Hot Press Meets Brandon Flowers

It’s Sunday afternoon in Brussels and Brandon Flowers is feeling a little glum. Chilling in his luxury suite in the five- star Hotel Amigo, not so fresh from last night’s rousing headlining performance at the Isle of Wight Festival, the chisel- chinned frontman of The Killers is missing his family on Father’s Day.
His gorgeous wife of almost seven years, Tana Mundkowsky, and their young brood – Ammon (6), Gunnar (4) and two-year-old Henry – are all back home in Henderson, Nevada, a quiet and wealthy suburb situated just 10 miles from the madness of the Las Vegas strip. With the band touring Europe until the middle of July, including a stop-off in Dublin’s Phoenix Park on Saturday the 13th, it’ll be at least another month before the three Flowers boys are reunited with their dad. Such is the fractured family life of the typical internationally touring rock star.
“Ah, I always miss them when we’re out on the road,” he sighs, speaking in a soft American accent. “There’s no way I could take them with me, though. It’s just too difficult with three young kids, especially for that long a flight.”
Although there are a few windows in the band’s touring schedule that would potentially allow him a sneaky visit home, Flowers is unlikely to relish the prospect of that draining round-trip. Quite a nervous type anyway – you can tell by the way he punctuates interviews with a series of self-deprecatory giggles – the 31-year-old is famously terrified of flying.
“I sort of conquered it for a while, and then I had a relapse,” he admits. “I had a really bad flight from Colombia to Guadalajara in Mexico, and it kind of brought it all back up. But now I’m recovering again.”
Flying isn’t his only fear. He’s quite superstitious, and is most particularly afraid of the number 621, following a scary incident with a ouija board when he was a young teenager. It’s his date of birth (“we do it the opposite of the way you guys do it over here”), but ever since the board informed him that June 21 was also going to be his deathday, he’s avoided 621 wherever and whenever possible. He won’t stay in a hotel room with that number, let alone board a bus, train or flight. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t much enjoy his birthdays, either.
“Yeah, it’s so stupid, really. It’s ridiculous. You shouldn’t mess with the dark arts. I remember we were coming over to do our first Glastonbury, and I had to fly on my birthday, and it was just a nightmare. They had to drug me to get me on the plane.”
Does he have any special comfort routines when he’s flying now?
“Yeah, breathing,” he says with a perfectly straight face. “It’s a lot to do with breathing. It’s strange because you start going through each limb and sort of have to let go and realise that you’re tensing up. It’s kind of amazing what happens when you go through every section that you’re supposed to go through of your body. By the time you’re finished, it’s sort of like an out-of-body thing.”
Needless to say, as one of the world’s most famous Mormons, he also prays to God when he’s airborne.
“Yeah, I make a lot of... bargains,” he laughs.

Given the truly phenomenal success he's enjoyed with The Killers over the past decade, you've got to wonder what chips this most religious of rock stars has left to bargain with. After all, Brandon Flowers and his band already have the kind of album and ticket sales that many would happily sell their souls for, and he’s been internationally famous for most of his adult life.
The youngest of six children, Flowers was born in Las Vegas in 1981, but his devoutly Mormon family relocated to Utah when he was eight years old. His father was a produce man, working in grocery stores, and his mother a housewife.
Quiet and shy as a teenager, Flowers didn’t really fit-in, growing up in the small, conservative town of Nephi. It wasn’t exactly the most rockin’ place (The Book Of Nephi is the first section of The Book Of Mormon, and opens, “I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in the learning of my father...”).
A devoted fan of gloomy British indie bands like The Smiths, Depeche Mode and The Cure, he tended to keep his own company and admits that he was considered something of a weirdo in high-school. When he was 19, the Flowers family returned from Nephi to live in the suburbs of Las Vegas, and young Brandon was finally able to seek out his own kind of people.
After a brief stint in a band called Blush Response – they fired him when he refused to relocate to California with them – he answered a newspaper ‘Musician’s Wanted’ notice placed by the future Killers guitarist. Dave Keuning’s ad mentioned The Beatles, Oasis and other British bands, and immediately caught Flowers’ attention.
Keuning had grown up in smalltown Iowa, and the pair clicked immediately. Within a couple of months, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci – whom they knew via bar-circuit contacts – had joined the set- up, and The Killers were born. Taking their murderous moniker from the bass-drum of a fictional band in the music video for New Order’s ‘Crystal’, they played their first ever gig in August 2002.
