Q&A THE KILLERS

Brandon Flowers is en route to Reading and Leeds. Minus cowboy hat, but still replete with facial hair.

Hello Brandon. It’s festival time = are you taking tumbleweed and cowboy hats again?
We’re not and I’m going to miss that. With the Sam’s town tour it felt like we actually brought the music and the place to every country. I feel like we’ve shown the world Las Vegas isn’t just about the strippers and hookers. It’s tumbleweed and goats, too.

What songs can we expect to hear?
We’ll be doing some Sam’s Town songs, but the idea is to play some totally new tracks. In fact, we had a very emotional day when we finished the Sam’s Town world tour. We took the tumbleweed from the tour back out into the desert and let it go. It needed to be liberated.

How’s the album sounding?
No title, just a few demos. It’s sounding like four guys standing in various living rooms getting ideas together. When you’re making music, anything can seep in. I just saw this guy drive past earlier who had blue skin. He drinks a medicinal potion called colloidal silver and it’s turned him blue. Now that’s a great story for a song.

Have you got the widescreen Americana thing out of your system?
I think so. It’s good to have phases and Sam’s Town grew from a feeling to a song to a whole album – and then the outfits and tumbleweed. So far we haven’t got a concept to hang the new album on.

Can you give me a taster?
I can’t wait to do Tidal Wave, which is a pop song with a vein of Drive-In Saturday by David Bowie. It’s also a bit like I drove All Night by Roy Orbison.

Do you still have facial hair?
I do. I’m at a pivotal moment, though. Tana (Flower’s wife) likes it, but the baby (nine-month old Ammon) doesn’t so much. When I snuggle up to him, it prickles and he really starts to bawl. I can’t really blame him because until I was 10 years old I believed that any man with a beard would kidnap me.

There’s your album concept; fatherhood.
Well, you say that, and I listened to Kate Bush’s This Woman’s Work (from soundtrack to 1988’s She’s having a Baby) recently, which I think was about her baby (actually about confronting parenthood). It’s incredibly powerful. But we won’t do an album about fatherhood. In fact, my criticism of Sam’s Town is that I neglected my ability to tell a story. On Mr Brightside and JWAFOM you could follow the narrative all the want through. I want to get back to that.

Stuart Price, who has worked with Madonna and Seal, is producing. Are you dragging him to Las Vegas, or is he dragging you to London?
Neither. We use the internet. We demo and send it to him. Then he calls back and we talk about it. It’s really doing wonders for our carbon footprint.

What music are you listening to at the moment?
American radio is much more conservative that in the UK. In Vegas we have Jack FM and Jill FM. Seriously a classic rock station for guys and another for girls. Today I was listening to a bit of Fleetwood Mac, a bit of Peter Gabriel and then Oingo Boingo. But you can’t take any hints as to what we’ll be doing from that.

This year you’re headlining Reading and Leeds. Last year it was Glastonbury. You didn’t enjoy that, did you?
Well….there were sound problems and it’s such a big show that I think we felt overawed. But then we did TITP, the pressure was off and we agreed it was the highlight of our career so far. The crowd were amazing. We felt we could do no wrong. That was the first time I ever thought. “Wow, this is what it’s like being in U2!”

Can Jay-Z bring the glitz and glamour to Glastonbury this year?
I don’t’ know what I think about that. All I do know is that I’m against gansta rap. I don’t even know if Jay-Z does gansta rap. It’s not uplifting to people who listen to it. We have a big problem with violence in America, and when you live with the reality of that it’s hard to enjoy music that endorses it. But that’s “Brandon Flowers of Las Vegas” talking not “Brandon Flowers of The Killers”

What’s been your best festival experience?
From as sheer mind-blowing natural phenomenon point of view it would have to be the festival we did in Norway in the summer. In southern Norway the sun sets for two hours. We headlined and we came off just as it was getting dark. We dried off and I went to see Bright Eyes and 1a, just as it was getting light. It was incredibly moving.

Are you still doing your own laundry on the road?
Yes I am. I am very particular about the way I do my T-Shirts especially. The moment I take them out of the dryer is very precise. Everyone else nukes’em. I like them still a little damp.

Come on, a rock star washing his own smalls. Only Morrissey can make that work.
Maybe. The thing is, I trust my wife with my laundry, but that’s it. Touring is a crazy whirlwind and sometimes it’s nice to have a little something that makes you feel like you’re still in control.

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