Kings of Leon: "I saw U2 in the Sphere... The best acid trip I’ve ever been on without taking acid"

The last time we virtually met Kings Of Leon was during lock down when Caleb Followill was pacing around his des Nashville res like a caged tiger.

While relishing the extra time he was getting to spend at home with his supermodel-turned-entrepreneur wife Lily Aldridge and their young kids Dixie Pearl and Winston Roy, home schooling and baking banana bread just weren’t cutting it compared to the adrenaline rush of being on a stadium stage every night.

“We’re a travelling band,” Caleb noted, the Creedence Clearwater Revival reference I’m sure fully intended. “If you take that away from us we don’t know what to do with our hands. This has been tough, man, on everybody. We can’t wait to jump back in.”

True to his word, Caleb and the chaps hit the road again the moment the Covid all-clear was sounded - their first gig back was alongside Heart’s Ann Wilson at the NFL Draft Show in Cleveland, more of which anon - and have been touring pretty much nonstop since.

The band are currently in London having just completed a series of South American shows, which concluded 72 hours ago at Lollapalooza Brazil in Sao Paolo.

If Nathan Followill’s “Thank you for an amazing night of sweaty dancing; sorry about the nudity… but not really!” tweet is anything to go by, it was a riotous return to a country where they have bona fide rock god status.

“Nudity? Oh, yeah, I took my t-shirt off and threw it into the crowd,” a jetlagged-to-fuck Nathan explains today. “We got those shirts made for our single, ‘Mustang’. They weren’t available in Brazil so I thought, ‘What better to give to the crowd?’ who got to see my chicken bird body naked from the waist down.

“The fans in South America are crazy, it’s always so much fun,” he continues. “In Mexico City, we got a police escort to the show because we were running late. It was raining and the motorcycle cops were sliding sideways trying to stop the traffic for us. It was very, very scary but they got us there in time.”

I’m meeting Nathan and his cousin Matthew Followill in London’s ultra-posh Beaumont Hotel where it’s £19 for a glass of wine and they iron the copies of The Daily Telegraph that are laid out for their well-heeled guests, visiting rock stars included, to read.

Adding to the former’s head-still-halfway-over-the-Atlantic ‘lag is his staying up to all hours to watch his baseball team, the Detroit Tigers, lock horns with the New York Mets.

Nathan has also found time in between press duties and signing 15,000 CD and 3,000 vinyl copies of the Kings’ new Can We Please Have Fun album to watch his equally beloved Manchester City spank Aston Villa 4-1.

“Woohoo, a little hat-trick from Phil Foden,” he enthuses. “I’m starting to think, ‘Another title maybe?’”

Are the Gallaghers aware that he’s a City fan?

“I’m not sure,” he responds. “I know Man City are because we’re doing something in Manchester and I’ll get to go and do the tour and give Haaland some hair tips!”

Asked what the most amazing sporting occasion he’s been at is, Nathan shoots back, “The Masters. I’m a bogey golfer who last year switched from being left-handed to right-handed, which has improved my game.”

Liam Gallagher told me that he’d swap all the number ones and Knebworth sell-outs to tog out just once for City.

“I still have fantasies of dunking in the NBA, which is never going to happen unless I grow two feet,” Nathan rues.

I imagine the Kings playing the NFL Draft Show was down to him.

“Yeah,’ he nods. “It’s a weird gig because people are there to see their favourite football-player, not the entertainment.”

“Some people got really freaked out about it and were saying, ‘What the heck are Kings Of Leon doing here?’ but it was a good way of dipping our toes back in the water.”

The aforementioned Can We Please Have Fun was recorded when the Kings were label-less after ending their eighteen-year relationship with RCA America.

“We had no label pressure or anything like that,” Jared Followill has said. “It was like we were playing with house money. It gave us the freedom to try and do something great without having to think about anything except for the music.”

“This record felt special right from the start,” Nathan agrees. “From the first meeting, we could not have been more on the same page.”

Named after a phrase that had been rattling round Caleb Followill’s head for a while, Can We Please Have Fun kicks off with the immortal line “All my wildest fantasies are here…” and over 44mins 55secs proves to be one of the Kings’ deftest, grooviest and, yes, sexiest albums yet.

Talking to us about its 2021 predecessor, When You See Yourself, Caleb observed that, “The song that’s kind of set a new benchmark is ‘100,000 People’. That’s the one we’ll have to try and beat on the next record.”

Well, have they?

“We beat it maybe seven times on this record,” Nathan suggests.

“I love ‘100,000 People’ too,” Matthew takes-over, “but ‘Ballerina Radio’, which is a similar sort of mid-tempo song, is even better. When we had that, I knew we were on the right track.”

“I was that way about ‘Actual Daydream’,” Nathan reveals.

“We kept one-upping ourselves,” his cousin resumes. “We’d do a song and say, ‘That’s the one to beat’ and have to bring all the others up to that level. It just kept going like that until the end.”

