While Jared comes across as a genuine rock star, Nathan is more of an easygoing surfer dude. He says the only reason that he thinks 100,000 People, a soulful anthem from the new album, is any good is that when he hears it, he doesn’t cringe or “try to crawl under a table”. “I was like, ‘Babe, you gotta turn this off!’ I was blushing so bad I felt like blood was seeping out of my face.” Caleb can’t usually watch or listen to himself. Recently, Caleb walked in on his wife, the model Lily Aldridge, watching a career-spanning selection of Kings of Leon music videos. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardianīeing stuck at home has thrown up some problems, though. ‘Magical time’ … Kings of Leon play Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage in 2008. “I wouldn’t normally be catching some of these milestones that I’m getting to be part of,” says Nathan. “We bang out a record, says Caleb, “and then hit the road for a couple of years.” But lockdown has allowed them to pause and clear their heads with family time. “I’m glad we got it finished before it all happened.” “A lot of it has come to pass,” sighs Caleb. The chorus of Claire & Eddie, with its warning that a “fire’s gonna rage if people don’t change”, felt eerily prescient as the band watched riots spread across the US last year. It’s not just Covid anthems that they’ve accidentally written. Time In Disguise asks “is it a man or a masked machine?” And Echoing wonders if “we’re ever going out / We could be here for ever without a doubt.” A lot of the content is prophetic.” You would certainly assume some songs were written during lockdown. “It very much looks like it was written during quarantine. “It’s quite strange when you read the lyrics,” says Caleb. Recorded at their Nashville base with Arcade Fire and Florence and the Machine producer Markus Dravs, When You See Yourself’s release was postponed for a year by Covid. They were once dubbed the Southern Strokes, but these days a more accurate description might be the Cattle-ranch Coldplay. The rockier moments are still rowdy but they’re on a leash, while the epic ballads are a little more melancholy.
Two solid records on, 2013’s Mechanical Bull and 2016’s Walls, they have transformed into an expansive rock band in the vein of Pearl Jam.
They’re a markedly different group from the wild garage band who showed up on British shores in 2003: “Branded,” Jared remembers, “as the new rock revival: us, the Strokes, the White Stripes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.” They’re different, too, from the arena-rockers who had huge hits with Sex on Fire and Use Somebody a few years later.Ĭaleb’s alcohol-induced meltdown in 2011 brought on a period of reflection for the quartet. This mid-life peace and wisdom is at the heart of that eighth album, the excellent When You See Yourself. But that’s all in the past and this is how progress is now measured by Kings of Leon: not in streaming figures, Grammys or ticket sales, but whether they made a record without lamping each other. ” The fighting, he says, would often be the result of a day off on tour spent drinking too much, as innocent squabbles took a sinister turn. Matthew grimaces when he remembers some of the brawls he’s witnessed over the years, when he would be hunched up at the back of the tour bus thinking to himself: “Oh my God, there is no way we’ll ever play music again after what he just said to him. “We leave the fighting to the duelling eight-year-old girl cousins.” “We have kids now,” says Nathan, the eldest. “So there’s no punches being thrown.” Drummer Nathan and guitarist Matthew are joining us from their respective houses a few miles away, with bassist Jared checking in from a holiday in Florida. “Our bodies don’t work like they used to,” says singer and guitarist Caleb, speaking over Zoom from his home in Nashville. For the first time ever, the four Followills – brothers Caleb, Jared, Nathan and their cousin Matthew – got through the recording sessions without any fistfights. S omething remarkable happened during the making of the eighth Kings of Leon album.
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