Resurrection Men

Picture the scene. The stars of our story – Caleb, Nathan, Jared and Matthew Followill – are pacing side-stage at the Tennent’s Vital festival in Belfast. The look on their faces is an intriguing mix of excitement, expectation and anxiety. Their band, Kings Of Leon, have been away from the coalface for what seems like a very long time. Tonight is not only their first visit back to Irish shores since their well-publicised professional and personal wobbles (which led to them going on official hiatus in October 2011), it’s also the start of the touring cycle for their sixth album, Mechanical Bull.

No wonder they’re nervous about returning to the limelight. They are in that zone of feeling that it could all go horribly wrong. After all, it has happened before. The beads of sweat are just about discernible on their faces, as they wait in the shadows. However, as their intro music hits, the real life sons of a preacher man – forget the nephew for just a minute! – put on their game faces regardless, march on stage in front of 30,000 or so pumped up punters and prepare to reclaim their title as the kings of stadium rock. As long as nobody shouts “Good evening Belgrade” you guess that everything is going to be alright...

Rewind the clock. Two hours before show-time. Hot Press is sitting in a nondescript portacabin with KOL frontman Caleb and drummer Nathan. He admires my shoes. I return the compliment. I have an unashamed fondness for leopard-print winkle pickers. It would seem that the singer’s choice of footwear is quite apt too: tonight, he’s in full-on ass-kicking mood.
“Once we got our heads together, we were just chomping at the bit to not just make music, but make music that was good,” he grins. “And I mean really good. Music that would shut up the folks who were saying we had lost touch with who we are as a band and as people.”
Not that the naysayers’ arguments were entirely without fuel. 2011 was a tough year for Kings Of Leon. The general view was that their fifth effort, Come Around Sundown, didn’t quite shine as brightly as previous material. Whether the less than ecstatic response to the record was a factor or not, after a decade spent slogging their guts out on the road, the tight-knit band began to unravel like one of Rivers Cuomo’s legendary sweaters. The explanation was a familiar one, as official statements put the implosion down to “exhaustion.” They took a break, ostensibly to recharge the batteries – but it’s fair to say that their departure left many wondering would we ever see the Kings return to action.
“I’m sure there were some people who were worried about our future,” agrees Nathan. “We needed to have a little time off, though, and the whole experience was amazing because once you get a nice break you get a chance to rest and be normal for a second. It charges your batteries and gets you ready to come back out again. So the break did us a lot of good. We were able to be family men for a while and kinda sneakishly make this record without anyone really knowing about it
and um...”
“Get fat,” interjects Caleb Followill, while comically patting his non-existent gut. “Yeah...” continues his brother. “It gave us time to lose some hair and gain some weight (laughs). But no, we were just in a really great head-space making the record – and that’s just carried on over into touring now. You know, we basically got reminded that this is what we like to do and we’re loving every minute of it.”
In many ways, Kings Of Leon had every right to feel jaded. They released five records in eight years, which is an exceptionally productive run compared to the pace at which most big acts now operate. You can only inagine that the likes of notorious procrastinator Axl Rose would trade his bandana collection in return for the Followills’ ability to produce the goods in the studio time and time again. But while KOL remained successful at packing the fans into stadiums, it all started to feel a little Groundhog Day for them. They now believe that going their separate ways for a while was what would ultimately keep them together.
“When you work really hard you’re supposed to take a little time off to kinda get your head out of that and bizarrely that makes you want to get your head back in it so much more,” reflects Caleb. “We see that now, of course. Before we took the break, we were just working and working and as soon as we got off the road we’d force another album out and will ourselves to be inspired – instead of it coming naturally. So yeah, the break was something that was important at the time.
“But it’s also something that’s important for the future. If we go out and tour a record for two, three years, then why not take a year out and hang out with our kids and our wives and try to get inspired again?”