As with thousands of bands before them, The Killers recorded a scratchy demo and honed their live act around the clubs of Las Vegas. Unfortunately, they failed to impress any of the American record labels who bothered to check them out. While the guys rehearsed and gigged whenever and wherever they could, they worked in lowly-paid jobs. Keuning slaved at Banana Republic; Stoermer was a hospital courier, transporting blood and body parts; Vannucci took photographs at a Vegas wedding chapel.For his part, Flowers was a bellhop at the Gold Coast Hotel and Casino.
The Killers eventually attracted the attention of a British A&R man from Warner Bros. Although he ultimately passed on signing the band himself, he took their demo back to the UK with him, and gave it to a friend who worked at fledgling indie label Lizard King, where Irish woman Shona Ryan was a key player. With no alternative offers on the table, the band signed to Lizard King in the summer of 2003.
Presumably that Warner Bros guy is still kicking himself now – not quite as hard as the man at Decca who infamously dismissed The Beatles on the basis that guitar groups were a passing fad, Dick Rowe, did. But nearly. The Killers’ 2004 debut Hot Fuss spawned three huge hit singles in ‘Mr. Brightside’, ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ and ‘Somebody Told Me’, before going on to shift several million copies. Although their 2005 follow-up, Sam’s Town, wasn’t quite so favourably reviewed, it too went multi-platinum and earned them the title of ‘Best British Band In America’: it may have been meant somewhat disparagingly, but Brandon Flowers was actually pleased.
The smoother, more pop-driven Day & Age saw the newly feathered-up indie rockers reach an even wider audience in 2008. Considered a real return to rock ‘n’ roll form after a lengthy hiatus, their fourth studio album, Battle Born, hit the racks last September. Having also released one compilation, Sawdust (2007), and one live effort, 2009’s Live From The Royal AlbertHall, all told the band have shifted more than 17 million records worldwide. They’re certainly not stuck for a few quid.
Battle Born Studios is the name of the band’s own Winchester recording facility, where most of the last album was laid down, but the phrase also appears on the state flag of Nevada. Do The Killers feel especially patriotic towards their home state?
“Yeah, I guess we do,” he says. “Some people think it’s a dirty thing. Well, not necessarily a dirty thing but I don’t know... There’s so much negative sentiment towards being proud of where you’re from. Of course I understand that it was sort of luck of the draw, you know. I could’ve been born anywhere. But I think there’s something special about having an attachment to where you’re from, and wanting to care for it.
“Like, if people didn’t like where they were from, I don’t know what would happen. Who would protect it, you know, keep it going? I embrace my roots and the way my people walk and talk and the kind of people that they are, and I like it. I’ve seen the world, and that’s been a real blessing in my life, but I still gravitate back to the desert, and I think it’s definitely a big part of The Killers as well.”
As the state’s biggest musical export, have they ever been officially honoured by Nevada?
“I think we’re in the Nevada Music Hall of Fame. I don’t know how many people are in that. We recently did an advert, a song for tourism in Nevada: we did a cover of ‘Don’t Fence Me In’. So there are these great commercials about coming to see our lovely State. So yeah, they know about us.
“We also did a version of ‘Home Means Nevada’, the State song, for Harry Reid, who’s the Senate Majority Leader in America. He went to the same high-school as my parents did, and he asked us to play it at one of his speeches.”
Although they did that small favour for Reid, a Democrat, The Killers generally keep their politics to themselves. When fellow Mormon Mitt Romney asked Flowers to lend his support to his presidential campaign over a lunch at Caesar’s Palace, the singer politely turned the Republican candidate down.
“I got along fine with him,” he says of that lunch meeting. “Mitt Romney’s a pleasant guy. I don’t think that many people would find it difficult to get along with him.”
However, he diplomatically refuses to divulge whether or not he actually voted for him.
“Within the band we try to remain on neutral ground and not talk about that kind of stuff because if I did or if I didn’t, one of the other guys might have or might not have, and so on and so forth...” He laughs and apologises. “Sorry, I haven’t done an interview in a long time, really, so that’s why I’m a little rusty today. I thought you were just going to ask me about this gig in Ireland.”
While they may prefer to remain politically neutral, The Killers did agree to play for President Obama at the White House last year, which is one way of nailing your colours to the mast.
