It may be cold, dark and depressing in Dublin, but 6,272km away in Nashville one of Music City’s famous musical residents is basking in both the early spring sunshine and the glow of optimism arising from a certain somebody being booted out of the White House.

“We’re happy to have that time behind us and hopefully everyone will start loving each other again,” Caleb Followill says in that deliciously lazy Tennessee drawl of his. “There’s peace in the air at the moment, which all of us have a responsibility to build on.”

Adding further to the Followill feelgood factor is the imminent release of When You See Yourself, Kings Of Leon’s eighth album in a somewhat turbulent career dating back to 1999.

“We really focused on this record and put the time in,” Caleb reflects. “We didn’t want any filler; everything had to have a purpose. Not just the songs but everyone’s part in them. If you listen to Jared’s basslines alone, it’s fantastic work. The song that kind of set a new benchmark for us was ‘100,000 People’. That’s the one we’ll have to try and beat on the next album. The storyline is great. It’s a long song but it keeps you engaged. If it comes on I won’t cringe or hide away from it. That should be in the magazine: ‘You’ll cringe less with this one than you did with our previous work.’”

How could we leave such a fantastic quote out? While not lacking in balls to the wall rockers – ‘Echoing’ is as heavy as anything they’ve done in the past – When You See Yourself is for the most part a funky shake-your-tail-feathers affair with a title-track that reminds this listener of Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)’. No, really!
“Oh wow,” Caleb says managing to appear simultaneously perplexed and pleased. “If that’s the vibe you’re getting from it, great. For us, making a record is a case of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. We’ll get together and very sheepishly play some of our ideas. When the other guys start playing along with them you’re like, ‘Okay, we might have a song.’ When we’ve ten ideas we all agree on it’s time to book the studio.”

Is he a drunk/sober/happy/depressed writer – or a bit of all four?

“It depends,” he ponders. “Some of these songs were written a long time ago when I was definitely drunker. The best thing you can do is come up with an idea when you’ve had some drinks, but then get stoned so you’ll be self-conscious writing the lyrics and push yourself to make sure they’re great.”

Finally, a way of working I can fully embrace! The new long-player was due last year ahead of the Kings embarking on another of their epic tours – the Dublin RDS was due a visit on July 1 – but then you-know-what happened. The only silver lining to the Covid cloud, Caleb says, was getting to hang at home with his supermodel-turned-entrepreneur wife Lily Aldridge and their daughter Dixie Pearl, aged eight, and son Winston Roy who turned two last month.

“Any time you get to spend with your family is precious especially when the kids are young,” he reflects. “It was frustrating, though, that having decided to jump back in we couldn’t. We’ve always been a touring band, so much so that when we first started other bands would say, ‘Why do you guys play so many shows? You have to tell your managers to ‘fuck off’ or whatever because they’re overworking you.’ We were like, ‘Actually, it’s us. We’re the ones who’ve travelled our whole lives and now we’re doing it in luxury. We’re seeing all these beautiful cities and eating all this fantastic food.’ That’s our lives. We’re a travelling band and if you take that away from us we don’t know what to do with our hands.

“We got the chance to kind of clear our heads and get out of the music world for a while, but now that we’re back into it we’re really pleased with what we’ve done. We could’ve made a few tweaks to When You See Yourself during lockdown, but we didn’t want to go and throw a bunch of modern-day problems on it. So we resisted the temptation.”

Given that they were about to go on tour when the pandemic struck, are there 50,000 Kings Of Leon t-shirts in a warehouse somewhere with the wrong dates on them?

“I thought it’d be funny to do the touring shirts with ‘cancelled’ next to all the dates and add some absurd venues that were way too big for us to fill, but no one else got the joke,” Caleb rues. “One thing I know for sure is that when we do play again, it’s going to be emotional. This has been tough, man, on everybody.”

In addition to the joyous arrival of young Winston Roy, Team Followill’s ranks have been further swelled by Jared and his wife Martha Patterson becoming first time parents in January 2020 to Adeline James and Nathan and his better half, Jessie Baylin, welcoming their second child, Oliver Francis, into the world in April 2018. Did they consciously make a window for having babies?

“We know when we have a break in our schedule that we have to get busy – which we did!” he laughs. “I don’t know if the wives are that happy but it’s like, ‘Six months starting now, go!’”

