Mr Brightside takes the country road home: Brandon Flowers on grief and growing up
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Brightside → take → grief
Brandon Flowers speaks to Mark Beaumont on being serenaded by Elton John on his birthday and how the love, hardship and country music of his Utah childhood shaped his latest solo album
Even through 45-year-old eyes and an ice-white rock star smile, the little kid in Brandon Flowers often bursts out.
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kid → speak → Flowers
He’s there, still awestruck and amazed, when he tells you about last night’s Michelin-starred meal at Ambassadors Clubhouse, meeting Bernard Sumner for the first time at an NME Awards urinal (“he pulled right up next to me and started singing Somebody Told Me”), or having Happy Birthday sung to him at a party at Elton John’s Windsor abode at the weekend.
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Birthday → ’ → weekend
“They brought a cake out,” The Killers’ frontman and indie rock Peter Pan beams, perched fit and good-spirited on a sofa in his London record company offices.
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Pan → bring → offices
“If you would have told me when I was a kid that Elton John was gonna sing me happy birthday one day…” He shakes his head, forever five on the inside.
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He → tell → inside
“It’s insane.
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It → ’ → ?
And that bright-eyed Young Brandon is all over Flowers’s third solo album Thrasher, the confessional top-three hit steeped in the country music and dark memories of his youth, which he brings live to the Royal Albert Hall this week.
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he → steep → Hall
A relatively intimate occasion for a man more used to blazing dazzle-jacketed across arena and stadium stages, but hardly a one-off - The Killers have often been known to play tiny club shows for hardcore fans immediately after a major gig.
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Killers → use → gig
“The energy can be wild,” Flowers says.
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Flowers → say → ?
“We once did it in El Paso.
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We → do → Paso
We played our gig, and then we went and played in a bar.
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we → play → bar
They had to shut down the roads.”
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They → have → roads
The thrill this time, he says, will be in indulging Thrasher’s storytelling core onstage.
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he → say → core
It’s a sequel of sorts to The Killers’ most recent album, 2021’s revelatory Pressure Machine.
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It → ’ → album
That painted a darkly atmospheric portrait of Flowers’s remote Utah hometown of Nephi, with its abusive drunks, suicides and addicts strung out on “hillbilly heroin”.
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That → paint → heroin
“Pressure Machine might have messed me up a little bit,” he says.
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he → mess → me
“It made me rethink everything.
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me → make → everything
It was the most fulfilling creative endeavour that I’ve ever had…
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I → have → that
I’ve never done that before.
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I → do → that
I have gotten away with murder on other records.”
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I → get → records
He’s not flattering himself; The Getting By, particularly, was luminous blue-collar poetry.
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Getting → flatter → himself
“I don’t know where it came from,” he says.
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he → know → where
“It’s smarter than I am.
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I → ’ → ?
There’s so many characters and stories that I’ve been carrying around — I unlocked something with Pressure Machine.
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I → ’ → Machine
I didn’t want to stop.”
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I → want → ?
Away from the band, Flowers went even further inward.
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Flowers → go → band
Having recently moved back to Nephi with his family, he was struck by intense memories of his time there, having arrived from Henderson, Nevada — in the glow of the Vegas Strip — at the age of eight.
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he → move → eight
The beauty of the Wasatch Mountains and the smell of wet leaves in autumn infused within him a fresh fondness for a town he’d spent his teenage years desperate to escape.
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he → infuse → years
“When I was there it was all about getting the hell out of there,” he says.
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he → get → hell
“These towns, instead of saying the next town is 20 miles, the freeway exits and entrances just say Las Vegas.
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exits → say → Vegas
I was seeing it every day, arrows literally pointing and saying Las Vegas, Las Vegas.
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arrows → see → Vegas
It must have been bombarding my conscience.”
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It → bombard → conscience
”The first time I touched a girl’s hips, would have been probably to a country song”
He appreciates more, now, the innocence of the times.
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He → touch → times
“It was the mischief that I remember.
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I → remember → that
They would have coolers in the back of their trucks, and it was commonplace for us on Friday nights to go from house to house of the guys that aren’t Mormon and look in their coolers and see if they left any alcohol in them.
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they → have → them
If you got lucky it was harder than beer.”
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it → get → beer
Also, flooding back, came memories from the backseat of his father’s classic cars, country music blasting.
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music → flood → cars
“I was surprised at how familiar I was with it,” Flowers says.
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Flowers → surprise → it
“I had been soaking it in on the way to school with my dad, or at school dances in Nephi.
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I → soak → Nephi
My first dance, the first time I touched a girl’s hips, would have been probably to a country song.
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I → touch → song
…and 35 more, not listed.
The Aporia
