Hot Press meets Imagine Dragons

Sprawled on the sofa at a swish London hotel, Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds looks every centimetre the dissolute rocker. So it’s a surprise to learn that, just a few years ago, a life of guitar-toting stardom was the last thing on his agenda.
 
“I wanted to join the FBI,” he says. “I was very serious about it. I went to a bunch of open days and seminars and things like that. My mom was getting kind of worried. She was asking me, ‘What if you shot someone – killed someone even? Could you handle that?’ I guess she had all these scenarios playing out in her mind. Of course then she found out I’d joined a rock band. Suddenly she was all like, ‘Maybe you should join the FBI after all!’”
By then it was too late. When it looked like Reynolds’ dreams of joining the agency weren’t going to pan out, he’d fallen into a funk. At home in Las Vegas one night, he channelled his frustration into a song. It would become ‘It’s Time’, Imagine Dragons’ first hit.
“Oh, man, I just started singing, stomping, clapping my hands. The song sort of came out of nowhere. I had no active ambition to actually write anything. The music flowed from me. I was tired and frustrated with my life. It was my way of expressing the pain I was going through. It was never meant to be the start of anything.”
Proud sons of Vegas, Imagine Dragons have been predictably compared to The Killers. While their music is a little more adventurous, swapping electro beats for third-hand Springsteen-isms, it nonetheless has a powerful stadium sweep and it’s easy to understand why the quintet are tipped for great things. They’ve already made their presence felt in the US, where debut album Night Visions reached the top five in 2012.
A thoughtful chap under the rocker insouciance, Reynolds believes that, after years of pop dominance old-school rock ‘n’ roll is poised for a comeback. With their strident, arena-ready sound, Imagine Dragons, he further holds, are perfectly placed to capitalise
on this.
“People want to see live instrumentation,” he avers. “It’s a wonderful time to be in a band. There are new beginnings. Whether it’s us or people like fun. or The Lumineers – they’re all doing great. For the first time in a long while you’re hearing artists who actually play their instruments on pop radio. It’s fantastic. The way I see it, it’s almost as if the industry has all these rotating trends. One thing is in fashion, then it’s something else. Rock is in with a vengeance. It’s a good time to be in a band I think.”
Thoroughly chipper today, Reynolds admits to a darker side. Prone to depression, he was at a low ebb when Imagine Dragons started.
“I’ve always struggled with anxiety,” he says. “For a long time I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, how my life was going. It’s really all in my head. Wherever I go I seem to carry that around with me. With the band taking off what I’ve found is that success doesn’t cure everything. These things can still haunt you.”
That isn’t to say Imagine Dragons are entirely po-faced. Young men with the music world at their feet, they’ve been learning how to enjoy themselves.
“There are moments of wildness,” Reynolds admits. “We were playing in Scandinavia one time and, during the support act, our bass-player decided to walk on stage naked during their set. Actually he didn’t even run on stage. He just calmly sauntered out there. If you’re going to do the whole naked thing, it’s best to do it in as classy a fashion as possible, I think.”
As with The Killers – with whom they’re not closely acquainted and have only met once – they have a complex relationship with Vegas. There’s a lot of hometown pride. However, they acknowledge it can have a seedy side too.
“We used to play these shows on the strip,” Reynolds recalls. “We’d do four, five-hour sets. Mostly it was covers. Every so often we’d try and slip in an original. I remember the crowds being really weird – all these older people who’d been gambling all day on the one arm bandits and what have you. They’d come into the bar for a break. And they’d have to listen to us.”

Night Visions is out now.