A truly great song can draw on a whole host of components — lyrically telling
a tale of love, heartache, lust, anger, alienation, triumph, euphoria — and
communicate its message in any number of musical idioms. Dance, garage, rap,
electronica, blues, heavy metal, punk, pop, MOR: none of these is a
guarantee of greatness, but nor does any of them preclude it. And if the
single is on its last legs as a commercially viable product, it still
possesses (especially when it is an act’s first release) the ability to
serve as a clarion call, to knock you for six, to leave you gasping for air.
Once in a blue moon, such a debut single arrives. And what separates it from
the chaff is not that you understand it in an instant, that you plug in at
once to its core. You don’t. Rather, you experience only an inkling of
comprehension. Instead of setting your emotions in stone, it makes you
flounder. The old shiver up the spine is present, for sure. But so, too, is
a baffling combination of rapture and sadness.
No wonder, then, that so few songs pull off such a devilish trick. And no
wonder, either, that word spread fast in this country last September when
the Las Vegas four-piece the Killers released a debut single called Mr
Brightside on the independent label Lizard King. I say word spread fast, but
for the most part, words failed people. Those exposed to the song’s three
minutes 41 seconds of synth-pop perfection attempted to do justice to the
lyrics’ distillation of end-of- the-affair wretchedness and paranoia and
jealousy, to its over- whelming guitar intro, to the way the keyboard part
enters so majestically after the first chorus, to its aping of Teardrop
Explodes’ Reward at the close — and, by and large, we failed.
So, too, on a sunny afternoon in San Francisco, does a local DJ. Sitting
pretty in his swivel chair, a master, apparently, of the knobs, faders and
jingle buttons in front of him, this West Coast taste-maker grins across at
four exhausted twentysomethings and seems, like us, lost for words. Opposite
him, the greatest pop band in America look for all the world as if fate has
dealt them a particularly useless hand. After nine weeks on the road,
hauling their cases on and off airport transit buses, their clothes are
stiff and crackling with stage sweat, their matted hair sculpted into messy,
just-out-of-bed bouffants. They begin a live, acoustic rendition of a song,
only for the DJ to cue Morrissey’s new single. In profile, their manager’s
benign smile takes on a fixed, glacial quality. Are you, the jock inquires
cheesily, the best band in the history of Las Vegas? “No,” deadpans Brandon
Flowers, the band’s 22-year-old Matt Dillon-lookalike singer, “we’re the
best band in the history of the world.” The session is an unmitigated
disaster.
This is a key moment for the Killers. They have a humungous record contract
with Island in the States; they have just returned from supporting their
idol, Morrissey, in Los Angeles; their first, rapidly selling-out headline
British tour begins tonight; and Mr Brightside, play-listed on national
radio, is rereleased tomorrow. What’s not to like? “We all had expectations
of what this would be,” says Flowers later. “And some things are getting
met, and some things aren’t.” He accepts the Killers have a lot to learn
about grinning and bearing it. “The problem is not that we failed but that
we were more ourselves,” he reflects about the radio encounter. “People who
are on our side call it ‘coming out of yourself’, when really they want you
to fake it.” “It’s as if,” interjects David Keuning, the guitarist, “they
want you to be a comedian and an actor.” “I think,” Flowers continues, “we
need to find a middle ground.” He pauses. “A half-fake.”
After trying and failing in other bands, and drifting through jobs as a
bellboy, a wedding photographer, a medical courier delivering body parts,
and a shop assistant, the four Nevadans soon realised — Mr Brightside was,
incredibly, the first song Flowers and Keuning wrote together — that they
had stumbled on something special. If Keuning is their moody musical genius,
the towering, laconic bassist Mark Stoermer their John Entwistle, and the
mad, acrobatic drummer Ronnie Vannucci their snare-thrashing Clem Burke,
Flowers has the stillness and quiet power of a true front man. The youngest
member, he grew up in Las Vegas, moving as a teen with his family to Iowa,
before returning at 16 and savouring the Sin City nightlife on a fake ID.
