Kings of Leon: Band on Fire

20 September 2008

0Comments | Comment on this Article

"There's an element of sex that's expected in our songs so I tried to wrap it all up in one song. If you read the lyrics you'll find it's got some quite visual lyrics in it. It's a pretty sexy song actually, but I knew after writing 'Sex On Fire', I couldn't write verses about making out, or going to the movie theatre with a girl."

Perhaps the band are simply slow-burners. While they have not enjoyed a number one single in the UK before 'Sex On Fire', their third album 'Because Of The Times', which is named after a preacher's conference in America - the three Followill brothers' father is a travelling United Pentecostal Church preacher - did get to number one in Britain.

"Because of the thrill of being number one, I think the songs we're writing now just really have something about them," Caleb said when the band were working on 'Only By The Night'. "It's a passion that I think will carry on. This is gonna be like a Wham record. We try to strike while the iron's hot, and we're writing some really good songs right now."

Drummer Nathan also admitted the band found working on their fourth album easy and nowhere near as stressful as the others, mostly because they had already secured a strong fan base and were not so concerned with impressing people.

"There's no pressure really, when it's your fourth record," he claims. "They say you have your whole life to write your first record, six months to write your second, then the third is make or break. So by the time you've done four you can tour as much as you want to even if you don't make another record. We didn't have any pressure on us and that comes across on this record. We weren't scared to try anything and it's good, we tried out stuff that will be seen as us being cool and not just experimental."

Caleb agrees, adding the current praise for their fourth album is particularly strange as they were initially planning to take a break from music after 'Because Of The Times' was released in April 2007.

"The reason we went in and did the record so quickly was because of Glastonbury," he admits. "We were at the end of our tour and we were going to take a load of time off, but then we got the call and we were like, 'F**k! We should probably be putting out a record."

There could, perhaps, be another reason for the band's growing success: they have tamed their wild ways. When they first burst onto the music scenes tales of drug and alcohol binges and dalliances with a host of unsuitable famous and not-so-famous women followed them.

Speaking in 2005, Nathan admitted: "We're young guys, obviously we're gonna dabble. But you come to realise it has nothing to do with us as people. It's crazy. We'll be telling girls, 'We're leaving in fifteen minutes.' And they're like, 'I only need ten.' We're like, 'Are you serious?' And they are."

Caleb took such a mammoth amount of drugs on a regular basis his bandmates saw fit to give his alter-ego - the loutish side of him which emerges when he has overindulged - the name Rooster as he so regularly appeared.

"Rooster is a d**k. I hate him," Caleb says. "I'll wake up some days and the guys will tell me what Rooster said to them the night before. And I'll be like, 'Oh, my God. That was the meanest, deepest, darkest thing ever.' Once in Los Angeles, Rooster was at a table at the Rainbow Room with Drea de Matteo from 'The Sopranos' and Ron Jeremy. He got so f**ked up that he had to be carried out!"

Nowadays, however, the boys have little time for musicians who overindulge. Nathan recently took thinly-veiled swipe at British rock stars Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty - who have both battled drug addictions - after they posted footage of themselves playing with a group of baby mice on video-sharing website YouTube.

He said: "Any time a band becomes known for something other than their music it becomes as novelty. A lot of bands think they have to be out there being stupid and it's a form of insecurity because their music isn't good enough to hold people's attention. So they have to smoke crack, play with mice and put it on YouTube.

"I mean, sure it was fun for us to make out with supermodels and get s**tfaced but we've figured out the formula. The harder you work, the more successful you get. The more you party, the worse you feel and the less you want to work hard. We still enjoy drinking, but we realise that the harder we work while we're young, the more we can party when middle age hits and the band is over."

The group claim ditching drugs and groupies has helped them write better music, and have no doubt that their current success has much to do with them all having long-term girlfriends.

"It's eased a lot of the tensions that we had personally. It's made this a lot easier on us," Caleb admits. "When we used to come over here to Britain, it was pretty stressful. You were in your hotel room all by yourself all day. You wake up and it's already dark out and you're so lonely. So at night, you go out with girls.

"At the end of the day, you want to be doing something that will, hopefully, be remembered. You want that to be on the cover of the magazines, and the other stuff to be the blurb. As opposed to that on the magazine cover and the music as a blurb."

Alongside this, the group think "Only By The Night' is the best-produced record they have ever made. With more than a hint of rock-star swagger, they claim they would have had a number one single sooner had they taken their production in hand on earlier albums.

"Your song was much better than theirs, but their song sounded better on the radio. Not because the lyrics were better or they were a better band, but just because the production was better," Nathan says, discussing how irritated the band became when songs which weren't as well-written as theirs charted higher because they were better produced and sounded more impressive.

"Every time we would get on the phone to our manager and say, 'What the f*** is going on here? Another song we can't hear the guitar solo on. But on this record, you can hear the guitar solos."

Jared adds: "We consider ourselves to be better than a lot of those bands that are big now, like Panic At The Disco or Fall Out Boy. We would love to kick their a***s out of there."

Whether it's down to ditching the drugs, ignoring the groupies or just thanks to their stellar line in catchy sing-a-long rock anthems, one thing is for sure: 'Only By The Night' is set to secure Kings of Leon's place among the most successful stadium rock bands. Let's just hope they don't take the rock-star cockiness too far, otherwise they may find one of the hundreds of other indie-rock bands snapping at their heels decides to soup up their production and "kick their a***s out of there".

By Hannah Ferrett

0Comments | Be the first to comment!