The Killers have been involved in some first-rate collaborations in their two decades as Las Vegas’ finest purveyors of anthemic indie-pop. There has been team-ups with Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Marr, the Pet Shop Boys and Phoebe Bridgers from Brandon Flowers’ crew but perhaps the most impressive is the time they enlisted late rock’n’roll icon and the world’s grouchiest man Lou Reed to duet on their 2007 song Tranquilize.
The Perfect Day singer taught them to up their work ethic, the band told this writer a few years ago. “One of the more positive notes was he tried to impart some knowledge he learned from Andy Warhol,” Flowers explained. “He told us a story that Andy Warhol would ask him, ‘How many songs did you write today Lou?’ And he’d say, ‘I wrote one song’ and Andy would say, ‘Why didn’t you write five?’ He told us that the first day we were working with him and the next day we came in the studio and he said, ‘How many songs did you write today Brandon?’ Haha! So it’s instilled in me to keep trying and working harder and he wrote a lot, that’s why he was so good at it. We were scared to death about working with him.”
