that we love music and we’re very thankful to be here. I’m on top of the world right now.

 

It seems like every article about the band makes a connection between the music’s epic, glamorous qualities and the fact that you guys are from Las Vegas. Is that warranted? Las Vegas isn’t glamorous anymore. When I drive down some of the city’s streets, I imagine the days of Elvis and Sinatra. That period still exists in my mind. Now it’s all very sex-oriented. But I had an epiphany the other day: We could not have existed if we were from New York or L.A. We would’ve been so self-conscious. People in New York wallow in their artistry. Las Vegas doesn’t have that indieness. We were able to do what we wanted without worrying about being cool.

but we’d play “Mr. Brightside,” “Somebody Told Me,” and “Smile Like You Mean It” for label heads and they’d turn us down. It shows you how ignorant some of these people are. It should be a no-brainer to sign a band that plays those songs. I was optimistic, though. My favorite line from Alphaville’s “Forever Young” is “Hoping for the best but expecting the worst.” I was hopeful but ready to take some blows.

 

The theme of persecution shows up in a lot of your songs. So do the ideas of revelation, divine visions, spiritual transformation. Those same ideas are all over the Book of Mormon… I don’t know why I’m coming to terms with this right now, but in the last few months…I get asked about it a lot. If I were Catholic, no one would bat an eye.

Bono gets asked about religion all the time. Okay, but people look at me like I’m an alien when they ask about Mormonism. It’s there in my music. It’s always been there. It’s obviously, it’s, um, it’s unavoidable.

 

Is there a similarity between your religious feelings and your feelings about music? It’s possible. I think of talent as being God-given. I know that contradicts what a lot of people believe, but that’s how I see it. I think the Beatles were meant to be, you know? So when I listen to Paul McCartney, I think, here’s the person that God gave the gift of allowing him to write “Let It Be.”

Were you put here to be a rock star? I don’t know. I have my days.

CLOCK WISE FROM TOP LEF T: BRIAN ARIS/LIVE 8 VIA GE T T Y IMAGES; COUR TES Y BRANDON FLOWERS; KMAZUR/ WIREIMAGE. COM; FRANK MULLEN/ WIREIMAGE. COM

Your first band was called Blush Response— that’s a terrible name. Did you come up with it?

“I don’t understand the lack of ambition

[Laughs] I still kinda like it! It’s a Blade Runner reference. It’s futuristic. That was our attempt at something along the lines of Duran Duran.

out there. U2 are like f--king Liberace
compared with what’s coming out now.”

Was Blush Response the beginning of the Killers? No. I used to scour the band classifieds in Las Vegas Weekly and City Life. I’d answer ads and go to people’s houses and play with them. After four or five false starts, I met Dave [Keuning, Killers guitarist] and we started to play together. Mark [Stoermer, bassist] was in a band called the Negative Ponies. He used to come see me and Dave—that just blew my mind. We weren’t used to people showing respect to us in Las Vegas. But Mark and Dave became friends, and eventually he started to play with us. The same thing happened with Ronnie [Vannucci, the band’s drummer].

 

Did the fact that you were bandmates before you were friends mean you guys approached the music more like a career and less like a hobby? Yeah. Sometimes I feel sad that I didn’t have that experience of playing with my friends. A lot of people assume that because we’re in a band together, we’re best buds, but we’re still getting to know each other. I’m younger than the other guys. Hopefully, learning more about each other will help keep things exciting.

Have you had to learn how to play live? You look pretty nervous on stage sometimes. I have nights where I’m King Kong and nights where I don’t feel like I belong up there. I’m working to get over the barrier I have about really believing that people are at the shows because they like us. Everyone hated us in Las Vegas when we started out. That feeling will never leave me. The more gigs we sell out, the more King Kong nights I have, but I constantly feel like I have to prove myself.

 

You got a record deal fairly quickly, though, right? It took about a year. We got turned down by a lot of labels. It sounds ridiculous now,

Clockwise from top left: Dave Keuning, Flowers, Mark Stoermer, Ronnie Vannucci at Live 8, prior to Labor Day, July 2005; mod Brandon in 1987, when he was young; with wife Tana at the 2005 M TV Awards; attracting fickle bloggers at the 2003 CMJ festival in New York

IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS. GO TO SPIN.COM / FEBRUAR Y 2009 73