May 9, 2024 • 12 mins
Kings of Leon Front man Caleb Followill chats with Booker and Stryker to talk about the upcoming New album "Can We Please Have Fun". He talks about the creative process of making the album. Speaking on where the ideas came for the New songs "Mustang" and "No Where to Run". Stryker also has a great flub! Listen in and hear if you can find it. Always great catching up with the Talented Caleb Followill.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Do you all new all sweet Booker, Striker podcast talib what's going on there?
You look good man? Oh?Thanks? You guys look great too.
Well, that's not get carried away. Hey, we're sitting here in
burbank or on the fifth floor withoutrevealing your address. Where about are you?
(00:23):
I'm at my address in Tennessee,Nashville. Yeah, I think I've
interviewed him from this exact location before. What a nice looking place there.
Striker looks good. I'm Booker,by the way, he's Striker Caleb from
Kings of Leo. Congratulations on gettinga new album out. Was the album
title a mission statement when you walkedinto the studio or just something that popped
(00:49):
into your brains? Yeah, itwas. It was something that I had
written down pretty early on as apotential for an album title, But it
was really it was something that Ijust hoped that we would do going in
to make a record, was justenjoy the process and not overthink it and
get in our own way. Soit was for us, But as the
(01:11):
other guys saw it, they Ifeel like they thought it was going to
have a more of a universal meeting, and people seem to have reacted to
it in that way. Can weplease have fun is the name of the
album. So Booker and I wantto know making the album, did it
stink or did you have fun?It was fun. It was a lot
(01:32):
of fun. It stunk a littlebit, but it was fun. Yeah,
I know, we had a goodtime. We worked with a kid
Harpoon for the first time, andhe's just he's just a good time.
He's there to kind of get usto bring out our best and it was
great. He's a big fan ofour old stuff. So as opposed to
(01:53):
taking us in a direction that wewere a little concerned maybe it would go
a little pop or something like that, it was that he was not that.
He was like, no, wewant we want things to feel like
the old days. So so itwas it was a good time. Did
you present him finish songs? Didyou guys work through songs together? How
(02:14):
does that process work? Does hejust tinker with things? Where does he
come in in all this? Imean there there were songs. The songs
were kind of still forming and stillhappening, but yeah, we you know,
they're all King songs. Uh.We we didn't uh we didn't use
him in the writing, but youknow, the stuff that he does as
(02:35):
a producer. It's it's pretty prettyhelpful to take our little songs and make
them something better. He just knowsa lot of tricks drum sounds and guitar
sounds and stuff like that. Butyeah, these these songs came from us
in your career. Three grammy wins, uh the new album nine full length
(02:55):
studio albums. Just quickly going backfor a second, then we'll talk about
all the new songs. Did youguys as a group, have like any
goals early on, like, guys, we're going to do this for thirty
years or what? What was thetalk back then when you first started.
It's four grammys and we hope toadd to that. No, I mean
(03:23):
when we first started it was itwas pretty much like we couldn't believe that
it was happening. And our goalearly on for our first record, we
said, if we could sell tenthousand copies, that meant that there would
be ten thousand people that would cometo a concert or concerts. That's all
we wanted. We just wanted tohave people show up to the shows when
(03:45):
we were in their town. Whatare the things that are different about this
record? What did you did youpurposefully attack it differently. Did you say
we want to try something different?Was there anything that you took maybe a
hard left in the creative way ofdoing things? Well, I mean not
to sound like we've ever had anyinterference from the record labels, but this
(04:14):
is the first time that we didn'thave a record label involved at all.
