Kings of Leon: Royal FlushBy Andy Tennille
www.harpmagazine.com/articles/detail.cfm?article_id=5259It’s half past midnight at San Francisco’s ultra-posh Redwood Room, and the vampires are lurking.
Bathed in the bar’s subdued orange glow, six-foot blondes in tight skirts and sultry Latinas in stilettos saunter salaciously across tiger-striped carpet as retired venture capitalists slurp $13 mojitos like they’re the elixir from the Fountain of Youth. Plasma-screen TVs broadcasting weird, amorphous art line the polished redwood walls. Young Asian tech geeks and tattooed indie hipsters camp on designer leather couches downing expensive French champagne and nodding to the Killers’ “Bones” throbbing from the club’s sound system.
Since its $50 million renovation in 2001, the swanky lounge inside the Ian Schrager-owned, Philippe Starck-designed Clift Hotel has been dubbed “Hollywood North,” a privileged playground where visiting celebrities mingle with the city’s depraved nouveau riche. With Bob Dylan in town for two nights at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the bar is abuzz with quivering starfuckers, but no one is paying much attention to the skinny, long-haired kids in tight jeans quietly drinking wine at a small table in the corner.
If this were a trendy club in London’s West End, the four Followill boys in the Kings of Leon would be mobbed by a throng of fans befitting Glastonbury Festival headliners whose first two albums went U.K. platinum. But at home in the States, the band lingers in relative obscurity.
With Because of the Times, their new album, due out April 3 following 12 months of successful tours opening for U2, Pearl Jam and Dylan, the Kings of Leon finally may have broken through and made the big rock record everyone’s been hoping they’d make. But the prospect of new fame or even world domination doesn’t seem to faze them.
“Your first record, you’ve had your whole life to make. Your second record, you’ve got three months to make. Your third record, that’s the record everyone says is gonna determine if you have longevity or not. Every record has some stereotype to it but we don’t pay much attention to that shit,” drummer and elder statesman Nathan Followill confesses. “We never really set out to conquer the world. We always just try to make the next record better than the last. That’s really all you can do. If you start thinking about making the ‘big record’ or getting worried about how famous you are, you’ll blow your wad too early. Then you’re just the guy sitting at the end of the bar telling stories nobody wants to hear.”
*****
The down-home humility of the Kings of Leon stems from humble roots that are the stuff of rock lore. Nathan, Caleb and youngest brother Jared Followill spent much of their youth traveling the southern revival circuit in an old Dodge pickup as the backing band for their father Leon, a United Pentecostal Church preacher. In 1997, their father left the ministry, and their parents divorced. The brothers eventually moved to Nashville in hopes of scoring a songwriting deal. One of the first people they met in Music City was Angelo Petraglia, a former Boston-based rocker turned Nashville producer-songwriter who’s penned tunes for Brooks & Dunn, Emmylou Harris, and Patty Griffin and earned a Grammy nomination for Trisha Yearwood’s smash hit “Believe Me Baby (I Lied).”
“Instead of sitting us down to try and chug out some bullshit song for some bullshit country artist, Angelo hung out and listened to records with us,” says frontman Caleb Followill. “Before we ever worked together, we became friends. He introduced us to the Stones, some Johnny Cash and a lot of other bands. He’s a big part of what we do. Angelo’s kinda like the fifth King. He’s been there with us since the very beginning.”
A happenstance meeting with singer Trey Boyer at a Nashville nightspot in 2000 led to a management deal for the two elder Followills; at about the same time, cousin Matthew Followill moved to town to join the band on guitar and younger brother Jared began learning the bass. Word of mouth spread and in 2002, nine labels extended invitations for in-person auditions in New York City, igniting a bidding war. The brothers inked a deal with RCA records, and as fate would have it, one congratulatory gift would have a significant influence on their debut release.