Asked how the home schooling’s been going, Mr. Followill pulls a face and says, “It’s Mrs. Followill who’s been doing most of the teaching. I’m the distraction who comes down with ice cream and makes jokes. We were home schooled a lot when were we kids because we travelled, and it can be pretty frustrating looking out the window and seeing a pretty day knowing you’re chained to the desk. I have to say the amount of work kids are expected to do nowadays is insane. After a long day at school they’re given an hour’s homework to do. It’s way tougher than it was in my day.”

Ice cream and goofing apart, has he been of any academic use to Dixie Pearl?

“I consider myself pretty good at math but, well, math has changed. Never mind the solution, I don’t even know what the problem is.”

We’ll take that as a “no” then. The answer to another question, “What attracted you to Victoria Secrets model Lily Aldridge?” might seem obvious, but it was in fact good old rock ‘n’ roll that Mr. & Mrs. Followill first bonded over.

“My wife’s Dad, Alan Aldridge, designed a lot of the original ‘60s artwork for The Beatles and The Who, and also created the fantastic gatefold sleeve for Elton John’s Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirty Cowboy,” he enthuses. “He was a brilliant artist and a really cool guy.”

What does Caleb Followill, 39, make of Jared Followill, 34, saying that the reason the new Kings promo shots are artfully blurred is that he’s freaking out about getting old.

“I’m kind of embracing it,” Caleb says of staring at 40. “It’s natural, it happens. Jared with his, like, zero body fat does not look old. I’ve zero sympathy for him.”

Music industry tongues were set a wagging in 2019 when the Kings jettisoned their original manager, Ken Levitan – “I took them from not having a song to being one of the biggest rock bands on the planet,” he said at the time – and entrusted their affairs to Irving Azoff, an old school Mr. 20% whose antics have often overshadowed those of his charges.

“That guy’s got some stories,” Caleb says of the 5 feet, 3 inch music mogul who according to the New York Times “lit menus on fire in restaurants, sent gifts of live boa constrictors to his rivals and once used a chainsaw to cut through a wall to a client’s room.”

My suspicion is that they only signed with Azoff because they wanted to pump him for info about their beloved Eagles who he managed for forty years, prompting Don Henley to say, “He may be Satan, but he’s our Satan!” Am I correct?

“Possibly,” Caleb laughs. “We’ve known Irv from way back but never thought we’d end up working with him. I wish I could get him drunk so he’d tell me the dirt, but he doesn’t really drink. He’s been doing it for a long time and it’s pretty awesome that we get to work with this legendary figure.”

The Kings’ relationship with Azoff intensified when, resplendent in tuxes and dickie-bows, they covered ‘Take It Easy’ at the 2017 Grammy Awards.“We had Ringo Starr introduce us, which was one of the most surreal moments of my life,” Caleb fondly reminisces. “Not only did we get to perform an Eagles song, but they were sat there right next to two former Presidents watching. That was very strange. It’s one of those times when you’re looking at ‘em – but you’re not really looking at ‘em. Your eyes glaze over because you don’t want to see Don Henley pulling a face.

“It’s a shame that Glenn Frey, who was the one who requested us, had passed away before we did it. Afterwards one of his kids came up to us with tears in their eye and said, ‘My Dad wanted this bad and he’s looking down’, which was a beautiful moment.”

Most bands would be delighted to have two Beatles connections, but the Kings have gone one better.

“The owner of the studio where we recorded Where You See Yourself has the largest collection of Beatles equipment in the world,” Caleb marvels. “I got to use the same BBC microphone that The Beatles sang on. He’ll bring a guitar in, say ‘why don’t you play around on this?’ and neglect to mention that it used to belong to John Lennon. When I found that out I was like, ‘I don’t want to touch this thing, what if I break it? and he goes, ‘Ah, don’t worry man, it’s just music.’

“Matthew, who’s the equipment nerd in the band, really did his homework because we were using all these vintage classics, which give everything you do this warmth. It makes you sound like you’re good at what you do. We’re not Pink Floyd but we play the same keyboard as them!”

Quick pop quiz: What’s the best Beatles album?

“This is such a hard question… ask me tomorrow and I’ll probably tell you something different but today it’s the White Album.”

Is the correct answer – and the one fellow Beatles nut Billie Eilish gave when I asked her. While you’d have to walk round Dublin a lot to bump into Bono, during my one and only trip to Nashville I spotted a magnificent looking Little Richard being wheelchaired through the airport, Billy Bob Thornton strolling along Broadway and Alison Krauss hailing a cab.

