Hey, remember when Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos was detained by Russian police after being suspected of being a spy? No? Well, let me tell you about it because it literally happened 21 years ago today.
So, the story goes that, on June 2, 2005, Kapranos was trying to board a plane in Moscow. He was traveling under his legal name, which is Alexander Paul Kapranos Huntley. As he was attempting to get on the plane, he was stopped. Kapranos was then detained on suspicion of being an MI6 agent, per The Sunday Times.
Apparently, his name matched that of a man who’d previously been caught stealing information on Russian weaponry. That agent was Richard Tomlinson of MI6, who did apparently steal Russian secrets roughly a decade prior.
Ultimately, Kapranos was able to talk his way out of the situation. He pointed out something important: the man they were looking for was 13 years older than him.
Alex Kapranos is not a spy, or maybe that’s just what he wants us to think
Thankfully, Alex Kapranos was able to prove he’s not a spy and go on about his work as one of the most distinguished alt-rock singers of the 2000s. In their two+ decades together, Franz Ferdinand has toured relentlessly and released six full-length studio albums. The band’s most recent record is The Human Fear (2025).
In an interesting 2025 conversation, Kapranos talked with Stereogum about his career and even weighed in on the notion that the band ever thought about changing its name.
“Absolutely not,” he asserted. “When we started out, we played about five or six gigs just in squats and in people’s flats in Glasgow. And then we had a gig at an actual real venue, and they were putting a poster together, so we had to come up with a name.”
“And I think the only name that had been floating about was named after a pack of toothpicks that we had called Party Sticks. So that was the first name,” he added. “And then I was watching the horse-racing, and there was a horse called the Archduke, and I thought, ‘Oh yeah — Franz Ferdinand.’”
The post On This Day in 2005, an Alt-Rock Frontman Was Detained in Russia After Being Accused of Being a Spy appeared first on VICE.
