Kings of Leon

Tennessee's Kings of Leon are three brothers — Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill — and their cousin, Matthew Followill, and together they are generating heat with their gritty Southern garage rock sound. Before they had even released their excellent new album, Youth and Young Manhood, Rolling Stone had already hailed the band as part of "the next wave of new artists who will make your world a better place in 2003."

As children, the brothers Followill learned about the touring life in a rather unique way — their father was a United Pentacostal evangelist who traveled back and forth between Memphis and Oklahoma City. The Followills were like nomads, drifting between relatives' homes, hotels and pastors' houses, often spending much of their time in the back of a car. When the Followills finally settled down in Nashville in 1998, they were able to focus on their burgeoning musical interests.

Lead singer and songwriter Caleb Followill recently spoke with ASCAP about his musical inspirations, his late exposure to pop culture, and what it's like to be a in band with family.

What's it like to be a band with all your brothers and your cousin?

It's cool. We argue like most bands. But we can get over it pretty quickly. We don't hold grudges or anything. We're all pretty close. It's just easier. It makes everything easier in the sense that since we are family, you can be totally honest.

Tell me about the days when you were younger and traveling around with your evangelist father?

It was weird. We would just stay in churches or hotels. To us it was completely normal. We didn't know it any other way. That's the way it had been since we were really young. But like looking back, it's definitely a weird thing. I mean, it was a really strict religion. If we weren't in music, I doubt anybody would think it was that interesting.

Is it true that it was only when your father left the cloth hood that you were fully able to explore music?

Yeah, that just kind of opened the floodgate to pop culture and stuff for us. We kind of got to do things that we had never been able to do before. We started watching TV and buying CDs.

It took about a year before we were just like completely disgusted with pop culture in general. So we started listening to different stuff - older stuff. You could just tell by listening to it that it wasn't conjured up by suits. We just got sick of everything that we would see and hear. So we just shut ourselves off from pop culture again and started listening to our own things.

We started thinking about putting a band together. Then The Strokes came out. And then we started hearing a lot more about the White Stripes. Those bands don't really care about selling records. They just make good music and don't have to really worry about anything.

How do you think that your songwriting has changed over the years?

When we first started, all we would do is try to come up with a good idea and then try to write rhymes around it. Now it doesn't even really have to rhyme. It's just about telling a good story and venting your feelings.

Do you think that your songs tend to be more autobiographical or fictional?

There are always little pieces of us in the song - like little memories of places that we've been to and the experiences that we've had. We kind of grew up being dreamers so we've got really good imaginations.

Do you think that growing up listening to a church gospel choir influenced your music?

Maybe a little bit — maybe the energy of it all. Everything is just real. There is nothing fake about gospel music. Back then you were just doing it for one reason — to get everybody pumped about God. It would be so energetic with people shouting and stuff like that. But we exude a totally different energy on stage now.

Why did you guys decide to call the album Youth and Young Manhood?

We were looking through our old closet full of old stuff like baby books and old baby blankets. We were flipping through one of my dad's really old bibles, one that he used all the time. It had notes and lots of underlined passages. In the very back, there's a tree of Moses' life. Every branch had a really cool title on it, and the very first branch said, "Youth and Young Manhood." It sounded pretty classic to us and seemed to describe the stage of life that we're in right now.

— Jin Moon


TOP