KoL grace Beat

[gnome snatcha]

KOL have are the front page spread on melbourne street press mag called BEat plus a decent article inside.

i have done my duty and stolen a bundle. i am a tragic soul

[californiaxwaiting]

Haha, so it is an interview or something?

[cornflake]

oh scan please

[Replicant]

Here's the article from the beat web site.

[ Kings Of Leon ]
Daniel Crichton-Rouse speaks to king Caleb Followill

“We were so amped: we went out there and fucking gave them a punk rock show! We played more songs than the band that followed us [Foo Fighters] and we had much less time! The Big Day Out’s gonna be great man, I can’t wait.”
Those are the words of Caleb Followill: the vocalist and guitarist of one of America’s hottest bands, Kings of Leon. Speaking about the Reading Festival, it’s this enthusiasm and attitude that’s made the Tennessee quartet such a success, and one of the reasons why you’ll see them on the main stage at Australia’s most prestigious music festival next month.
Bursting onto the scene in a flurry of hype and hysteria in 2003, their debut Youth and Young Manhood caused shockwaves in the music world that were felt strongest in Britain, where The Guardian crowned the Kings “the kind of authentic, hairy rebels the Rolling Stones longed to be” whilst giving the album five stars. Brit rock bibles Uncut and Q Magazine shared the praise too, awarding the album five and four star respectively.
But Kings of Leon weren’t given the same royal treatment in their homeland, America. Even though Rolling Stone spoke highly of the band, the press in America weren’t as supportive – most writing the band off as merely another Strokes-wannabe. Pitchfork Media went as far as to say “their bar band approach sounds as if they've taken a book of rock history and, dutifully following along, bookmarked some of the most unremarkable passages.” There was also some doubt about the credibility of the band member’s backgrounds. Brothers Caleb, Jared and Nathan grew up on the roads of Tennessee and the southern states whilst their dad went from town to town preaching to the people. The boys grew up in the strict eye of the United Pentecostal Church and subsequently, were forbidden the pleasures of rock music.
“It was against our religion to listen to secular music,” Caleb says. “The only thing we could get away with was [old music], so whenever my family would go to bed at night I’d put a little radio under my pillow and I’d listen to Chuck Berry and Otis Reading and even stuff like Tommy James and the Shondells: the first time I heard Crimson and Clover it freaked me out. Then in high school I was rocking out to Pearl Jam and Aerosmith and shit like that,” Caleb laughs. “Then I got into Pixies, Velvet Underground, The Cure and stuff like that.”
So what did the British see that their fellow Americans didn’t?
“I think in the beginning they were fascinated by [the band’s story], you know. I think in the UK when they talk about the south they imagine it is still the same it used to be. They have this imagination of this beautiful old haunted place and when they heard that our dad was a preacher and we actually did go to the dark places of Mississippi and Louisiana, I think that fascinated them,” Caleb suggests. “And then when they heard us get up on stage and play with the fervour that we try and play with… we try and put everything in our songs and leave nothing out. We don’t care about the way we look on stage; we just want people to feel what we’re trying to get them to feel. I think that all this came together and gave them this fascination of us – it’s kind of weird to us now, but it got us the start.”
At the time their debut was released, a new rock revival was happening in Britain with The Libertines bringing the musical eye back to cockney England in the most significant manner since the Sex Pistols. The Strokes were touring and Kings of Leon were their support: so the timing couldn’t have been better. Suddenly, the three sons of a former preacher man (and their cousin Matthew) couldn’t walk down the streets of London without being recognised… but America was another story.
“The UK is so small, so to be as big as we are over there [means] everyone knows who we are. But over here [in the States] it’s slowly spreading just the way that we had hoped that it would do. The shows over here are a lot like the early shows in the UK: they’re packed, the people are crazy and they’re starting to recognise your name and it’s… it’s getting better.
"I think we take [the success] well,” Caleb considers. “We’re pretty good with it, but I mean we have each other around so we know our roots and we know what we’re all about and we know we can’t get our heads too big. If I was in just some regular band, the band probably wouldn’t know everything about me, but in this band we know everything about each other so we enjoy it and we laugh and we fucking have a ball with it. It doesn’t get to us that bad because we’ve always socialised – I mean, with our dad being a preacher we always had to be the good kids, so we know how to bullshit, so I think we do alright. ”
Now the tour’s over, it’s back home to record that difficult third album. Their sophomore release Aha Shake Heartbreak was as good as any band could have hoped for and even American critics were now jumping on the Kings’ bandwagon. New York Magazine stated – almost apologetically – about the debut: “At the time, critics were stimulated by a group of rich, bored, private-school kids called the Strokes, and they saw the Kings as low-rent copycats. This was unjust.”
The Followills are putting high pressure on themselves to deliver something unique in this next record, Caleb boasts.
“We’re getting to a point now [where] we want to write a record that’s inspirational; we want it to sound like every song you’ve ever loved. We want to make ourselves cry with the fast songs, and we think we’re at a comfortable level now – we feel like we’ve proven ourselves, we’ve showed people that we can go and do a live record and now we’re willing to experiment and try to go for a big classic record,” he says. “I know that sounds like a lot of pressure, but I think unless we put the pressure on ourselves, we’ll never be able to do it.”

[Porcelain]

oohh the new album sounds rather exciting

thanks for that

[californiaxwaiting]

EEEp that album will be so good.
I like the Strokes, but personally i think KOL are better.

[MrsFollowill]

ta very much

[The Morning Seed]

Is there even a doubt that kol is the best rock and roll band around?

[mystery girl]

theseeds said:

Is there even a doubt that kol is the best rock and roll band around?

that was beautiful.^^^^

that was a great article. i was thinking: it seems that they're putting a lot of pressure and an amnazing amount of effort into this next record. do you think this will make them take longer to release the record?

there were a bunch of cd's by diff, artists that were supposed to be released this year, but they never came out because they had this amazing goal to reach and they kept scrapping the stuff they already ahd done.

the point of that rant is, do you think this will happen with the next record?

[The Morning Seed]

At first i was confused by this question. Then I ate an orange.

And i think the answer is no, this record will come out as planned. Thing about KoL is, their brilliance seems to take no effort at all. I mean if you hear how they talk about making their second album, they put it together in a couple of weeks and not only that, they did it live. To have a amazingly solid sounding piece of art come out of such a crunched schedule is proof that they know what they are doing and they will only get better. And that is a testament to their bond.

[mystery girl]

your answer was just waht i was looking for. i figured the ? would be confusing. sorry. i totally have faith in them and their "brilliance" as you put it, but sometime si get nervous about it becaus ehtey're so awesome. it's like " how can you get any more awesome" that's what worries me. but hey they're badasses they can do it. *rambling*

[The Morning Seed]

kaleidescopeeyes said:

your answer was just waht i was looking for. i figured the ? would be confusing. sorry. i totally have faith in them and their "brilliance" as you put it, but sometime si get nervous about it becaus ehtey're so awesome. it's like " how can you get any more awesome" that's what worries me. but hey they're badasses they can do it. *rambling*

I get worried they will all die in a plain crash.

I too have kol loss anxiety. Like the mother has for her children.

[katietill]

^^and i can vouch for that. the kings are brilliant no matter what. pressure or no, they will make an incredible record.

[mystery girl]

look at us gettin all protective and worrisom over those boys. I think KOL have the best fans ever.

[cornflake]

Karma for you John. Thank you so much for typing that out! Sounds so exciting!!