One of the many qualities that make his songwriting stand out from the crowd
is his affection for what he writes about. Hot Fuss, the band’s sensational,
hit-stuffed debut album, abounds with Vegas characters he has observed, and
whose complicated — in some cases doomed — lives he chronicles. Midnight
Show and Jenny Was a Friend of Mine are two-thirds of a promised murder
trilogy, and Believe Me Natalie and Andy You’re a Star similarly narrate the
attempts of their subjects to better themselves in a cut-throat city. In
setting these stories to music that betrays his enduring love for British
new wave — the Killers are named after the mock band that appeared in the
video for New Order’s Crystal single — Flowers has, he insists, accidentally
hitched his fortunes to the current fixation among American acts on the
disco-punk glory days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Britain, the
band’s melding of this era with the best of Bowie, the Cars, the Smiths and
Pulp is, predictably, going down a storm. America, he says, may be another
matter. “America’s the market that’s the hardest. We have the big dogs
behind us, but there are so many bands that do. If you’re not Kid Rock, it’s
going to be really hard.”
As a foursome, they exhibit many signs of a group of people who have spent too
long together. Earlier that day, driving to a photo shoot, they hear one of
their songs for the very first time on American radio, and their faces are
creased with sheepish grins. Yet within only 20 minutes of this momentous
event, three of them are bickering when Stoermer’s unannounced disappearance
for a pee means their departure is delayed. Tiny things, in other words, can
trigger a spat; conversely, when they feel collectively threatened, as,
through a simple misunderstanding, they did at the radio station, they close
ranks.
“We lose it every once in a while,” Keuning acknowledges, adding, in a
muttered aside, “some more than others.”
“We’re an intelligent band and we have intelligent songs,” says Flowers, “and
these people who are interviewing us are used to these kids, which we’re
really not. We have the mentality almost of an underground band, but they’re
asking us mainstream questions. That’s where we’re colliding.”
Another collision that you sense is occurring is the one between the band’s
total pride in Hot Fuss, and their apprehension that, even as it shifts
millions of units, their baby will be subsumed into the reductive,
mass-market platitudinising that robs creativity of its distinctiveness and
edge. Flowers isn’t the only one with expectations (and, in his case,
fears). Before his departure for Warner Bros, their record-company boss,
Lyor Cohen, was, says Flowers, “just so gung-ho about us. In meetings, he
would be like, ‘I’m going to burn this building down for the Killers’”.
Right now, what the Killers want and what they end up getting may be very
different things. Keuning’s wish list is topped, he says, by a desire for a
kip. “I think of it more than I ever used to,” he says wearily. “I’d sleep
on this bench right now.” Flowers is wide-eyed at the idea of success in
Britain — “We can go to Sheffield and play to more people than we can in Las
Vegas. It’s unreal” — and a touch more vexed about a breakthrough back home.
They should lighten up a bit. Those airport transit buses will soon be a thing
of the past. They will have their clothes laundered and understand how to
deal with DJs. Formidable both on disc and on stage, they will conquer at
least some of the world and keep hold of their integrity. They may even, if
they can stop squabbling and trust in their luck, learn how to look on the
bright side.
Mr Brightside is released tomorrow on Lizard King; Hot Fuss follows on
June 7
Great debut singles
Afrika Bambaataa: Planet Rock Melding rap and Kraftwerk, a
genre-smashing epic.
Boston: More Than a Feeling The greatest drive-time and
air-guitar anthem of all time.
Kate Bush: Wuthering Heights Still, 26 years later, there has
been no single so way-out weird.
The Cars: My Best Friend’s Girl To a garage-pop backing
that’s never been bettered, Ric Ocasek wailed: “And she used to be mine.”
And every man on earth understood.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Relax Banned by Radio 1, this
ravished the nation.
Kelis: Caught Out There “I hate you so much right now:
aaarrrggghhh!” she screamed, and we loved her right back.
Oasis: Supersonic One of the dirtiest and most unmistakable
rock’n’roll singles/statements of intent, this launched Oasis into the
stratosphere.
Pet Shop Boys: West End Girls Ennui, loneliness and
lovelessness to a pounding disco beat.
Radiohead: Creep Self-loathing has never sounded this good.
The Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the UK “Right, now,” hollered
Johnny, and the world was changed for ever.
Sugarhill Gang: Rapper’s Delight The original rap recording,
this mash-up of sounds and cultures redefined music.
The Undertones: Teenage Kicks “Teenage dreams, so hard to
beat.” The latter four words could just as well apply to this slice of
pop-punk heaven.