Earlier this summer, Kings Of Leon released the niftily titled The Collection Box which featured all five of their records (‘03’s Youth & Young Manhood, ‘04’s still stunning Aha Shake Heartbreak, ‘07’s Because Of The Times, ‘08’s Only By The Night and the aforementioned Come Around Sundown). From the outside looking in, it felt like the Nashville four-piece were laying to rest that period in the band’s career and getting ready to start their second cycle. Did it feel that way for them?
“Yeah, definitely,” replies Nathan. “It does feel like a whole new cycle for us. We’re older now, we’re fathers and husbands and stuff and we see life a little differently, I guess. So Mechanical Bull certainly does feel like a new start in certain ways.”
The record was made in secret, thus avoiding the pressures and demands of label reps, fans and nay-sayers alike. By all accounts a fun experience (“We were always playing practical jokes on each other and just messing around,” laughs Caleb), the opus encapsulates every era and the main influences of KOL’s tumultuous lifespan.
“I’m more excited about this album than anything else we’ve done in a long, long time,” states the singer. “I just think it’s a really solid album and we worked very hard on it.”
That hard work has clearly paid off in commercial terms: at the time of writing, Mechanical Bull has stomped straight to the top of the album charts in most territories. For this writer, the star of the show on the record is the down-tuned chug-fest ‘Don’t Matter’. A track which sees Kings Of Leon muddy up their sound and take a little inspiration from the Stooges and Queens Of The Stone Age, it confirms that the reborn band still know how to kick out the jams.
“Was ‘Don’t Matter’ the last one we did?” Nathan asks Caleb when I mention the song.
“Yeah it was one of the last ones,” nods his brother.
“It’s weird coz this was the kinda record that really snuck up on us,” continues Nathan. “I’d go home to my wife and go like ‘This record is so solid, but we still don’t have enough songs, I gotta have a little think’, and then we’d go in and write down how many songs we had on the dry erase board and we had 17 and I’m like ‘Holy shit, we’ve got 17 songs on this record’. ‘Don’t Matter’ was done towards the very end, at a point where we thought it couldn’t hurt to add another rocker to it and just fuck around. We thought, ‘If something comes out of it great, if not, we’ve still got an amazing record’. So that one happened literally within an hour, an hour and a half. Caleb and Matt were sitting there for 45 minutes working on it and me and Jared came in, heard it, locked in the drums and bass, hit record and we left that night with a song that didn’t even exist that morning.
We thought ‘Holy shit that’s a kick-ass song!’”
Does the band feel that this easy-going approach to making a record helped them creatively?
“Oh, for sure,” replies Caleb. “Not having everything mapped and planned out was liberating. We could just do what we wanted and that was inspiring. When we went into the new studio we were going in there just to rehearse for shows – but then I sorta started playing some ideas and everyone seemed to be into it, so we kinda secretly said let’s get to work. There’s no point waiting, you know? It felt like the early days again.”