So it was all on us andwe were the only audience that we were
writing for. And so in away it was like that, you know,
like the early days as a band, you're just kind of fearless with
your creativity and you know, you'rejust trying to kind of get each other
(04:34):
to a place where you're all happy. So yeah, I mean, you
know, there was no like bigleft turn or anything. It was just
about being honest and real and notcompromising. Both Booker and I love the
song Mustang. Yeah, from thefirst millisecond that we heard it. Where
did this one come along? Andyou've been holding onto this was an idea
(04:58):
for a long time now. Thisoffice this is where it came. That's
where it started. I was justhammering away on an echord, and my
son, who's five but he wasfour at the time, he kind of
peeked his head in and was kindof moving around. I was like,
oh, so he liked you know, it's hard to get my kids like
anything. Yeah. So anyways,I went into the living room and was
(05:20):
still playing it, and my sonwas wearing a T shirt with Mustang on
it, and my daughter was watchinga YouTube video of some cats wow,
And so I kind of compared thosetwo how my son was banging cars together
and she was like sitting there havingtea watching it. So it was like
these two personalities, and so Ikind of made it about that. The
(05:44):
guitar on it, I love it. Did it always start with that dead
picking at the beginning? Was italways that flattened out guitar sound or is
that something you stumbled upon because tome, man, it sounds like Kings,
but it's got a real like coolnessto it that you know, maybe
I haven't heard from you guys before. Was that intentional or tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah,that's a kid harpoon trick. I'm playing
(06:10):
just my guitar and it's a hollowbody kind of thing, same guitar I've
always played, And so I justwent in there and recorded it. But
he came in with like a littleearbud and taped it to my guitar.
And I was a little confused byit, but anyways went with it.
And then the trick that he usedis he turned the guitar amp off and
(06:30):
everything, and so all you're hearingas a tiny microphone picking up my actual
just plucking up my guitar. Wow. And so it's a really cool thing,
and we've been rehearsing it forever.We can't make it happen live.
But yeah, well I was gonnasay, because I thought maybe you were,
you know, deadening the frets andyou were sort of kind of pounding
(06:53):
on it that way. How willyou emulate that live? It's just going
to sound like my guitar. You'regonna do my Beth Just yeah, if
you have to have to listen tothe record, I guess kid Harpoon of
you mentioned and those of you watchingare listening right now. He's worked with
Harry Styles and Florence and the Machineand of course now Kings of Leon.
(07:15):
There's another song that Booker and Ilove of all of the songs, Nowhere
to Run. Yeah. Now wasthere a cat video involved in this one
as well? How did this onecome about. Yeah, No, there
was no kiddies involved or hurt.And this one, No Nowhere to Run
is a song I kind of foundit on my phone. There was an
old voice memo and Jared was playingthe baseline and we got the studio and
(07:41):
I was like, what about thisand I played it for him. He
was like, I don't remember thatat all, so he had to relearn
what he was playing. And itwas the first one that I feel like
kid gravitated to and he liked ita lot, and we were all a
little unsure, so we we kindof kept putting it on the back burner,
on the back burner, and thenat the end, once all of
our confidence was built up, werecorded it and we love it. Yeah.
(08:07):
Is that a talk you into itsituation? Then? I think it's
a distract you from it until thetime is right. And then we all
once we knew that we had tomeet and the potatoes of the album,
then it was like, okay,well this one this is going to find
a nice home here. How manyof the twelve new songs can you and
(08:28):
the band play verbatim this second?Or is there a lot of rehearsal coming
up before the huge tour which includesAugust twenty second at the Form and then
the next night you're going down uponDesert at that new arena, Agrassuer Arena.
Yeah. I keep saying a bunchof people to keep telling me about
that Palm Desert gig. They're comingto that one. Yeah. I can
personally play all twelve of them.I don't know that that is the case
(08:52):
with everyone, but we did havea rehearsal today and in the rehearsals were
hitting like three new songs a dayto get them all to a point where,
God forbid we have to play them, we'll be able to pull them
out. Are you generally pretty goodwith remembering what you've done on the first
take and grabbing that or do youwrite it down immediately? You got a
(09:15):
good memory when it comes to thisstuff? Yeah, I mean I have
a weird memory. There are certainthings I can't remember at all, But
musically, if it's something that's meaningful, I'll usually one time I've got it.