“The last three we recorded were ‘Mustang’, ‘Split Screen’ and ‘Ballerina Radio’ so, yeah, there was no slacking off,” Nathan says.

I love his line about “liking scars on songs”, which definitely applies to Can We Please Have Fun’s double punk whammy of ‘Nothing To Do’ and ‘Hesitation Generation’, which has his “1-2-3-4!” drumstick count-in left on it.

“Especially when we used to record all the way live, I never minded about a mess up here, a mess up there because it’s something that happened, it’s a real moment,” Nathan says. “Why would you plaster over that?”

My favourite Can We Please Have… track is album closer ‘Seen’, which veers off into Kraftwerk territory.

“That’s a surprise, huh?” Nathan continues. “It’s definitely an experimental ending. There was a synthesiser lying around so… It’s probably the only song that we kept from the demo process. We just brought it into the studio and added some sparkle.”

Would the guys already know the stuff Caleb’s referring to in his lyrics or is it a case of, “Interesting line, bro/cous, what does that mean?”

“No, I don’t even ask,” Matthew responds. “I like to just listen to it and make my own mind up about what it’s about. We’ve been coming out with these lyric videos, which I hate because I’m like, ‘That’s what you say? I thought it was something else!’ It changes it in my mind.”

“There are little subtle things that you pick up on like, ‘You four-eyed long-haired fuck’ – there’s no denying which band member that line’s about,” Nathan deadpans.

As much as I love rock ‘n’ roll, it’s nowhere near as innovative as pop is at the moment, which possibly explains why the Kings brought Harry Styles and Florence + The Machine man Kid Harpoon in to produce.

“He likes all music and his perspective on the band and our sound is great,” Matthew enthuses.

“We had no idea how much Kid knew about us until we were in the studio and he’d reference a song: ‘That tom part you played on ‘Kings Of The Rodeo’… I love it!’ What made it such a great collaboration is him saying, ‘You guys do what you do – and I’ll do what I do.’”

When I was starting out as a teenager in the music industry, my objectives were to get rich and get laid – neither of which I’ve been particularly successful at, but hey! What was in the Kings’ youthful heads and have those priorities changed?

“Oh my god, I was brainless,” Matthew winces. “I was seventeen when I joined Kings Of Leon and I’ll be forty this year, so all my growing up has been done around the band and on the road. When we first started we didn’t really know what we were doing. We just wanted to make music and maybe do a couple of the things you mentioned! I remember our management saying, ‘We want you guys to have a long career’ and I was like, ‘What the heck does that mean? Let’s just make this song popular.’

“Now we realise how much fun it is to be creative and the life fulfilment that brings. It’s a job but not our job because it’s so great. We know how lucky we are.”

“We’ve learned that you can have just as much fun in a marathon as you do in a sprint,” Nathan adds wisely. “Early on, it was ‘As much as you can, as quick as you can.’”

Which can – and did – burn the band out for a while. I’m loathe to use the term ‘middle-aged’ but as they all enter their fifth decades, are the Kings starting to get a sense of their own mortality?

“Mmmmm, probably more legacy than mortality,” Nathan considers. “You get to a point where you think about what good you’ve done and what good you can leave after that. Having kids now – my daughter’s eleven and my son is five – probably makes me think more about mortality than the music.”

Knowing what he knows now, would he encourage them to go into music?

“No, I’m telling my daughter to marry an agent or a manager or someone else who makes a commission,” Nathan laughs. “I said to my wife, ‘I’m not going to be one of those parents who has a drum-kit set up when they’re born and they feel like they have to play it’. I made it a rule that they had to ask for a set of drums, which at different points they both did. My daughter, especially, is very musical.”

And listening to what?

“Not my music which is cringe; I’m not cool. She’ll have Alexa play her a song and I couldn’t tell you what it is or the era it’s from. Albert’s favourite is Stevie Wonder’s ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet’. We’ve listened to that song together probably a hundred times.”

Which is quality parenting. Are there any Swifties in the house?

“Oh yes, my daughter and my wife.”

Has Nathan met Taylor?

“She’s come to shows before and we’ve hung out backstage. I know we signed a guitar one time for a boyfriend.”

It’s funny how she’s the person that Donald Trump fears the most.

“She has a lot of sway,” Nathan agrees. “Taylor made half of America cheer for a football team they’d probably never heard of and wouldn’t have cheered for but for her.”

Asked the Trump question three years ago, Caleb Followill said, “It’s really brought the worst out in both sides. I lost a lot of friends because of it. There was no compromise or trying to see other people’s point of view; it was full on one way or the other. I didn’t want to watch the TV. I was scared of, like, what’s next? You didn’t think it could get any worse – but then it did. There’s a huge, huge divide in this country.”

Which isn’t getting any narrower as we head towards November 5’s Biden vs Trump rematch. My enquiry as to whether the Kings will be publicly endorsing one of the candidates elicits a grimace from Nathan who says: “That’s the one band rule – we just don’t talk about politics. Our families are… very different. There’s a country song (by Sammy Kershaw) that says, ‘Let’s talk about anything / Anything in this world / But politics, religion and her.’”

