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The year was 2002, in Henderson, Nevada, and no one at the bar that night realized they were watching what would become one of the biggest bands in the world: The Killers. No one, that is, except maybe Brandon Flowers, who was barely 23 years old when The Killers shot to stardom with their first single, “Mr. Brightside,” a story about being cheated on ripped from Flowers’ own life, which became the anthem for a generation.
“I noticed early on, people would talk about the storytelling in Killers music, that they didn’t always associate with young rock bands,” Flowers said. “And I think that was when it first started to maybe dawn on me, where was I getting this from?”
Where he was getting it from turns out is Nephi, Utah, an hour and a half south of Salt Lake. It has one stoplight, and feels about as far away from rock & roll stardom as you could get. The family moved there from Las Vegas when Flowers was eight. “It’s funny to look at it now, to say it was a culture shock,” he said. “It really was, even though I was just a kid. My unit was my family, but there was something in me that still really felt planted in Las Vegas, and felt like that was part of my identity, you know? And it was something that I always wanted to go back to.”
Flowers struggled to fit in, missing school to help his dad work on an apartment building, a family business. (His sister’s name is still on the mailbox.) And to buy music in Nephi back then, he headed to the closest thing Nephi had to a record store: The Flying J Truck Stop. “They used to have these bins inside our Flying J that would just be full of cassettes, and you’d kind of mine through them,” he said. “One particular treasure that I found was a Depeche Mode record there.”
Another formative location in town? The local golf course. “This is the bar of the town,” said Flowers. “This is where people can congregate and play a sport they love, but they can also drink. And so, there’s sort of a subculture of guys that played golf here a lot. And so, that was my experience – my first cigarettes and my first chewing tobacco and alcohol was all here also.” It was as close to Las Vegas as he was going to get in Nephi.
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Flowers did end up back in Las Vegas for his senior year of high school, and it’s where The Killers established themselves and rocketed to fame.
Btu these days, it’s places like Nephi that actually inspire Flowers, which might be why his new solo album is country western, the kinds of songs his dad played on the radio. “It just really lends itself to the stories and to the characters and to detail,” he said. “I was secretly absorbing it.”
Gold and silvеr, God and glitter
Lights that flicker on hubcap chrome
On the road to Heaven
In Strauss and Stetson
Swimming pools of horsepower
Take me back home
— From “The American Dream”
Brandon Flowers performs “The American Dream”
Flowers’ latest solo project is called “Thrasher,” filled with stories of his childhood. “One of my strongest memories, more so than getting beat up by a couple of country kids that were stronger than me, was [my dad] trying to teach me to fight,” he said. “So, it’s just an interesting thing to look back on. Now I have three sons, and I teach them to not fight.”
Nine years ago, Flowers moved back to Utah with his wife and children, something he’s glad he did now that they’re leaving the nest. “They don’t prepare you for this,” he said. “You know, watching kids be young and that innocence and raising them was maybe the best, you know, felt like the greatest time for me. And now we just took one and dropped them off in Pennsylvania yesterday. It’s just a tough thing to wrap your head around, letting them go.”
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Flowers, who’s been a lifelong practicing Mormon AND a rock star, says he’s looked to rock & roll’s past for guidance on how to handle that balance. “One of the things I love about Elvis is, I see him as sort of like a spiritual progenitor and someone that, no matter what mistakes he made, you know – and we all know everything about Elvis – but just he was still deeply religious, and I think about that with Johnny Cash also, a couple of the people that always come to mind,” Flowers said. “And they struggled with it, and so I’m able to learn from them and make my decisions based on, you know, you can read the books, you watch the documentaries, you watch the movie, you know how it would happen.”
And sometimes it’s learning from Elvis what to avoid? “Absolutely, yeah,” said Flowers. “I mean, he was the first. He did everything. He did everything wrong and he did everything right.”
To hear Flowers tell it, his true success wasn’t found on the Vegas Strip or even on stadium stages. For him, his bright side has been found at home. “I mean, it’s been a wild ride,” he said. “I’ve been lucky. I have three sons, and me and my wife have been married for 21 years and it’s just, those are the things you start to realize, what is success? I try to instill that into my children and show them I have a great time on stage, I love writing songs, it’s fulfilling for me. But I am so happy walking down the street with you right now. You know, I have dinner, our routine, the things that we have implemented, like those are the things that feel like true success.”
You can stream the Brandon Flowers album “Thrasher” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
Story produced by Anthony Laudato. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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