“Yeah, that was one of the highlights of this whole ride for us,” he recalls now. “We played on the Fourth of July at the White House on the south lawn. That was incredible, we got to play in front of the USO [United Services Organizations] and these people that are in the military and their families. That’s just about the coolest thing you can do in my shoes on the Fourth of July."

With over a million sales in 2012, Battle Born has been a commercial success - all the moreso in the UK and Ireland, where it topped the charts. But it wasn’t the easiest record to make. Recording it in fits and starts last year, the band utilised the services of no less than five different producers during its gestation: Steve Lillywhite, Damian Taylor, Brendan O’Brien, Stuart Price and Daniel Lanois. Was it always the plan to work with so many different people?
“The plan was one producer, but it didn’t work out that way,” he explains. “No offence to anybody that we used or didn’t use, it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. You start calling people, and they’ve already been booked by other bands, or have stuff going on – so we just took what we could get. We took people in pieces.”
Despite the disparate styles of these producers, the album – clearly influenced by the stadium- stuffing likes of Muse, U2 and Springsteen – isn’t painted in broad strokes.
“You know, it was recorded a piece here, a piece there,” he says, “over a few months. So I’m pretty impressed with how concise the record sounds having used five different producers.”
Director Tim Burton shot the video for ‘Here With Me’, one of the lead singles off Battle Born. Starring Winona Ryder as a flaxen-haired horror movie queen, and Craig Roberts (who appeared in Richard Ayoade’s Submarine) as an obsessed young fan, it’s typically surreal visual fare from the maker of such cult movies as Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.
“Well, Tim made a video for us on our second record, he made ‘Bones’, and the way that all happened was that we had brass on the album for the first time,” Flowers explains. “Mark [Stoermer] grew up playing the trumpet and he heard a part and it reminded me of Oingo Boingo, and that was a band that I grew up listening to that really we haven’t mentioned enough. They had a huge impact on me.
“And of course Danny Elfman, the singer from Oingo Boingo, worked with Burton and there was that connection – and then everything just sort of aligned. We did this song ‘Bones’ that reminded me of Oingo Boingo and we thought that Tim Burton would probably be amazing to do this video. And he ended up saying ‘yes’ and doing that. And that’s one of our best videos, for sure, and we thought that we’d ask him again, so he’s done two videos for us now.
“He’s got really great taste and it’s nice to keep working with someone like that, that you just have complete respect for and know that you don’t have to worry. They’re courageous and you believe in them. And I can’t explain to you how much you have to worry [with other directors] because you’re putting something that you’ve done into somebody else’s hands – and they’re gonna shape it. But you don’t have to worry when you give it to Time."
Following a memorably awkward TV chat show experience last September another celebrity with whom Flowers is now (reluctantly associated is famed atheist Richard Dawkins. Shortly before the release of Battle Born, the singer appeared on Skavlan, a Swedish-Norwegian show. Fellow guests included Ulrika Jonsson and Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus. It started off as a normal celebrity interview, but journalist host Fredrik Skavlan soon began inquiring about Flower’s religious beliefs. The slightly embarrassed star spoke positively about his Mormon upbringing and unwavering belief in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A few moments later, he was effectively ambushed when Skavlan introduced the author of The God Delusion onto the show. Dawkins wasted no time tearing into Mormonism, calling The Book Of Mormon “an obvious fake” and referring to church founder Joseph Smith as a “charlatan.” While he couldn’t disguise hisannoyance, it’s to Flowers’ great credit that he didn’t deck anyone live on TV.
“I did know Dawkins was going to be on,” he recalls of the incident. “And I knew who he was, even though I may have looked like I was taken by surprise. I actually sat beside him backstage on a couch and we shared an interpreter, because the show was in Norway. He may not have known about me, other than that I was a singer in a band, unless they gave him a sort of prep like ‘that kid is a Mormon’ or whatever.
“I was aware of him because... I don’t know. Being a believer I’d heard about him and I’d seen his rants before about Mormons. And he gets so frosty and really upset about it. But I wasn’t expecting what happened. I didn’t expect it to be so full-on, I guess. He has some boxes that he checks, that he ticks, and he checked every box that I’d seen him check before on Mormonism and he just kind of erupted.
