Franz Ferdinand

Getting arrested is almost a cliché in rock star history. Usually, though, the causes are tied to excess, drugs, brawls or run-ins with the law. Far more unusual is the story involving Alex Kapranos, frontman of Franz Ferdinand, who was stopped at Moscow airport and arrested in 2005 in the middle of a tour.

The episode dates back to the end of May 2005, when the Scottish band was playing two shows in St. Petersburg and Moscow during the tour for their successful debut album “Franz Ferdinand“. In those months the group was at the peak of its international rise and was already playing live some of the new songs destined for their second record, “You Could Have It So Much Better“. Once the Russian shows were over, the musicians were due to head to New York to finish mixing the album.
The journey, however, came to an abrupt halt at Domodedovo airport. As he prepared to board his flight to the United States, Kapranos was stopped by Russian authorities and declared a “high security risk”. Uniformed soldiers surrounded him, preventing him from boarding the plane. “There were guys in uniform circling around me. That's when I realised this was something serious”, he later told the Times.

The stop was triggered by a striking case of mistaken identity. The singer's passport, in fact, bore the name Alex Huntley rather than Alex Kapranos. Huntley is his mother's maiden name, chosen by his father, who was of Greek origin, to spare his son any discrimination linked to a foreign-sounding surname. That name, however, was already known to the Russian security services. Alex Huntley was in fact one of the aliases used by Richard Tomlinson, a former MI6 agent, the British foreign intelligence service. During certain missions in Russia itself, Tomlinson had travelled under that identity. After being dismissed in 1995, the former 007 had become a highly controversial figure for attempting to publish a book about his activities in the intelligence service, an affair that also landed him in prison for a time. When Russian agents read the name on the Franz Ferdinand singer's passport, the system immediately triggered an alert. Kapranos was questioned and held for over an hour while the necessary checks were carried out.

In the end, it took only a comparison of the two men's personal details and physical appearance to clear up the misunderstanding: Tomlinson was thirteen years older and bore no real resemblance to the Scottish musician. Once the case of mistaken identity was confirmed, Russian authorities allowed Kapranos to continue his journey.
The episode ended without further consequences, and Franz Ferdinand were able to reach New York to finish “You Could Have It So Much Better”, the album that, just a few months later, would definitively establish the band thanks to tracks such as “Do You Want To”, “Walk Away” and “The Fallen”. It remains, however, one of the most surreal stories ever experienced by a touring rock band: that of an indie singer detained not for rock-star excess, but because his name happened to match that of an MI6 spy.

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17/07/2026