“Someone at the label sent us the Zeppelin box set and we literally locked ourselves in the garage at home with a half ounce of weed and just listened to it for two weeks solid. Mom thought we were in a cult,” Nathan jokes. “It’s funny ’cause we weren’t raised listening to all the music that everybody else grew up with. Most bands hear a record and can name you five bands that it sounds just like. We don’t have that luxury…or maybe that curse. When we heard those old Zeppelin albums, it had an immediate effect on us.”
Released in August 2003 and produced by Petraglia and Ethan Johns, son of legendary Zeppelin, Stones and Eagles producer Glyn Johns, Youth and Young Manhood exuded both the lawlessness of ’70’s Nashville outlaw country and the pomposity of the early Zeppelin recordings, achieving a dirty, sweaty vibe due as much to the band’s early musical tastes as to its inexperience in the studio.
“That first record, we were scared shitless,” Caleb admits. “We were sweating it, man, ’cause we didn’t know how to make a record. We just knew to go in there, plug in and kick out 2 ½ minute songs. If we could get through it without fucking up ten or twelve times, that was a success. With the second record, we kind of had an idea what we wanted to do. We went out on a limb and experimented a little more but it still had that live, boogie rock feel to it.”
Aha Shake Heartbreak, released in February 2005, did not stray far from their garage rock roots but it did illuminate the Kings’ broadening musical horizons. Melodically diverse songs like “Milk” and “Day Old Blues” fit comfortably alongside tracks such as “King of the Rodeo” and “Pistol of Fire” that seemed heavily influenced by the English post-punk sound of the ’80s. Lyrically, it was much darker and more candid than Youth and Young Manhood, certain songs offering detailed (and at times self-deprecating) snapshots of Caleb and the band’s decadent lifestyle speeding along the fast lane of the rock ’n’ roll highway.
“The first record was pretty much storytelling. The second record was a little more personal; [Caleb] probably wrote too much shit that had actually really happened,” Nathan reflects with a grimace. “But he’s an amazing songwriter. There’s times when we’ve drank two or three bottles of wine and he’ll just pick up a notebook and start writing. The guy can’t even carry on a conversation with me yet I’ll read what he wrote the next day and be blown away. I don’t know how he does it. He’s able to turn his inner demons into melodic poetry.”
The gritty simplicity, candid songwriting and swaggering edginess of both albums earned critical praise from British music press and fans alike, two groups long infatuated with the cultural exports of the American South.
“Our first gig over there was at a bar that was a strip joint by day and a rock club by night,” Nathan remembers with a laugh. “The White Horse in High Wycombe, England. We couldn’t even go in our dressing rooms when we pulled up in the van because the strippers were finishing their lap dances for the locals. But once we started playing, it was pandemonium. 150 people could’ve stood in there safely and there were probably 300, 350 people jammed in there to see us. It was so hot you could hardly breathe. We thought it couldn’t be that insane every time but it has.”
“Every concert we’ve ever played in the U.K. has sold out,” adds bassist Jared Followill. “It’s pretty crazy when we’re there. We have to stay in our hotel all day because we really can’t leave. If less than 200 kids come over the barricade at the show, it’s a slow night.”
Despite festival gigs at Bonnaroo and the Austin City Limits Music Festival, opening for the Strokes and appearances on the Letterman and Conan shows, the band has struggled in the states to attain the frenzied following it has across the pond.
“At first, it bothered us a little bit just because you go from not being able to go anywhere without a security guard to coming here and the only person that recognizes you in the airport when you get home is your mom,” Nathan says. “But really, it depends on what you want out of this. Do you want to be on TRL and live in L.A. or New York and not be able to walk down the street without every person knowing who you are? For some people, that’s the goal and if it ever gets where we can’t leave the house without our big baldies then shit, we’ll do that. But if we never get to that point, I don’t think any of us will be too disappointed.”