There’s a further reminder of the Followills’ conservative Southern Baptist background when I ask them if, as kids, they indulged in any wanton acts of rock fandom.

“Growing up,” Nathan observes, “it was all church stuff. We had a very sheltered upbringing.”

“We didn’t really go to concerts or listen to secular music,” Matthew adds. “When we toured with U2, I didn’t know any of the songs other than the huge famous ones like ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’. Watching them every night I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so crazy!’ I felt that huge fanboy feeling then.”

“We had a run – U2, Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan – which was super-sweet,” Nathan says.

Did they get to hang out with Mr. Zimmerman?

“There’s a famous story in the camp about knocking Bob’s hat off,” Matthew recounts. “We were just shaking hands and of course Nathan, being the sweet man, went for the hug which made everyone else down the line have to hug too or otherwise it would’ve seemed rude. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Oh my god’, turned a little too close to Bob and the hat came off!”

Kings Of Leon’s 2023 highlights included back-to-back shows in the Racecourse Ground, as seen in This Is Wrexham. Do they know Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney?

“I’m buddies with Rob through a show called It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which we’ve been on before,” Nathan enthuses. “My wife was best friends with Ryan’s ex-wife so we’re connected in various ways.

“Going in and literally taking over the entire town… it’s the best time to hear music and the best time to rob a bank!”

Nathan and Jared are aghast – and, indeed, agape – when I mention that the new Bohemian FC away-shirt has the Thin Lizzy logo emblazoned across the chest.

“Wowwwwwww, I want one!” Nathan says.

“These guys always talk sports and I never get it but I’d wear one of those!” adds Matthew who’s also a massive Philo fan.

August 19, 2023 was the twentieth anniversary of Kings Of Leon releasing their barnstorming Youth & Young Manhood debut, which has aged not one jot since. Has anyone given them lessons in longevity?

“Bono and Eddie Vedder are the two most influential peers in terms of sitting us down and saying in the sweetest, nicest way: ‘Right now is the time of your life. You’re cream of the crop but it won’t always be that way unless you do this, this and this,’” Nathan reveals. “It was almost like somebody giving you stock tips! I always appreciated that.

“I saw U2 in the Sphere,” he continues, “which was absolutely the most mind-blowing show of my life. The best acid trip I’ve ever been on without taking acid. It was insane! Even in doing something like that, Bono made sure to give me a handwritten note thanking me for coming to the show. He doesn’t have to do stuff like that, he doesn’t have to do anything, but that’s just the kind soul he is.”

Matthew was similarly impressed when he made his own pilgrimage to Vegas.

“Everyone talks about how it looks – it’ll probably be the way everyone watches music in fifteen years from now – but you don’t realise how great it sounds,” he says. “There were speakers everywhere. I don’t even know what was going on, but it was the most amazing thing.

“I wasn’t going to say it, but I also got a note from Bono.”

“Did he put XOXO at the end or did he just give you one of these?” Nathan enquires whilst mischievously raising his digitus medius. “Was it just a tiny little finger?!”

Do the Kings still consider themselves to be in competition with other bands?

“No,” Matthew says with a shake of his head. “It’s important to let the ego go.”

“Me and my prostate, as we get older we’re in competition,” Nathan deadpans again.

The Followills did Bono and the Hewson family a favour last year by taking Inhaler out on the road with them in Europe. Elijah is a delightful young man, isn’t he?

“So sweet, so fun,” Nathan agrees. “Those kids were great and the real deal musically. It’s the first time I felt probably how U2 felt taking us out. Bono was maybe two years older than I am currently when he was touring with us – and now I’m touring with his son.”

As much as they’re looking forward to rocking Marlay Park in June, Nathan admits that it’s unlikely to beat the buzz of the Kings playing Slane Castle in 2011. This despite them having the mother of all collective hangovers after their partying the night before with Neil Diamond.

“Yeah, we hung out with Uncle Neil and lead him astray,” Nathan confirms. “The poor guy; I don’t know if he recovered!”

“I’ve never been as nervous as when we did Slane,” Matthew confides. “I couldn’t eat all day, it was miserable. Then I got on stage and after about five songs the nerves all went away.”

Talking about the album title, Jared Followill has proffered that, “It’s such a heavy time. Sometimes you want to say, ‘Can we please have fun, just for a day?’” What do the guys slap on the hi-fi when they’re seeking respite from the world’s woes?

“A pick me up? I love soul music – Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson,” shoots back Nathan who’s the main supplier of the Kings’ funky grooves.

The last word goes to Matthew who says: “It’s not probably the answer you’d expect but the Deftones’ White Pony album gets me every time.”

Can We Please Have Fun is out now. Kings Of Leon play Marlay Park, Dublin on July 6 with The War On Drugs.

Read our full live special – including all the action at Musgrave Park, St Anne's Park, Malahide Castle, Marlay Park, Trinity College Dublin, Fairview Park and more – in the current issue of Hot Press: