Albert Hammond Jr. has more in common with Tutti from The Facts of Life than one might assume. The two share a love for roller skating that knows no bounds. Apparently his formative years, the ubiquitous Strokes’ guitarist was a star before Is This It? burned up the charts. According to NME.com, Hammond was a championship skater who performed for as many as 5,000 people at a time. Hammond told Britain’s The Guardian that “I used to skate in front of, like, 5,000 people and I was never nervous, but the first time I got on stage, there were four people there and I vomited.” It’s a good thing Hammond learned to hold his cookies in front of a crowd. The Strokes are currently at work on their third album, a follow-up to 2003’s Room on Fire.
