Skip to main contentAbout 30 seconds into the first track on the Kings of Leon's Aha Shake Heartbreak , something strange happens. The trance-inducing, two-note guitar tremolo that guides the intro muscles its way into the frenetic drum line. And that sets up the first funk-inflected drawl from leadman Caleb Followill. "Slow night so long, she's frenching out the flavor/ she's 17 but I done went and plumb forgot it," he sings, all while that guitar line bubbles feverishly below and beyond for almost the entire song.
Those stretched, blues-free guitar parts, the making out with minors and the semantically questionable lyrics all point to a band obsessed with Television, CBGBs and the lawless early-'70s New York punk scene. You know, the one the Strokes and countless other rock bands have so successfully pillaged for image and sound.
What's so strange about that?
Well, the Kings of Leon are supposed to be a Southern rock band.
Based in Nashville, the band was signed by RCA Records in 2001 based on the songwriting skills of Caleb Followill and his brother Nathan. The two musicians were steeped in the sounds of the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Neil Young and the pseudo-Southern Rolling Stones they would hear in the car while travelling across the country with their evangelist father. And on their debut full-length album, 2003's Youth and Young Manhood , showed it. The music hinted at a garage band lurking within, but the Kings of Leon sound was decidedly Southern and, at times, even honky-tonk.
So what happened? Well, his name is Jared, he's 18 years old, and he probably sustained a few charley horses from Caleb and Nathan while riding across the country in their father's car.
"I'm the youngest one, so I'm usually the guy that's introducing people to new bands," says Jared, the youngest brother, on the phone from Nashville. "They introduced me to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, which was fucking awesome. And then I showed them the Pixies and the Cure and Joy Division, and Television. That's how I got into this band. Out of sheer music credibility and not necessarily playing."
Jared isn't lying. When Caleb and Nathan were being courted by RCA, they decided to keep the band in the family, recruiting cousin Mike as guitarist and Jared as bassist. That was a risk, considering Jared was just 14 and had never wrapped his fingers around the neck of a bass before.
"You can't really let a major record label put together a band, because it'll be a bunch of dorks," Jared says. "They didn't want to sign a record deal and have two fucking 40-year-olds playing guitar for them or two 15-year-olds with bleached-blond hair who came straight out of Avril Lavigne's band, so they asked Mike and me."
What followed was a story that could happen only in Nashville-and one that smells slightly of a major-label PR department rewrite. Jared bought a bass and had 10 days to learn it before a group of RCA label execs arrived at the family's house to have a listen. RCA liked what they heard and signed the group. Two years later, the Kings were riding a wave of positive press from Youth and Young Manhood and record sales topping 500,000 in the U.K., where they were superstars.
And then the band went and changed everything.
WWeek 2015