Mojo - The Music Magazine

Lame music, backstage fracas, and Liam Gallagher's groundless allegations...

Back to Part I

MOJO: What music do you hate?
Caleb Followill: "I never understood how someone could like electronic music. Back in the day I would go to a club to try to hook up with girls and the music the whole time was so bad, I would sit at the bar going, What the fuck is this? There were girls up there dancing, and every other guy would go home with a girl because I couldn't stomach the scene."

MOJO: Liam Gallagher says you've sold out. Have you?
Matthew Followill: "I don't think we've ever sat down and said we have to write a song that sounds like this. That just never happens. The songs just kinda come together. You always get these questions, like, Did you guys try to make this record more poppy or whatever? And it's like, No, we literally wrote 12 or 13 songs and recorded them and put them in sequence for the record. That's just the way it goes."

Nathan Followill: "I don't think that we ever want to make a decision as a band based on what we think someone else thinks about us. We don't plan stuff, ever. That's why it's never taken us more than six weeks to make a record. And two of those weeks are us jacking off and being stupid. It's like going to school - in the first week of school you don't do shit."

Caleb Followill: "I've always been scared of songs being these big crossover hits. Like with Use Somebody - I wrote the melody and all of us related to it, it felt like this big song, so I kinda pushed it under the rug. Then we were making Only By The Night and Matt kept saying, where's that song about using somebody? I would act like I didn't know what he meant. I knew the song he was talking about, but it scared me."

MOJO: Is it an inevitable by-product of success that you end up with a few assholes in the audience?
Caleb Followill: "One time we had two skinheads in the crowd - I mean like, tattoos covering them, they were full-on, hardcore - and they were jumping around, singing every song. I felt for sure they were taking the piss, but I found out they weren't. Our security guard kinda looked at them and told them to settle down, 'cause they were pretty aggressive with all the people in the pit. And the guy went off: Man, you see me with my tattoos and my bald head, and you're gonna watch me all night and make sure I'm not doing things. And really he was absolutely having a good time. I see a 60-year-old couple out there dancing, you meet little kids, and you see grown men singing Sex On Fire - it's crazy, I don't get it, but it's cool."

MOJO: You all say you've stopped doing hard drugs. Do you seriously expect people to believe that?
Jared Followill: "I definitely got to a point where it was too much. It just got depressing and repetitive and monotonous. When I joined this band I wanted to get away from all the normal things that 15 year-olds do. I didn't wanna go to school. I wanted to be in a band and travel, but by doing those things and going to a bar every single night and having the same drinks and meeting the same girls, it just became as repetitive as if I'd stayed in school. We all kinda went crazy. We haven't really completely recovered yet, but slowing down on a lot of that stuff is definitely the right step forward."

MOJO: Why don't you read your press?
Matthew Followill: "It's weird how they like you and then they hate you. I've never disliked a band just because they got popular. I listened to The Killers for what seemed like forever before they were even heard of, but I didn't really change my opinion of that first record just because they had a hit single."

Caleb Followill: "I go through phases when I read stuff. For us, in Nashville, most people don't recognise us and the people that do don't like us. So when you walk around and you get that kind of attitude all the time. Every now and again you have to boost your ego, so I'll go home and read some stuff. Most of it's bullshit. It sounds cool but it's not real."

MOJO: What really happened at the Brits?
Nathan Followill: "In reality, we'd already gone when a guy came busting into our dressing room drunk. Our security is like, Whoah, you can't come barging in. This guy stormed off, and he's about 6'4", a decent-sized guy, and he comes back and punches our tour manager right in the face. And our tour manager is like, Is that all you got? Seriously, a guy your size? Security drug him out and they bumped into a girl as they were dragging him out, she spilt something on her dress, turned around and saw our tour manager and thought he was the one that had done it. She threw her drink in his face, and then his girlfriend got in her face. The press can take anything and blow it so out of proportion. We've learned now that it's pretty comical, some of the stuff you read is hilarious. When our family reads stuff that is horrible that didn't happen, we can be like, Honestly, do you really think that something like that would happen? But it's also good because you tell a couple of fibs during an interview... do you really think that I would say that?"

MOJO: What, then, is the truth about Kings Of Leon?
Nathan Followill: "I'd say in general we're pretty nice guys. We have chivalry. We do. And we also have herpes as well..."

Interview by: Paul Elliott

Picture by: Ross Halfin