THE KILLERS: Vital Signs

If all this name dropping sounds like a dream come true, it’s important to remember that when they first paired up, Flowers worked as a hotel bellhop and Keuning schlepped clothes at Banana Republic. The pair met through a 2002 newspaper ad Keuning placed in The Las Vegas Sun, citing Oasis as an influence.

“I remember Brandon had Clarks shoes on, like Oasis,” Keuning chuckles, thinking back on his first impression of his future singer. “And I remember opening the door and thinking immediately, he’s not like the others. I could pretty much tell in the first minute that he was going to work but we still had to go through the motions of meeting. And we didn’t really say anything. I had my keyboard in my room and he just kind of came over the next day with his keyboard.”

“And we kind of instantly went to work,” Flowers adds. “We started looking for people right away to join our band. So we kind of went through that process together. We’d call people from ads and they’d come over or we’d go to their houses. And it’s true, the moment they’d open the door we’d kind of know. It was a frustrating time, meeting all of those people. But it was kind of fun. You never knew who was going to be behind the door!”

Once their lineup was intact, The Killers came up with their biggest hit almost instantly. “We had our ups and downs writing together in the beginning,” Flowers remembers, “but we had ‘Mr. Brightside’ right away. And so that was always-even when we only played it to twenty people in a bar-obvious that it was different from other bands and different from our other songs. I went through this Saddle Creek phase, listening to all of that stuff [ on that label]. And we started writing these ‘indie rock pour-your-heart-out’ kind of songs, but it just never felt right. So we actually went through phases on the way to getting Ronnie and Mark. Once we were altogether, it was considerably stronger.”

And being able to work off of each other has continued to help the band through songwriting troubles. “Writers block hasn’t been a problem so far for us,” the guitarist says, “because the four of us write music. So even if one of us is struggling, we usually plow through it.”

However, Flowers admits he sometimes struggles with lyrics. “I was never a big reader, but because I want to improve as a writer, I’ve been forced to read more now,” he says. “And it really does help with lyrics, and it’s opened up my mind a little bit. Reading really does help me, plus it takes my mind off of the problem, because you can obsess over it.”

Keuning says they’ve had a number of incomplete songs that he’s been quite fond of, but because they were only “halfway there, we’ve had to abandon them.”

Still, Flowers acknowledges they have gone back to salvage a few of them, to tremendous effect. “With ‘Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine,’we had the verse forever,” he remembers, “and we knew in our hearts that it was good. But we wondered if we’d ever get past that verse. And then the day came where Mark started playing the chorus. And it could have been anybody. Because we’re able to work together like that it helps us to avoid being stuck a lot of the time.”

“Brandon might bring in a song he has on keyboards without giving any direction, and Mark will come in on bass and Ronnie will come in on drums,” Keuning explains. “And I’ll noodle around on the guitar until things sort of formulate. We have to spend time together, working through the songs, because what we start out with may not be what we end up with. And sometimes songs just spawn out of jamming together.”