*****
“If we didn’t learn anything else making this record, we learned how awkward it was bumping into the girl that you had sex with the night before. That’s pretty damn awkward. It’s so much easier when you’re on tour ’cause you get to go to another town the next day. If you decide to sleep with a girl when you’re at home, then she’s going to tell this girl and that girl and before you know it, you’ve got a damn girlfriend and there ain’t another town comin’. We all faked it like we had out-of-town girlfriends and told them, ‘all right, I’ll cheat on my girlfriend back in New York, but just this once.’”
Caleb Followill snickers wickedly as a mischievous grin creeps across his twenty-something stubble. For Because of the Times, the band returned to the familiar surroundings of Nashville instead of heading off to Los Angeles where Aha Shake Heartbreak was cut.
“There’s something to be said for sleeping in your own bed, driving your own car, drinking at your favorite bars and having your friends around,” Nathan explains. “There’s no pressure. Sometimes you can get caught up in that. You record in L.A. and find yourself wanting to get a session over with so you can go to whatever bar or club is hot at the moment. It can take you over and as opposed to doing a record, you’re hanging out in L.A. for two months and happened to record an album while you were there partying. This record was very, very laid back and comfortable, but at the same time, it had kind of a sad feel to it too.”
Caleb picks up the narrative. “Our first record was really just us dreaming about being on the road. The second one was actually what happened. This record’s about missing the road, the party and everything that goes along with that. We’d just come home from this great tour of England and went straight into the studio. You love being at home but you’re also wondering what’s going on out there while you’re there. So the songs are like us looking back and wishing we were back there. They’re kind of melancholy, but a good melancholy. It’s kinda like when I listen to My Morning Jacket’s At Dawn. It’s a feel-good record but yet there are songs on there that’ll rip your heart out. It sounds so lonesome but they were at home making that record, like us. I guess people at home are just more comfortable to cry.”
Songs like “Fans,” “On Call” and “Ragoo” capture perfectly the longing the band had for the U.K. as they recorded in America, but the sullen vibe of Because of the Times manifests itself most readily in “The Runner,” a highly personal tale that found Caleb seeking solace from a higher power while his bandmates stewed after a particularly ill-fated evening.
“We were on tour and I was drunk and an asshole and pissed off the whole band like I do sometimes,” the frontman admits. “Our equipment was all set up for our soundcheck the next day and it was like an hour until we were supposed to do it. I walked up there with a guitar, started playing this little riff and just started singing, ‘Our time as we go, we know our time will change/I talked to Jesus, Jesus says i’m okay.’ As soon as I sang it, I got the chill bumps. It was kind of like me forgiving myself ’cause I knew it’d be a couple of days ’til they all talked to me. It’s one of the first songs I’ve written where I actually talk about Jesus, but it’s not in a religious way. It’s about being a sinner, it’s about being a son of a bitch. That’s why i think that song’s so special. It’s kind of like a song for every man, you know.”
The comfortable feel of the album was aided in no small part by the return of both Johns and Petraglia as producers. The duo serves different roles for the band, but the collaborative relationship between them reached its creative zenith on Because of the Times.
“From a production standpoint, Ethan is like the stern father and Angelo’s like the caring mother. Ethan’s pedigree and résumé speak for themselves, so he usually knows what instruments or effects to use to get certain sounds,” Nathan says. “While he’s more behind the board, Angelo’s out there with us in the studio, strapping on the guitars and saying, ‘All right, that doesn’t work but maybe if you try this.’ It was always kind of a stiff situation between them until now. Now, they’re buddy-buddy. It’s almost like they had to work together in the past and on this record, they got to work together.”
The Kings have been known to wear their influences on their sleeves, be it Zeppelin, the Kinks, Cash or AC/DC. For Because of the Times, the band was more like the proverbial leather couch: the last ass that touched them was the one that left the deepest impression.
As part of the promotion for Aha Shake Heartbreak, the band was invited to appear along with U2 on CD:UK, a British music television show featuring live performances and artist interviews. The gig ended up being the break of their lives.
