Kings of Leon - McFearless

The most fun thing is coming backstage after a show and meeting someone who's in a band that is so huge that the shit is scared out of us. Nathan Followill ponders on the recent adventures of the Kings of Leon, when those backstage luminaries included Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam, and the divinity that is U2. "We're just kinda like sponges, we like to hang out with the legends and just let them fill us with knowledge of ways to avoid the pitfalls of the rock n' roll lifestyle. Then we usually get shit-faced and forget everything that they told us."

Followill acknowledges the effect these experiences have had on the band's new sound. "We've evolved. We knew the kind of record we wanted to make, and that we couldn't go into the studio with our tails tucked between our legs scared to try something, because you're not guaranteed a next record – ever. The record business nowadays is so fucked up. Also, we did get to tour with three huge bands in the span of a year and a half. Most guys would kill to tour with just one of those acts at any point and time in their career. Playing with U2 every night to huge arenas definitely planted a seed in our minds, that's why we tried to make a lot of these songs sound really big. It helped we also had the luxury of soundchecking them in huge big arenas like Madison Square gardens. It just amazed us how U2 records translate live in those huge arenas and it sounds just as good. It kinda clicked a lightbulb in our heads, like 'no shit man, you can make big sounding music that can sound great in a 300 person club but can also sound great in a 30,000 arena.'"

30,000? If this is where their ambition lies, they're currently on a trajectory to match. What's the reason for this popularity? "Oh man I don't know, I think at first it was the whole story, the UK has always been fascinated with the south for some reason, being from here I really don't get it. At first I think it really was the story: being sons of a preacher gone bad and now we're doing the devil's music and all that but fortunately for us, we try to make each record better that the last, we try to grow musically and as a band. I think the fans grew with us and realise that 'they've got an interesting backstory and that's all cool but at the end of the day they can still put on a hell of a show, they're actually a good band and they write good songs.' It would have been so easy just to rely on the story and milk that for all it's worth and still be going around looking like we've just walked off the set of Almost Famous and playing it up. That was fun, that was a period in our lives that got us where we are today but we always want to be growing, always want to be changing, always want to be getting better because if you're not getting the job done there's a thousand young bands foaming at the mouth that'll do anything they have to do to take your spot."

What is it, then, about their upbringing that seems to fascinate the UK audience? "It is what it is, we can't change the way we were brought up. If people want to discredit that or make it into something that it's not, that's their problem, if they've got time to waste on stupid shit like that, you know, go for it. It's just so easy for journalists to read one thing about someone else and just take it and run with it and put their spin on it when really they're just repeating the same thing over and over. At first the thing that bothered me the most was talking about my dad, how he was kicked out for being a drunk and was a disgrace to the family. That kinda got to me I'll admit."

Particularly with the family focus being so prominent in the public psyche, aren't the brothers sick of the sight of each other after all these years? "It amazes people that we don't rip each other's throats out every day. But, we didn't really grow up as brothers, we grew up as best friends 'cos we didn't have the luxury of staying in one town a long time and making our own set of friends. Whatever town I was in I knew my two brothers would be there, we got along fine, that's who we hung out with. That helps so much to this day. We have our occasional tiff, but it's so much easier to get into a fight as two brothers as opposed to a lead singer and a drummer. If it's the lead singer and the drummer, the band breaks up. But we're brothers and we're not going to break up if one brother punches another in the head for looking at a girl he had dibs on in a bar."