The

Interview

AN TLER? WE DON’ T EVEN KNO W HER! Flowers at Glastonbury, 2007

more than pop. Every time I shave, I put the hair in a bag. I’m waiting for the opportune time to give it to him.

 

You’re joking. I’m serious. It’s a big bag, too. But I don’t understand how anyone could say Hot Fuss was disposable. “Mr. Brightside” isn’t disposable. Is “All These Things That I’ve Done” disposable? Calling that song disposable is beyond me. It’s a very special part of this generation.

 

But weren’t you reaching for something on Sam’s Town that you weren’t reaching for on Hot Fuss? Hot Fuss was all based on fantasy. The English influences, the makeup—they were what I imagined rock was. I’m a dreamer, you know? So I dug into that dream and made Hot Fuss. But hearing people call us the best British band from America made me wonder about my family and who I was. That’s what Sam’s Town is really about. I was trying to find out who I was.

How annoying was it that Chinese Democracy came out the same week as Day & Age? Axl waited 15 years to put his album out the same week as us! I haven’t heard Chinese Democracy, but people tell me it sounds like Korn. Axl is all right, though. We hung out with him a few times. We have a Chinese guy playing with us on tour—Ray Suen. He’s been giving me lessons about actual Chinese democracy.

grammar. Worldwide, “Human” is our biggest song ever. I guess somebody gets it.

Did you? That’s what’s so frustrating. Sam’s Town wasn’t some love letter to America or overreaching mythic thing. It was about me. I sang about Grandma Dixie and my brother being born on the Fourth of July. Guess what? My grandma’s name is fucking Dixie, and my brother was born on the fucking Fourth of July, 1969. The album is very real. I was being honest on Sam’s Town, and it bit me in the butt.

Kanye and Ludacris debuted that week, too. That’s some heavy competition. You can’t compete with hip-hop. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be as big as a rap star. I do—I’m always competitive. But there’s this weird perception of me as someone who’s sitting around plotting like a devil. It’s not like that. My music lights a fire under me. When I hear other people, I want to be better than them. I won’t apologize for it. It’s nothing dirty.

What’s worse: people harping on your grammar or saying you were ripping off Springsteen on Sam’s Town? The reaction to Sam’s Town took me to a bad place. But a good thing came from it—all the anger I had toward what people were saying about the album made me want to prove how good the music was. We would play those songs live with so much fire. In a way, the critics helped make the Killers a great live band.

Was it a mistake to be honest and say you hated emo or were offended by Green Day? I regret it. I’ve since apologized to most of the people I said anything negative about. Getting interviewed is so unnatural. I guess I’m too trusting. I’ll talk to somebody for five minutes and feel comfortable. [Pauses, then smiles] Maybe I deserve credit for saying what other people just think.

Do you pay too much attention to what people write? Yeah. I think too much about it. I’m doing better. I’m thinking less. That’s why Day & Age is a fun record. We let our hair down. I wasn’t worried about what critics might say or about trying to follow in U2’s footsteps.

Are you happy with the critical reaction to Day & Age? It’s definitely been more positive than it was for Sam’s Town. It will always be difficult to digest the fact that someone’s going to hear the album one or two times and then say it’s amazing or it’s not as good as Hot Fuss. Nobody is ever going to know the album the way I do. People will love it for different reasons.

 

Seriously, though, how can we humans be “dancer”? [Laughs] I never thought that line would get so much attention! It just makes such sense to me. It’s hard to explain. There was something bionic about it, something extraterrestrial. I knew it wasn’t perfect

You sold six million albums your first time out. It took U2 a few years to do that. Would you have preferred more gradual success? The career paths of so many of the people I look up to are absolutely the opposite of ours. Depeche Mode is another band I think about. It wasn’t until Music for the Masses or Violator that they got huge. Other bands that had really big first albums, like Guns N’ Roses, didn’t have staying power. I hope we do.

Are you bothered by the fact that more of your contemporaries aren’t angling for stardom? Even Chris Martin seems embarrassed to be famous. I don’t understand the lack of ambition out there. There’s no fantasy. U2 are like fucking Liberace compared with what’s coming out now. I’ve never been shy about wanting to be heard. I’m not hiding behind being cool. Unless you’re so pure that you only play in the street, you have something driving you. Yeah, everyone knows it’s a difficult time to sell records. Not enough people are taking that as a challenge.

When Hot Fuss came out, were you bothered by people saying the Killers were— Style over substance! [The Pet Shop Boys’] Neil Tennant said I only grew a beard to prove that I was

But a really successful rock record nowadays sells a million copies. Isn’t it a fool’s game to try to be a larger-than-life rock star under those conditions? First things first: We write songs that we love. But like you say, maybe the idea of huge rock stardom is outdated. I hope it isn’t. People think we want to be big for big’s sake. That’s not the case. The bottom line is

DYLAN MAR TINEZ/REU TERS

72 fEbRUAR Y 2009 / SPIN.COM: ThE MUSIC WEbSI TE