“It looks different from the outside, but it’s a pretty small community so, yeah, it’s hard to go out in Nashville and not bump into someone well-known,” Caleb nods. “It used to just be country, but now it’s every type of music. My wife gets calls every day from her friends in the fashion and acting worlds who’ve moved here. If you’ve got a good eye – and I do – you’ll spy ‘em everywhere. When shows are happening, we try to pop in to the little studio Jack White’s got in Nashville and see what he’s up to. He’s a great musical ambassador for his adopted city.”

Lord Henry and the other 70,000-plus people who saw Kings Of Leon rock Slane to within an inch of its ramparts in 2011 will be delighted to learn that it ranks as one of Caleb’s worst hangovers ever.

“Oh my God, it’s in the top three for sure,” he says wincing at the memory. “We were so proud to be able to tell our Dads, who were massive fans, that we had Thin Lizzy playing with us. I remember they were snorting snuff so obviously we had to. This was the night before Slane so the celebrations started early. Neil Diamond was staying in the hotel too and joined in.”

Stop right there. As someone who’s been worshipping at the Diamondian altar since the age of eight – it was ‘Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show’ that made me denounce Christ in his favour – I’m going to turn all fan boy and ask, “What’s he like?”

“Oh, a super nice guy; just very warm and friendly. It’s only right that he still has young-ish bands coming up to him with their jaws on the floor star-struck. I think he enjoys that so, yeah, he’s a hell of a guy.”

Cool, so back to Slane…

“When we walked on stage the following day, I thought, ‘We’ve fucked up!’” Caleb admits. “I was really struggling and hurting up there. I honestly don’t know how we managed to do around thirty songs, but people were clapping at the end so we’ll put it in the ‘win’ column.”

It could have been worse with Slane subsequently opening their own distillery.

“No, it really couldn’t have been worse but now that I know they’ve got their own distillery we’ll have to pay them another visit.”

I’m sure there’s a cask there with the Kings’ name on it. I doubt mine is the only household where art has taken on even greater importance during lockdown. What’s helped Caleb overcome the Covid blues?

“I wanted to be a chef when I was a younger man and really cranked that up a lot last year cooking three square meals a day for the family,” he reveals. “I got crazy into making tacos, so much so that when we started to get ready to do press I thought, ‘Okay, time to ease up on tacos and hit the gym.’

“When you’re cooking tacos you need nice wine and music, which reminds you of a better time before all this shit started going down. I was listening to a lot of the stuff we listened to making our first album – Wilco, Yo La Tengo and Magnetic Fields. Stuff that was a little bit mellow and helped me escape. You know, open the windows, make myself a Paloma and enjoy the day.”

More than a few Palomas – tequila, lime, grapefruit juice and agave syrup in case you’re wondering – were downed in celebration of Sleepy Joe whooping Donald J.’s lardy ass.

“The Trump era – and sadly it’s not over yet – has really brought the worst out in both sides,” Caleb proffers. “There were all these fanatics waiting to have their moment. I lost a lot of friends this year 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 and, like, what’s next? Every day there was something. You didn’t think it could get any worse – but then it did. There’s a huge, huge divide in this country.”

As someone who grew up in the southern states with religion to the fore, does Caleb get the messianic hold Trump has over evangelical Christians?

“It’s strange because it wasn’t something that came in to our religion. As far as my Dad and his preacher buddies were concerned, whatever your politics were you didn’t bring them into the pulpit. There was just no place for it but that’s changed.”

He’s mentioned Ringo and Slane, but before Caleb heads back to the kitchen are there other standout Kings moments he wouldn’t swap for the world?

“We’re continually finding ourselves in situations where we’re just looking around going, ‘How did we get here?’” he admits. “Winning awards is a nice thing but it’s not nearly as big as when you have an artist you admire telling you they’re a fan of your music. That’s kind of a gut punch, y’know? You inspired me and now you’re being inspired back? That’s crazy!

“Something that got me started in this was when I was trying to write a song in Nashville but didn’t know how to play guitar,” Caleb concludes. “I said to this guy who was really amazing, ‘I wish I could play guitar like that’ and he went, ‘Enough to practice?’ That was the day I went and bought a guitar and taught myself. I looked at this guy’s hands and what his fingers were doing and mimicked it at home. If I can pass that sort of ‘eureka’ moment on to someone else then my work here is done.”

•When You See Yourself is out now on Sony.