And these songs in particular, theymean a lot to me. I
kind of buried myself away and wrotea lot of them, got a lot
(09:37):
of them meat myself before the bandkind of added everything that turned it into
what it is. So for mepersonally, I know all of it kind
of like the back of my hand. Well, listen, we've got this
incredible contest going as well where we'regiving away two round trip tickets to see
you guys play man Hyde Park onJune thirtieth, plus one of our listeners
(10:03):
is going to be a Kings ofLeon crew member for the day, and
so well, yeah, yeah,you could just like yell at them,
treat them horribly, Okay, tellme to get you sugar free red Bull
at seventy degrees, like, whateveryou want to do, please do it.
There's only one person on the crewthat I scream at, and that's
the drummer unless they're sitting in forNathan, then I try to stay.
(10:28):
So you don't yell at Matthew orJared's just just that God, wow,
Jared and Matthew have lost her hearingyears ago, so that it doesn't yelling
doesn't really help. Is it stillas fun? And I don't want to
sound like a corny dude, butit's way more fun now than it ever
has been. We're just we're justso fortunate and so we just appreciate this
(10:54):
opportunity that we have and we respect, you know, this opportunity, and
we worked really hard to make thealbum that we wanted to make, and
now I think our goal is tohopefully bring people together with it and let
our music be a source of healingor something. You know. I know,
(11:16):
it's a crazy world we live in, but everybody listens to music.
So hopefully it's our music that they'llbe listening to and then they'll forget about
their problems for a minute. Bookerand I congratulate you and your bandmate Slash
Friends Slash relative on all the success, like back to going to two thousand
and three or so with that debutalbum. You have had people that have
(11:37):
been backing you and following you forall these years. So thanks for all
the good music and all the goodtimes man, and thanks for jumping on
with Booker and Strike. Good luckwith the album, man, Thank you
very much. Just an honor youguys. Cool Man. We'll see you
with the Form show and possibly PondDesert as well. Nice all right,
can't wait. I'll be there youGood luck, dude, great album,
great stuff, man, great stuff. Ellis. I'm a big, big
(12:01):
fan. They wait to see youagain. See you soon. Yeah,
guys, be good? All right? Can we please have fun? Yes
we did. Goodbye, The AllNew All Afternoon with Booker and Striker broadcast
Do you all new all sweet Booker, Striker podcast talib what's going on there?
You look good man? Oh?Thanks? You guys look great too.
Well, that's not get carried away. Hey, we're sitting here in
burbank or on the fifth floor withoutrevealing your address. Where about are you?
(00:23):
I'm at my address in Tennessee,Nashville. Yeah, I think I've
interviewed him from this exact location before. What a nice looking place there.
Striker looks good. I'm Booker,by the way, he's Striker Caleb from
Kings of Leo. Congratulations on gettinga new album out. Was the album
title a mission statement when you walkedinto the studio or just something that popped
(00:49):
into your brains? Yeah, itwas. It was something that I had
written down pretty early on as apotential for an album title, But it
was really it was something that Ijust hoped that we would do going in
to make a record, was justenjoy the process and not overthink it and
get in our own way. Soit was for us, But as the
(01:11):
other guys saw it, they Ifeel like they thought it was going to
have a more of a universal meeting, and people seem to have reacted to
it in that way. Can weplease have fun is the name of the
album. So Booker and I wantto know making the album, did it
stink or did you have fun?It was fun. It was a lot
(01:32):
of fun. It stunk a littlebit, but it was fun. Yeah,
I know, we had a goodtime. We worked with a kid
Harpoon for the first time, andhe's just he's just a good time.
He's there to kind of get usto bring out our best and it was
great. He's a big fan ofour old stuff. So as opposed to
(01:53):
taking us in a direction that wewere a little concerned maybe it would go
a little pop or something like that, it was that he was not that.
