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And when Pawson returns the bouncer won't let him in. The next day Smith gives a rare roar of laughter when I tell him this. We are now in a residential tower block, a few streets north, where the xx have been booked to play an afternoon warm-up gig: four quick tracks on a rooftop, their audience made up of competition winners. The block has hosted popstars before, and one of its apartments is today serving as a dressing room.

It's here that a war-chest of pornographic DVDs has been left, also condoms, with a note inviting the band to dig in. There are dumbbell weights in the room, should they want to use them. The LA strangeness is mounting. This morning when the band went on a local radio show there was concern, expressed by the show's production staff, that it would be somehow insensitive to mention the date of their new album's US release, 11 September. Outside, on the tower block's roof, the band have just done a soundcheck and discovered they'll be performing in a part of the building normally reserved for residents' games.

Pieces pushed to one side, the xx will gig on a giant chessboard for the first time in their careers. Croft is actually more concerned about a red velvet rope that has been strung between the audience and the performance space.

Doesn't it look a bit starry? She and Sim have a muttered discussion, too, about whether they should wear sunglasses for the show. On the one hand, they don't want to look distant. On the other hand — it's pretty sunny. It makes me think of something Smith told me, another bouncer-related anecdote from the night before. The over-zealous minder had kept smacking off people's hands as they reached out to Smith in his booth. They don't like to let people close, but nor do they like being kept, showily, at a distance.

Smith offers up another odd moment from last night. In the VIP area after his set he was approached by a figure he recognised.

Daniel Bedingfield. Any good, I ask? Smith grimaces, and shakes his head. Oh well: it's a measure of how esteemed he is, anyway, that old heroes seek him out as someone to impress.

In the band's time off between records — most of — Smith remixed an Adele single and Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here album, both successes, and he's been courted to produce for others since.

He mentions a collaboration with a US star which ought to be fascinating if released. The once-admired RJD2 even sent Smith a crate of new music not long ago, possibly looking to work together. This is his way, gruff and honest. Should one of my questions misfire and, boy, do they misfire under this kid's inscrutable stare , Smith stays silent, just letting it pass.

In a moment of unusual personal candour, he tells me how he met his Italian girlfriend over drinks in a bar, and adds with a strange sort of pride that he didn't ask her for her phone number.

Smith's instinct is for passivity, and perhaps this is what makes him such a fine producer. Outside, the rooftop show under way, the xx play through a couple of numbers from their new album and a couple from the old. Afterwards there is an attempt at an onstage radio interview, and Sim hugs himself, embarassed, taking a hit for the team by answering questions on behalf of the others.

At one point the interviewer pings a rogue inquiry at Smith, who's hiding among the big chess pieces at the back. Sim has to step in and translate his friend's silent answer, a vague upper-body twitch. Afterwards, backstage, the band seem relieved it's over and in a good mood. Tonight's gig at the Fonda theatre will be more demanding but the afternoon set with its small audience has reminded them happily of early gigging days, when they played in pubs and clubs to crowds of a couple of dozen.

This was around , when they were working up songs for a possible album and Pawson had installed them in a small rehearsal room in Putney. Womb-like, Sim once called it. They were still living at home at the time, Croft tells me, "and when I think about it from a parent's perspective we could have been doing anything. You know: we're off to rehearse now, bye!

Luckily we were doing something. The band began a tour, which gradually extended as their fanbase grew and eventually lasted about 18 months, on and off. A lot of jet lag and Jennifer Aniston films, plus some emotional times along the way. Difficulties had developed with the band's fourth member, Qureshi. Croft, at the time, likened the rift to a divorce. They had to grow up in a lot of ways during that first tour.

Most of us go through the buffeting half-romances of early adulthood with a bedroom to retreat to, a duvet to crawl under, but the xx went through it all in minivans and departure lounges — with an entourage.

Smith tells me about a DJ set he was doing, somewhere on the tour, when a girl in the crowd approached him with a folded-up note. He was young, and had no clue what to do with it, so he put it in his pocket. Only after much jokey persuasion from those around him did he finally open it, in the cab on the way back to the band's hotel. It might not be too late to follow it up The note said: "Why don't you play some decent music? For Croft and Sim there was a more brutal lesson.

Softening, in , Croft gave a short, intimate interview to the online magazine Tourist in which she and her girlfriend at the time, an art student based in London, talked about love. What does it feel like, they were asked, to be in a long-distance relationship? Sim has kept consistently zipped. I get the sense, speaking to Sim, that he quite enjoys the mystery he inspires. On stage he sways and leers, all eyes and attitude. Exactly as a good frontman should, he makes you — bloke in the crowd, neck craned — feel many degrees less masculine because you haven't got a guitar and a catalogue of tortured love songs to growl through.

Normally I would email Romy demos and she would email them back. So having her in front of me made the editing process so fast. We wrote three songs on the album in less than half an hour. We wrote four songs together in total.

I definitely felt more like a proper band. After emerging with an idiosyncratic aural palette, The xx still very much sound like The xx on Coexist. We were recording on a five-input multitracker when we were doing our early demos, which was two voices, two guitars and just drums. It was those kind of unplanned things that made the sound in the beginning. Original drummer Lol Tolhurst switched to keyboards in , and was "let go" in before the release of the classic Disintegration.

Current drummer Jason Cooper is a mere newbie, having only been with the band since The most famous - and notorious - line-up change in history. The Beatles went through a number of drummers in their early days, but Pete Best was a fan favourite and stayed with the band through their formative years in Liverpool and Hamburg.

However, shortly after they were signed to the Parlophone label, Best was unceremoniously sacked in favour of Ringo Starr and The Fab Four were complete. Were they jealous of Pete's good looks? Was he not that good a drummer? The debate has rumbled on for 60 years Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sam Fender.