Return of the Kings

Even if you’ve never met Caleb Followill, you do feel that you know him personally. Such is the nature of celebrity. We know far more than we really need to, which is that he’s in a band called Kings Of Leon and that they make fine rock music. We know all about his childhood, the life he and his brothers had with their nomadic preacher father, the fact that they pretty much lived in their car for a few years. We know all this because every single piece of coverage that greeted their arrival told us so.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it that it has only been about eighteen months since Kings Of Leon first swaggered into our lives, so ubiquitous have they become. If I asked Caleb what he was doing a year ago, would he be able to tell me?
“No,” he says sounding a little confused. “I can’t really remember where I was this time yesterday. Since we finished the first record we were on the road non-stop. We were supposed to take a two month break but after two weeks we were going stir crazy so we started writing.” The result is Aha Shake Heartbreak, the Kings’ second album in as many years, and one that has firmly consolidated their position in the rock frontline. No wonder their Witnness new band slot of eighteen months ago has passed into the stuff of legend.
“It’s always been amazing in Ireland, I don’t know why.” Cleb reflects. “The first place we played in the UK was in High Wycombe and it was a strip club or something. When we got there we couldn’t get into the dressing room because they were still doing lap dances or something. Anyway we ended up having a huge group of people there from Ireland and it was our first show. They were going, ‘You guys are fucking great’ and we were going ‘how the hell do you know who we are?’ It’s always been good for us there.”
Does the fact that they’re family members make it easier or harder for the band to keep it together as the pressure increases?
“We know each other so well and that can sometimes be a good thing, sometimes a bad thing. I think that because we’re family we can go through shit and come out the other side, whereas if we were just friends we wouldn’t be able to. Either way, it’s all grist to the creative mill.
“We didn’t really write that much on the road but when we got home it kind of just started to pour out of us,” Caleb says. “It was a different process but I don’t want to scare people away from our record. We’re more proud about this than we’ve ever been in our lives. For those who were hoping that we could do a different thing, that’s the people who are going to be really amazed by this record.”
“I’ve been driving around listening to the radio trying to hear our new single,” he adds, “because everybody says it’s getting played all the time.”
“When we finished our album, we did a bunch of press and then we went home for two weeks. That time period was the worst because we were pretty much sitting around playing golf…”
We can’t let this pass. Did he say that they played golf? The vision of Caleb swinging a sand wedge just doesn’t seem to fit!
“Yeah, a little bit. Me and Nathan go out and swing the sticks every now and then.”
How would he judge the success of the album? “When we first started as a band and made our first album, we said that if 10,000 people bought our record and knew who Kings Of Leon were, we’d be freaked out. Then our record went on to do much better than that. Now we have all these people at record labels who tell you what they think the record’s going to do. I really don’t like to hear that, just let it come out and do its thing. It’s about the people that it connects with and the fact that we made a second album that we’re so proud of. It’s not going to be like most bands’ second album where people say they just repeated what they did before. This one will reach different people in different ways. Without saying it too much I’m really excited about it.
“This record is very personal.” He adds. “The first album was a bunch of country boys sitting in Tennessee writing a bunch of songs about wishful thinking, writing about girls that they wished they could sleep with and murder ballads about men that they never really met. On this album, even though we might touch on some of the same subjects, this is all us and it’s all true. It’s things that have happened within the last year and a half.”
Yet the songs on the album don’t actually make being in Kings Of Leon sound like that much fun. There’s a world weariness to the lyrics, best exemplified by ‘The Bucket’, which combines the most joyous pop melody of the band’s career with miserable reflections of the rock star’s lot. “Anything off stage it’s pretty hard to enjoy,” Caleb says. “They call it rock stardom but, apart from your moment on stage, you’re just a fucking businessman.”
So in terms of attitude, what distinguishes Aha Shake Heartbreak? With the first one we knew that we were young, that our bass player was fifteen years old and that we were from a different part of the world than most bands. We kind of had to put up a barrier between us and everybody else and that came across in our music and our attitude. We came across as kind of punks, from the way that I would sing to the way that we did our press.
“This time, we were so fucking sick of hearing anything about us – good or bad – that we just wanted to go and do something that had nothing to do with our dad, had nothing to do with our hair, nothing to do with our age; just something that would make us smile every time we listened to it.”
Come on, though, every new band needs an angle and the Kings Of Leon had a great one that served them well.
“I quit reading the press after two weeks of our fame or whatever, because it was always just the same thing over and over. It happens to every band, the same shit. People just like to repeat stuff. Unfortunately we gave them plenty of ammunition.”
An explanation, you would think, as to why the band have returned with a radically cleaned up look. Gone are the moustaches, wild hair and scruffy Southern style to be replaced by a far sleeker, more mainstream image – apart from drummer Nathan.
“It’s funny we got a record deal and someone mentioned we were good looking – and so from that second on we all grew our hair. I grew mine so that it covered my face completely. We did it so people wouldn’t talk about our looks and it ended up biting us on the ass and everybody ended up talking about our hairy faces.”
I tell him that he’s looking almost boyish these days. “Now people ask for my ID and everything. I’m actually getting laid now…”
Out on the road again, how are they dealing with the inevitable temptations – in which, indeed, they have happily partaken in the past.
“We’re getting better. At first we’d walk off stage and immediately just get trashed. Now we let ourselves slip gradually into a drunken demeanour. It’s really hard for me to talk to people who are really, really drunk. I used to be able to stand there for thirty minutes but now I’m looking at my security guard and going ‘Get this guy the fuck out of here’. You got to learn how it all works and even when it bugs you I love the fact that the fans came to our show and got drunk. Good for them, God bless them.”
I wish him well and tell him that we hope to see him back in Ireland soon. “Yeah”, he drawls, “maybe we’ll go and play a little golf or something…”

Aha Shake Heartbreak is out now on BMG

CHRISTIAN BROTHERS:
Five other performers with clerical connections...
ROBBIE WILLIAMS:
Although it may sound unlikely, the performer whose most enduring quality is tongue-in-cheek irreverence can now legitimately add the title of Reverend Robert Williams to his long list of credits. Incredibly, the top-selling artist was recently ordained a minister in one of America’s anything-goes churches and within 48 hours had performed his first wedding ceremony.
LEMMY:
The Motorhead main man’s father was a preacher, whilst his mother played piano during service. Although Lemmy senior was by all accounts a sterling gentlemen, his spiritual philosophy has yet to fully make its presence felt in his son’s music, given that his first band was called Bastard, he was fired from Hawkind on a drug charge, and his most famous composition is a satanic speed metal anthem called ‘Ace Of Spades’.
PRINCE:
The androgynous linchpin of consummately sexy funk-pop began his musical career playing in the local church choir. From there, he began his inexorable rise to the top level of the US music industry, going on to dominate ‘80s pop culture in particular. Remains enormously popular, even though ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ demonstrated a severe misunderstanding of the subjunctive case.
JERRY LEE-LEWIS:
The raucous rock ‘n’ roll maestro is a relative of Jimmy Swaggart, the colourful televangelist who was infamously caught "with" a prostitute in the early ‘80s. Interestingly, Swaggart is also a cousin of country singer Mickey Gilley. Indeed, he, Gilley and Lewis were all born within a year of each other and grew up side-by-side.