He was like, no, wewant we want things to feel like
the old days. So so itwas it was a good time. Did
you present him finish songs? Didyou guys work through songs together? How
(02:14):
does that process work? Does hejust tinker with things? Where does he
come in in all this? Imean there there were songs. The songs
were kind of still forming and stillhappening, but yeah, we you know,
they're all King songs. Uh.We we didn't uh we didn't use
him in the writing, but youknow, the stuff that he does as
(02:35):
a producer. It's it's pretty prettyhelpful to take our little songs and make
them something better. He just knowsa lot of tricks drum sounds and guitar
sounds and stuff like that. Butyeah, these these songs came from us
in your career. Three grammy wins, uh the new album nine full length
(02:55):
studio albums. Just quickly going backfor a second, then we'll talk about
all the new songs. Did youguys as a group, have like any
goals early on, like, guys, we're going to do this for thirty
years or what? What was thetalk back then when you first started.
It's four grammys and we hope toadd to that. No, I mean
(03:23):
when we first started it was itwas pretty much like we couldn't believe that
it was happening. And our goalearly on for our first record, we
said, if we could sell tenthousand copies, that meant that there would
be ten thousand people that would cometo a concert or concerts. That's all
we wanted. We just wanted tohave people show up to the shows when
(03:45):
we were in their town. Whatare the things that are different about this
record? What did you did youpurposefully attack it differently. Did you say
we want to try something different?Was there anything that you took maybe a
hard left in the creative way ofdoing things? Well, I mean not
to sound like we've ever had anyinterference from the record labels, but this
(04:14):
is the first time that we didn'thave a record label involved at all.
So it was all on us andwe were the only audience that we were
writing for. And so in away it was like that, you know,
like the early days as a band, you're just kind of fearless with
your creativity and you know, you'rejust trying to kind of get each other
(04:34):
to a place where you're all happy. So yeah, I mean, you
know, there was no like bigleft turn or anything. It was just
about being honest and real and notcompromising. Both Booker and I love the
song Mustang. Yeah, from thefirst millisecond that we heard it. Where
did this one come along? Andyou've been holding onto this was an idea
(04:58):
for a long time now. Thisoffice this is where it came. That's
where it started. I was justhammering away on an echord, and my
son, who's five but he wasfour at the time, he kind of
peeked his head in and was kindof moving around. I was like,
oh, so he liked you know, it's hard to get my kids like
anything. Yeah. So anyways,I went into the living room and was
(05:20):
still playing it, and my sonwas wearing a T shirt with Mustang on
it, and my daughter was watchinga YouTube video of some cats wow,
And so I kind of compared thosetwo how my son was banging cars together
and she was like sitting there havingtea watching it. So it was like
these two personalities, and so Ikind of made it about that. The
(05:44):
guitar on it, I love it. Did it always start with that dead
picking at the beginning? Was italways that flattened out guitar sound or is
that something you stumbled upon because tome, man, it sounds like Kings,
but it's got a real like coolnessto it that you know, maybe
I haven't heard from you guys before. Was that intentional or tell me a
little bit about that. Yeah,that's a kid harpoon trick. I'm playing
(06:10):
just my guitar and it's a hollowbody kind of thing, same guitar I've
always played, And so I justwent in there and recorded it. But
he came in with like a littleearbud and taped it to my guitar.
And I was a little confused byit, but anyways went with it.
And then the trick that he usedis he turned the guitar amp off and
(06:30):
everything, and so all you're hearingas a tiny microphone picking up my actual
just plucking up my guitar. Wow. And so it's a really cool thing,
and we've been rehearsing it forever.We can't make it happen live.
But yeah, well I was gonnasay, because I thought maybe you were,
you know, deadening the frets andyou were sort of kind of pounding
(06:53):
on it that way. How willyou emulate that live? It's just going
to sound like my guitar. You'regonna do my Beth Just yeah, if
you have to have to listen tothe record, I guess kid Harpoon of
you mentioned and those of you watchingare listening right now. He's worked with
Harry Styles and Florence and the Machineand of course now Kings of Leon.
