When The Strokes walked onto the stage in Dublin on Wednesday, October 28, to bring their European tour to a close, their longtime guitarist was nowhere near the building. Nick Valensi was roughly five hundred miles away in France, plugging in an electric guitar at the Accor Arena in Paris. Instead of finishing out a major international run alongside the musicians he has worked with for twenty-five years, Valensi showed up during Duran Duran's encore, helping the veteran British group run through Rio to finish their night.
The team up made for a strange contrast on musical terms. Valensi's style was forged in the early two thousands New York indie resurgence, where spare arrangements and wiry guitar interplay were the rule. Duran Duran built their reputation on the sleek, polished pop of the nineteen eighties. The bridge between those worlds was personal rather than stylistic. Valensi is married to photographer and presenter Amanda de Cadenet, who was previously married to Duran Duran bassist John Taylor. That domestic connection was enough to bring Valensi out under the arena lights in Paris, even if his cameo hit a few obvious technical snags along the way before the band reached the final chord.
What gave the moment real weight for onlookers was Valensi's continuing absence from his primary gig. His spot on stage with The Strokes has been vacant for months. Back in May, the band put out a brief announcement stating that Valensi would be taking a temporary break from their 2026 world tour. The group offered no detailed explanation for the move, simply confirming his leave of absence and noting that they looked forward to having him back. Julian Casablancas spoke up the following month to damp down fan anxiety, telling people that the guitarist would return soon, though the camp has never set a public date for that reunion.
To keep their tour moving, The Strokes recruited Longwave guitarist Steve Schlitz. Schlitz has held down Valensi's side of the stage across the European dates and previous stops, giving the touring lineup a dependable substitute. In fact, Valensi has not played an official show with The Strokes since their appearance at the Coachella festival in April.
Stepping away from a major tour has not meant abandoning the guitar entirely. Valensi seems comfortable picking his spots, dropping into public performances without taking on the heavy travel and daily routine of a full arena run. Before joining Duran Duran in Paris, he surfaced in Los Angeles for a surprise appearance with Jack White. Popping up for a single tune in California or France gives him a very different experience than the grind of a global tour, suggesting his appetite for live music remains intact as long as it happens on casual, low pressure terms.
Back in Dublin, his bandmates pushed through to the finish line of a productive year. The European leg included two major headlining nights at The O2 in London and served as the primary live showcase for Reality Awaits, the group's seventh studio album, which came out in July. Those dates followed a busy North American schedule, demonstrating that the band can still fill large rooms even while adjusting to a substitute guitarist on stage.
For anyone who has followed The Strokes across the past quarter century, lineup pauses and periods of personal distance are not unprecedented. The group has survived side projects, extended rests and shifting personal priorities before. Watching Valensi tackle Rio in Paris on the very evening his band completed its European trek in Dublin is certainly an odd chapter, but the official line remains that this separation is temporary. When he eventually returns to his familiar post, he will bring along a curious set of guest appearances from his time away.