Speaking of their early days, their debut album Youth & Young Manhood celebrated its tenth birthday this summer. I was one of the many who bought the record on the first week of its release (in the dearly departed Woolies * sniff *). During that Twitter/Facebook free time I actually thought the furry Southern boys were a Scandinavian rock band in the vein of the Hellacopters. My initial confusion certainly tickles their funny-bones...
“That’s hilarious, man, you didn’t know we were American?” laughs Nathan. “It’s really cool though, coz nowadays everyone knows everything about each other. It’s almost too much at times.”
“Even now I can barely work a fucking computer, man,” adds Caleb. “I know it’s a necessity for modern living, but I could do without that shit.”
And how do they feel about their debut now?
“I’m still very proud of it, but I don’t sit around listening to it,” begins Caleb. “It’s hard for me to listen to myself – especially listening to early me. At the time I wanted to shake the music industry up a little bit and and I wanted to do things differently so I was kinda singing like this [makes a nasal-sounding noise] and people didn’t understand what was going on, so it’s hard for me to listen to it. But there in our break I did kinda go back and skim through all of our albums and it was neat to see the progression in our music and that came into play when I was writing the new record.
“I thought, alright, maybe it’s time we kinda touch back on that early sound and maybe it’s time we touch on the second album’s sound. Obviously we do it kinda differently now as we’re different musicians – we’ve got a little more skill coz we’ve been playing for ten years – but it’s amazing to me that our first album still stands the test of time so well.”
Despite their pride in their first record’s achievements, Nathan tells us that he still thinks they were victims of its success in some respects.
“I feel like we got thrown in way too early as far as playing the bigger shows go,” confesses Nathan. “What year did we open for Oasis at Glastonbury? ‘03/’04? We had one record and we were thrown into the fire early on and we were like ‘Holy shit!’ Luckily for us, we were young and cocky enough to be like, ’We might not be completely ready, but shit, we wanna blow everyone away’. Thankfully we had that belief and that drive to get us through it.”
And does he think that Kings Of Leon in 2013 are worthy of headlining festivals and stadiums?
“At the moment, after putting in all those years of touring and hard work, I feel like we now deserve to be on that stage,” he says. “We deserve to be playing for this many people because we put the time in and were away from our families in Nashville for so long – trying to be the best we could possibly be.”
On the topic of their home-town, it feels only right to bring up the tears and tunes-packed soap opera that is Nashville. After a friend of mine (who’s a fan of the show) pointed out that the fictional stadium-straddling band who pop up in the programme from time to time are called the Revel Kings, well, it’d be rude not to ask them if they tune in to watch characters who are obviously based on them (ok, ok, that “friend” is actually me. Don’t judge me...).
“No, we don’t watch that show,” laughs Nathan, who’s clearly not as into trashy TV as I am.
“No, I don’t watch it either, but I heard about the Revel Kings thing. Yeah, they’re based on us. I know for sure they are,” continues Caleb as Nathan turns around looking more than a bit surprised. “I’m neighbours with one of the ladies on the show and I know for a fact that someone who helped decorate my house was a decorator on Nashville – and one of the characters was based on Caleb Followill. Then I heard one of the bands was called Revel Kings and I thought, ah, alright... I get it. So in short, we will be suing!”
Potential lawsuits aside, one thing that the singer did take seriously was the appearance of Prince at one of their recent warm-up shows in London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Did the pint-sized pop star appear in a puff of purple smoke, perchance?
“You know what? We didn’t even get to meet him,” smiles Caleb. “He’s a sneaky little Prince. They didn’t tell us he was there until after we walked off stage because they knew I’d be too nervous knowing he was watching me. After I heard I was like ‘fuck, man’! All I could think about was all the times we’d messed up... and fucking Prince heard me fucking mess up! Gah!”

On that note, Kings Of Leon’s burly American bodyguard turns up to tell us that our time with the band is up. Before we go though, there’s room for one last question, so I ask them – when they were making Mechanical Bull and preparing to embark on this new chapter in the band’s life, did they feel they had to prove the doubters wrong?
“Yeah, of course we did,” concludes Caleb. “It’s out of our hands now though. We’re not the kind of people that will go out of our way to promote our new album, but if I were to promote it I would say that I can guarantee that there’s something on this record for everyone, and like I said, it’s the most excited I’ve been about a record and our music in a long time. Maybe it’s the most excited I’ve ever been. I think that in this day and age the world is missing that rock band. Well, I think we can be that rock band.”
Conversation done, Kings Of Leon go into their pre-gig ritual. Ireland has been good to the band. Tennent’s Vital is a big gig. They want to make good on those promises.They can be that rock band. That’s the schtick. Now they have to live up to it.
Yeah, they’re a little nervous and they’re definitely feeling some jitters – but as soon as they break into the opening bars of ‘The Bucket’, the crowd, who have waited years for the return of the Kings, welcome them back by going absolutely mental. Are they serious contenders once again for the biggest rock’n’roll band in the world? Only time will tell – but so far Kings Of Leon’s second coming has started in fine style.
End of scene. Roll credits.

The album Mechanical Bull is out now