(07:15):
There's another song that Booker and Ilove of all of the songs, Nowhere
to Run. Yeah. Now wasthere a cat video involved in this one
as well? How did this onecome about. Yeah, No, there
was no kiddies involved or hurt.And this one, No Nowhere to Run
is a song I kind of foundit on my phone. There was an
old voice memo and Jared was playingthe baseline and we got the studio and
(07:41):
I was like, what about thisand I played it for him. He
was like, I don't remember thatat all, so he had to relearn
what he was playing. And itwas the first one that I feel like
kid gravitated to and he liked ita lot, and we were all a
little unsure, so we we kindof kept putting it on the back burner,
on the back burner, and thenat the end, once all of
our confidence was built up, werecorded it and we love it. Yeah.
(08:07):
Is that a talk you into itsituation? Then? I think it's
a distract you from it until thetime is right. And then we all
once we knew that we had tomeet and the potatoes of the album,
then it was like, okay,well this one this is going to find
a nice home here. How manyof the twelve new songs can you and
(08:28):
the band play verbatim this second?Or is there a lot of rehearsal coming
up before the huge tour which includesAugust twenty second at the Form and then
the next night you're going down uponDesert at that new arena, Agrassuer Arena.
Yeah. I keep saying a bunchof people to keep telling me about
that Palm Desert gig. They're comingto that one. Yeah. I can
personally play all twelve of them.I don't know that that is the case
(08:52):
with everyone, but we did havea rehearsal today and in the rehearsals were
hitting like three new songs a dayto get them all to a point where,
God forbid we have to play them, we'll be able to pull them
out. Are you generally pretty goodwith remembering what you've done on the first
take and grabbing that or do youwrite it down immediately? You got a
(09:15):
good memory when it comes to thisstuff? Yeah, I mean I have
a weird memory. There are certainthings I can't remember at all, But
musically, if it's something that's meaningful, I'll usually one time I've got it.
And these songs in particular, theymean a lot to me. I
kind of buried myself away and wrotea lot of them, got a lot
(09:37):
of them meat myself before the bandkind of added everything that turned it into
what it is. So for mepersonally, I know all of it kind
of like the back of my hand. Well, listen, we've got this
incredible contest going as well where we'regiving away two round trip tickets to see
you guys play man Hyde Park onJune thirtieth, plus one of our listeners
(10:03):
is going to be a Kings ofLeon crew member for the day, and
so well, yeah, yeah,you could just like yell at them,
treat them horribly, Okay, tellme to get you sugar free red Bull
at seventy degrees, like, whateveryou want to do, please do it.
There's only one person on the crewthat I scream at, and that's
the drummer unless they're sitting in forNathan, then I try to stay.
(10:28):
So you don't yell at Matthew orJared's just just that God, wow,
Jared and Matthew have lost her hearingyears ago, so that it doesn't yelling
doesn't really help. Is it stillas fun? And I don't want to
sound like a corny dude, butit's way more fun now than it ever
has been. We're just we're justso fortunate and so we just appreciate this
(10:54):
opportunity that we have and we respect, you know, this opportunity, and
we worked really hard to make thealbum that we wanted to make, and
now I think our goal is tohopefully bring people together with it and let
our music be a source of healingor something. You know. I know,
(11:16):
it's a crazy world we live in, but everybody listens to music.
So hopefully it's our music that they'llbe listening to and then they'll forget about
their problems for a minute. Bookerand I congratulate you and your bandmate Slash
Friends Slash relative on all the success, like back to going to two thousand
and three or so with that debutalbum. You have had people that have
(11:37):
been backing you and following you forall these years. So thanks for all
the good music and all the goodtimes man, and thanks for jumping on
with Booker and Strike. Good luckwith the album, man, Thank you
very much. Just an honor youguys. Cool Man. We'll see you
with the Form show and possibly PondDesert as well. Nice all right,
can't wait. I'll be there youGood luck, dude, great album,
great stuff, man, great stuff. Ellis. I'm a big, big
(12:01):
fan. They wait to see youagain. See you soon. Yeah,
guys, be good? All right? Can we please have fun? Yes
we did. Goodbye, The AllNew All Afternoon with Booker and Striker broadcast
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