lightning in a bottle.
That build up to the tempo change is just one of those music moments that makes everyone go ‘oof’ and grin. It hits the spot, doesn't it? It’s one of those songs that just sounds right.
And that riff. If you don’t want to move to that riff, there’s something wrong with you.
One of the key little details came from bass player Bob - remember the one who had to be taught how to play bass? He’d seen an article about ‘sports rock’, the sort of music played at US sports shows.
You know the type: Big, punchy songs that get the crowd in a great mood. The band thought it would be funny to do a bit of a spoof on songs like Eye of The Tiger, or a band like Queen.
And do those short, sharp hits right before the drop were born. It’s a count down, really. If you take it out of context it is an accurate take on the idea.
When they first played the whole song together in rehearsal, they joked that it would sound great on the radio - but they didn’t seriously expect it to. Alex’s past experiences in bands had him thinking they’d press up 500 copies of the song, and end up selling 35.
When it came time to record the song, their producer wasn't convinced either, feeling like the other songs they had were much stronger. How wrong they all were.
It’s funny to me they felt that way though, because they played the song live in several small gigs before it was ever released as a single in 2004.
And I'm sure it must have gotten a great response at those gigs. Can you imagine now, having been there ‘before the song was big’ seeing them play that in little venues around Glasgow? It would be the ultimate sweaty dance floor.
An interesting sidenote… When they came to record it, their producer wanted it to feel as much of a live sound as possible. So they made the decision to record without a click track, which is surprising considering how much trouble they had with the tempo beforehand…
Thanks to Paul being an exceptional drummer, this wasn’t a big issue. But with the band free to be just that little bit more live and loose, it provided that ‘in the room’ feeling. It’s not super polished, there's a sort of honesty about it.
I think this is a song that sounds best in a slightly dodgy little pub, live and loud without a care in the world. It’s a Friday night banger, and that’s how it sounds on the recording.
They might not have thought it would go massive, but we all know they were wrong. Released as the second single on their debut album in 2004, it took over radio. It was No. 3 in the UK and top 10 across the world.
It was part of a massive new wave of Indie Rock music. The Britpop bubble of the late 90’s and early 2000’s had effectively burst.
Indie rock music now sounded like Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs. It was a fantastic time.
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