“The day of the show, we finish our set and someone comes over and says U2 would like to meet you,” Caleb says with a laugh. “We sat in this little room by ourselves and then the door swings open and in walks U2. They sat there with us for a few minutes and talked about our music. We were all just floored they knew us. I’ll never forget Bono saying, ‘Man, with the records you guys are making, we’d love to open for you one day.’ We all laughed our asses off and then three weeks later, we got the call that they wanted us to open for them in the States.”
The band opened the entire two-month North American leg of the 2005 Vertigo tour, playing 28 dates from San Diego to Boston and all stops in between. Beyond the obvious boost to their American fanbase the gig provided, the Kings had the opportunity to watch and learn as one of the legendary bands in rock ’n’ roll played night in, night out. Sitting on the side of the stage, the band realized that they could make their albums more sonically complex without compromising the integrity of their live shows.
“There’s nothing worse in the world than going to watch a band play whose record you love and being disappointed when you walk out the door,” Caleb explains. “Any band can go into the studio and layer things up and make a really amazing record, but not every band can pull it off live. Watching U2 play every night on that tour, we realized that it can be good if it’s done right. So that was the first thing for us. We wanted big sounds and effects but we didn’t want to put anything on the record that we couldn’t pull off live. We wanted to make a record that would come across playing in arenas that big.”
U2’s imprint on Because of the Times is ubiquitous—in Nathan’s rhythms and drum sounds, in Jared’s thundering lead bass lines, in Caleb’s layered vocals and, most notably, in Matthew’s meandering, atmospheric guitar work so heavily influenced by the Edge.
“There’s a lot of stuff on this record that sounds like synthesizers and keyboards but it’s all guitar pedals,” Nathan says. “Matt really grew a lot on this record. He’s grown as a guitar player and become really comfortable exploring new sounds and different ways to play them.”
As fast as they embraced and assimilated Zeppelin into their collective DNA before Youth and Young Manhood, the band couldn’t help but be influenced by U2 and quickly became converts.
“By the end of the tour, we all had our own U2 nicknames,” Caleb says with a sly grin. “Matt’s nickname became ‘The Curve.’ Nathan had a beard so we called him ‘Hairy Mullin Junior.’ Jared was ‘Jadam Clayton’ and I was just ‘Wino.’”
*****
It’s 3:45 p.m. On a Tuesday afternoon and Caleb and Nathan Followill are leisurely sipping beers in the Grand Café at San Francisco’s ritzy Monaco Hotel. It’s the day after the band’s trip to the Redwood Room following their first night opening for Dylan, yet the young, up-and-coming rockers merit nary an autograph seeker nor even a double take as patrons enter and exit the restaurant. With tours of the U.K. becoming more frequent, it’s rare for the Followill boys to get a chance to relax in public, and the brothers appear to be reveling in the anonymity while discussing the upcoming release of their new album.
“Anyone can make another record of what everyone liked about their first two records,” Nathan contends. “There are a lot of bands, that do that and sell a shitload of records, and that’s great for them but that’s not our goal. We want to challenge ourselves and grow as musicians.”
“We may not be as big and famous as some other bands and we sure as hell don’t sell as many records as they do, but we have all these people in these huge bands that we love and look up to that think we’re amazing,” Caleb says. “We could be depressed as hell that we’re not selling as many records as some other bands, but you also don’t hear all these legends we’ve played with and who are now our friends talking up their records. So it really boils down to what you want out of this. For me, I want to continue making records. I want the last record we make to be the best one. I want to be in this band for a long, long time before it’s time to hang ’em up. As long as we’re still having fun and making folks like Bono and Eddie Vedder want to play music, that’s all we can ask for.”
As if on cue, the Killers’ latest omnipresent radio hit, “When You Were Young,” pipes in over the loudspeaker.
“Is that the fuckin’ Killers? Shit.”