Nashville Scene
may 4, 2006
.Mama’s Boys
In a dispute over loud music, Nashville rock rebels turn to their hardcore mother
by William Dean Hinton
Royal Pain in the Ass? Kings of Leon The advice Jerry Gonzalez was receiving over the telephone made no sense. Insulate his walls, he was told. Find a job so he wasn’t home all day. Or maybe think about selling his house, which sits on 30 acres of grassland in an unincorporated part of southwest Lebanon.
Gonzalez—a civil rights attorney who graced a 2004 Scene cover—moved into his two-story, three-bedroom house in early 2000 after spending nine months building it with his wife, Denise. The two have lived in domestic tranquillity for most of that time, except for an afternoon a couple of years ago when somebody was firing a machine gun in the vicinity of the Gonzalez property. Otherwise, it’s been Jerry, Denise, three stray cats, a gaggle of turkeys, a dog named Bear, some peacocks, deer and a stable of jumper horses upon which Denise has given riding lessons and won a bunch of ribbons. “It’s our little piece of paradise,” Gonzalez says. It’s so pleasant, in fact, Gonzalez decided to move his one-man law firm into the first floor of his home in January.
Last fall, he took little notice when a family moved into a yellow, two-story house on 16 acres just south of his property. From Gonzalez’ front porch, you can’t see his neighbors, who are about 500 yards away. But Gonzalez soon felt them. They blasted music loud enough to reverberate throughout his household. The bass annoyed him the most. Gonzalez, a former Naval officer, compared the sound to the extremely low-frequency communication system the U.S. Navy employs to send messages to submarines scattered across the planet. Such low frequencies, Gonzalez points out, “will go through mountains.”
Gonzalez saw what looked like teenage kids with long, bushy hair playing Hacky Sack in the backyard, so he thought his troubles would end if he could simply contact the owner of the yellow house. He provided the address to the Wilson County Register of Deeds. The owner, he was told, was Nathan Followill, which didn’t register in Gonzalez’ mind as anyone significant. Gonzalez owns a modest record collection, including Santana’s All That I Am, and checks the paper for musical acts coming to town, but at 43, he’s not as familiar with newer bands as he once was.
Gonzalez called the phone number he was given and a young man answered the phone. Gonzalez asked if this was the house playing loud music.
“Yes, sir,” the young man replied.
“I thought it was a family with a teenage kid,” Gonzalez recalls.
“Can you turn it down?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
But in the days and weeks after that first phone call, the music didn’t stop. Throughout the day, maybe three or four times a week, the music returned as loud as ever. Gonzalez says he called the yellow house many times, only to hear the answering machine pick up.
“I finally called the sheriff’s office,” Gonzalez says. “I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t want to knock because they could have come to the door with a shotgun. You know how people are around here.”
Gonzalez Googled the name Nathan Followill and found that he’s the drummer of the rock group Kings of Leon. “I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, I sure hope it’s not the Kings of Leon.’ ”
Unfortunately for Gonzalez, it was. The Kings of Leon—Followill and two of his brothers, Caleb and Jared, plus a cousin named Matt—are one of those bands that have seemingly come out of nowhere. Updating a ’70s-era sound and look, they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of records, toured at least three continents, played Bonnaroo twice and opened for U2 last year. In interviews, they say they’re from Nashville, though the Nashville music scene hasn’t embraced them because there’s a feeling their success hasn’t been earned.
Up until their teenage years, the Followills traveled with their itinerant preacher-father, Leon, around the South until he was defrocked for excessive drinking. After their parents divorced, the boys relocated to Nashville with their mother, Betty Ann Murphy, the group’s public relations manager who also cuts the boys’ hair and tailors their snug jeans.
Kingdom of Leon Where it all happens. Jacob and Nathan thought about writing music as a way to “make money to buy some pot,” as Nathan, at 25 the oldest member of the band, told Harp magazine last year. “If someone was gonna give us $100 for a little shitty song, that was great, that was hilarious.”
A demo of the boys’ music found its way to Ken Levitan, head of Vector Management, who was impressed by the Followills’ spark and ability to harmonize. Word on the street was that the Followills would become a duet along the lines of Nelson, a couple of guys who would look good in Gap commercials and make Levitan a lot of money. Instead, the brothers enlisted two family members, signed with RCA Records and were introduced to Angelo Petraglia, a Nashville-based songwriter who has written for Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn and Trisha Yearwood, among others.
Angelo, as he’s known throughout the music industry, co-wrote all of the songs on the Leons’ first two records, an EP called Holy Roller Novocaine and the band’s first album, Youth & Young Manhood. He was given writing credits on only two songs on the second Leon full-length, last year’s Aha Shake Heartbreak, but he was bumped up to producer, which gave him more influence over the band’s sound. Critics have pounced on Angelo’s Svengali-like presence, along with the fact that the Leons have played more live dates in Europe than they have in Nashville, as evidence that the band is a contrived project, as much *NSync as it is Credence Clearwater Revival.
If they are being handled, the Leons present themselves as charmingly clueless. In interviews, they’re usually occupied with one of two things, or both—their band and their women. They like to dish about losing their virginity, marrying supermodels and otherwise screwing around. In their song lyrics, all that is synthesized as “fighting, loving and fucking.”
In any event, several weeks after the call to the sheriff, Gonzalez received a call at home. It wasn’t Caleb or Nathan on the phone but their mother, Betty Ann Murphy.
Murphy was as pugnacious to Gonzalez as he can be in the courtroom. To resolve their differences, she suggested he get a job outside his home Monday through Friday. “He was complaining about music at 2 o’clock in the afternoon,” Murphy says. “I told him to get a real job and he wouldn’t have to be home to hear it. It is so ridiculous. The cops thought he was a joke. They just cracked up.”
Murphy suggested to Gonzalez that he insulate his home as a way to prevent the deep bass from penetrating inside. “I’m supposed to insulate my walls because they want to play loud music in a residential neighborhood?” Gonzalez asks indignantly.
She also told Gonzalez that the Leons probably will be building a recording studio, though that could be difficult, especially if the Followills expect to lease it to other acts—Wilson County zoning ordinances are restrictive when it comes to building a music studio on agriculturally zoned property, as the Leons’ house is.
Gonzalez says he could be talked into moving. “She made it seem like money was no object. In fact, she offered to buy my property.”
But he also hopes they can find a compromise. “I’m trying to solve a problem,” Gonzalez says. “Her attitude is ‘too bad.’ This is agricultural land. We should expect to hear agricultural noises. I hope we can resolve this soon. I don’t like to Google my neighbors.”
At the same time, Gonzalez is reluctant to research the Leons any further for fear he might undermine his quest for solitude. “I don’t want to hear their new album,” he says. “What if I like it?"
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www.nashvillescene.com for a picture of the infamous yellow house!
