I like to do a kind of recap of my life, see what’s going on. I do have one rule, though: I don’t write lyrics until we’re ready to record. Other times, songs just pop up out of nowhere. Some songs I mess around with for a few days or weeks, and then I show ’em to the guys.
GW How do you go about the process of songwriting? Do you sit around on a couch and play guitar? Do you watch films or read books to get inspired?ĬALEB It depends. What we have, the combination of people-and maybe it’s because we’re family, I don’t know-it’s giving us the chance to be extraordinary. There’s just something about being onstage with your blood-that’s something special. I don’t know if we’d have the same chemistry. But yeah, it’d be weird to be up there onstage with a different person. ĬALEB Obviously, I’d continue making music, and I’m sure everyone else would too. I mean, if I quit, they could probably find another guitar player and become a really boring band, and then…you know…fail. GW If a band member quit, would Kings of Leon continue?ĬALEB Depends on if it were me or not. But we’re pretty blessed to be in the situation we’re in, and we’re appreciative of what we have. Then if you add to that the egos of being in a band, obviously it’s gonna get a little hairy. Somebody hit somebody so we can just get this over with!” ĬALEB Anytime you have a sibling fight, it cuts a little deeper. It gets to the point where you’re like, “Oh, come on already. I mean, we haven’t had a good fight in a while, but when we do, it’s pretty intense. MATTHEW FOLLOWILL I’ve never seen any of the guys in a fight with somebody who wasn’t a family member.
Does that make it harder to be a band? Are your arguments more intense than in other groups? I think of bands like Oasis and the Kinks-bands that are well known for their combustible relationships.ĬALEB FOLLOWILL They might be more intense, but then I’ve never been in another band, so I don’t know. GUITAR WORLD Kings of Leon are a family band-you’ve got three brothers and one cousin. “Who in their right mind forms a band with the goal of being totally average?” Caleb asks rhetorically. Yet they seem fully aware that they’re on the precipice of realizing the dreams that they dared to imagine, and they make no apologies for the band they are now and the band they might yet become. Throughout their childhood, Caleb, Nathan and Jared spent years on the road following their Pentecostal minister father, Ivan, as he preached his way through the Bible Belt. The Followills know a thing or two about staying true to one’s roots. They stayed true to their roots, and they got played on the radio. Hell, Lynyrd Skynyrd got played on the radio back in the day. Nobody can tell me that we’re going pop or we’re too commercial. Matthew says, “I listen to those songs and they sound like us. Grandiose radio hits such as “Sex on Fire” and “Closer” mix seamlessly with the kind of dirty southern rock in which the Followills have traded ever since their first release, 2003’s Youth and Young Manhood.
With their latest album Only by the Night, the Nashville-based Kings of Leon are indeed selling out-arenas in the U.S.
He blows out a stream of smoke and chuckles. If you want to call that being a sell-out, well, shit, that’s your right. “Our first few records did just fine and they got us a lot of attention, but the only way that this could be happening”-he waves his hand, indicating the expensive hotel room and, by extension, the arena just a few blocks away that will be jam-packed in just a few hours-“was by making songs that connect with the masses.
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