From their early days, Kings of Leon - brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill, along with their cousin Matthew Followill - bore all the hallmarks of a classic rock ’n’ roll band. They emerged from Nashville seemingly fully formed, with old school riffs, the good looks and retro fashion style of Almost Famous' fictional rockers Stillwater, and an almost too-cinematic-to-be-true back story, the brothers hailing from a fire-and-brimstone background, their father being a disgraced Pentecostal preacher.
After the release of their 2003 debut album Youth and Young Manhood, the good times rolled for the Kings. Britain fell particularly hard for their distinctive style, which sounded like the Allman Brothers getting pissed up in the kitchen at the Strokes’ house party, and it wasn’t until fourth record, Only By the Night, that there appeared to be anything amiss.
It’s been reported that Caleb wrote some of the 2008 record under the influence of pain medication after a fracas with Nathan, and the album certainly seemed to explore darker territory than its predecessors. Take the gothic opening track Closer, which sees Caleb emerge from a fog of electrical bleeps to announce himself “stranded in this spooky town…” The whole record is eerie and melancholic – which didn’t stop it from shifting more than six million copies and thrusting them into European enormodomes. Those doors were opened by Sex on Fire, the album's horny lead single, a huge radio hit that the group would later dismiss as “piece of shit”, which would stoke inter-band tensions, familial rivalries and a descent into debauchery that threatened to destroy them completely.
Early warning signs arrived with the quartet's lacklustre performance headlining Reading Festival in 2009, and a muted crowd response which clearly irked the band. “I'm trying to hold back and not say anything negative man,” Caleb muttered ahead of playing Sex On Fire. “Hope it warms up out here, because we need it, we need you guys to help us do this, y'know.” When the Reading crowd roared along in recognition of the band's best-known song, Caleb could be seen shaking his head in annoyance. After the show, Nathan tweeted: “Reading? What the fuck? Zero love for the kings. I know it was cold but holy shit, y’all were frozen.”
The scrappy lads from Tennessee were beginning to look like entitled rock stars.
One year on, talking to NME, Caleb acknowledged “at the end of the day it was probably our fault. Because of the success I expected everyone to [cheer] for everything we did.”
“That was my Kurt Cobain moment when I was hating the success and I was scared that people were thinking that we did this on purpose, that we made this record so that it could be big.”