“I didn’t expect him to be so vicious about it, and I was sort of taken by surprise. I knew that I wasn’t going to convince Dawkins that there was a God or that there was a Creation. And he didn’t convince me that there wasn’t one. So anyway, it was strange. I never thought I’d be in that situation on TV.”
Have you read his book?
“No, I haven’t. There are quite a few of them. Maybe I should start.”
Does Flowers find it difficult being a sort of brand ambassador for his religion?
“I’m not really. I think I’m just someone that sometimes is in the spotlight that happens to be Mormon. It’s not like they’ve given me some title, you know, within the Church. I think it’s a relatively new religion and people are curious about it and there are strange rumours about it, and some of them are true, and some of them are completely false. And I think people are just curious and it’s getting a lot of attention lately.”
Referencing drugs, decadence and casual sex, a lot of his song lyrics seem to be somewhat at odds with traditional Mormonism... He shakes his head.
“I wouldn’t say ‘a lot’ of my lyrics are. Maybe some of them in the early days were. There might have been more lyrics that were at odds. I was trying... I was really engulfed in glam rock and, you know, chasing this fantasy, and it wasn’t me. And I guess that’s one of the beautiful things about being in a band, that freedom that we all have, to become something else. But I just realised pretty quickly that I didn’t like acting. And I was gonna start going down a different road and embracing more of what I really am, and it made it a lot easier.”
Eschewing the usual clichéd rock star vices, he doesn’t cheat on his wife, never touches illegal drugs, and very rarely drinks alcohol. So what’s his guilty pleasure?
“I don’t know if I have a guilty pleasure,” he shrugs. “I guess it would be something like playing Fruit Ninja on my phone. My wife put this app on my phone and it’s the only thing
I got on there. I haven’t quite embraced the whole electronic era that we’re in. It’s just so much easier if you don’t.”
Are you on Twitter or Facebook?
“No, I’m not. I’ve nothing against them, It’s just I’ll go and pick my kid up from school or go to the park with them, or be at dinner with people that I’ve known for years, and you take a moment and look back and everybody is just hunched over, hovering over their phones.
And people aren’t watching their kids at the park anymore, or playing with them, they’re Facebooking and sexting or whatever the hell they’re doing. And people aren’t driving and watching the road anymore they’re... it’s crazy. It’s like a nightmare.”
When the band took an extended break in 2010 following their world tour to promote Day & Age, Flowers enjoyed just a few weeks holidays before going off to record his hit solo album, Flamingo. Although the reviews were mixed (the biggest complaint being that it just sounded like a more bombastic Killers album), sales were healthy and the tour was successful. So any plans to make another one?
“Oh yeah,” he enthuses. “I loved that record and I love singing those songs. Now I miss singing those songs so I’m excited about new stuff, and dusting those off and doing it again.”
Are The Killers a musically democratic unit?
“Yeah, we try to be as democratic a unit as possible. So I definitely had more freedom, which is just a given, I guess, doing my own record. But that’s not why I did it. I just love doing this and I had the songs and they kept on coming, but yeah, it was great. Maybe in the beginning I was sort of dipping my toes in and flexing them a little bit, but I really enjoyed it so I think I’ll do it again.”
Before we finish up, talk turns to the forthcoming Phoenix Park date. Following a sold-out show in the O2 last February, it’ll be The Killers’ second appearance in Ireland this year.
“We have our best shows in Ireland,” he says.
“I mean, it’s kind of boring that I even know this, but pound for pound Ireland is our biggest country, it’s where we’re most accepted, so it’s nice. It’s exciting to go there. There’s a great musical heritage there, and they always seem to appreciate the effort. You know where some people are just sort of getting spoiled, I think Ireland is still very much receptive to new music and to live music, and I hope that doesn’t change.”
Before they hit Dublin again, The Killers will be playing their biggest standalone UK show to date, when they take to the stage of Wembley on June 22. Is he nervous about it?
“A little bit,” he laughs. “It’s such an iconic place. I know it’s not the original stadium, but it’s still sacred ground, and the bands that have done it before – well, there aren’t that many, so it’s a real honour to be doing this. I’m just grateful that we’re doing it and that we’re able to do it. It’s kind of unreal. And I try not to think too much about it, but I try to sort of find the similarities between every gig so I can just go out there and do my thing. So there will be a microphone and Ronnie, Mark and Dave will be there... and that’s all I need!”