Brandon Flowers, 45, is the frontman of the Killers. Since forming in Las Vegas in 2001, the band has released seven studio albums. Their 2003 song Mr Brightside is the longest-charting Top 100 single in British chart history, logging more than 500 weeks in the countdown. This month, Flowers releases Thrasher, his country-music-influenced third solo album. The youngest of six children and a practising Mormon, he lives in Park City, Utah, near his childhood home of Nephi, with his wife Tana and sons Ammon, Gunnar and Henry. You’ve said that a love of the music your dad called “country-western” was the secret of your upbringing. A guilty secret? I did feel guilty about it. I felt I had to choose. I was getting New Order and the Smiths from my brother. Then my dad’s playing Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. I went with New Order, and I’m happy with my original choice. But as I’ve gotten older, I gravitate back towards that other stuff. This is also your most personal collection of songs. In Miss America you sing: “You used to call me Miss America before you got hooked on speed / Maybe I’ll go and get me a Mormon boy / One that will treat me like a queen.” Whose story is that? My sister Shelly. She’s 15 years older than me. I was a mistake! I like to say surprise ... She got married young, when she was 16, 17, and she was in an abusive relationship. She [couldn’t] leave for so long. So many beatings. So much stuff. But when my mom and dad moved to Utah when I was 8, it was far enough away to create an escape for her. These are the things that you don’t think about until you’re older. Now I can see it. Paradise talks about your family and their history in Las Vegas. What do you make of the city now? The golden age is gone. There was a sweet spot in the 2000s, when Elton [John] was doing his Red Piano residency. They’re pushing people out. They started charging for parking. I wrote an op-ed about it in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Our culture is: you come and you tip the valet parkers. I was furious about it. My cousin is a valet parker, and he pinned my story up in the staff room. How are you finding fatherhood to three teenage boys? What makes it worse is they have my disposition. I’m not the most social guy. I’m in my own head a lot. So, it’s sometimes tough to read what’s going on with them. But they’re all really good. We haven’t had much rebellion, almost none. Are they musical? Yeah. Ammon is a great piano player, but he loves classical — Rachmaninoff and Bach are his rock stars. With Gunnar, his thing was horror, and that was his gateway to grunge. Henry is a full-on rocker. I need to call Liam [Gallagher] to make sure he hasn’t been around my wife. [Shows me photo on phone] He looks like a Gallagher! He’s fully embraced soccer and Oasis. He learns their songs on guitar and I play along on piano. I’m learning all of Noel’s tricks. So many great songs. How was it performing with the Killers at the Champions League final in Budapest in May? Like a fever dream. The fastest six minutes of my life. Literally 80% of the stadium were Arsenal fans. You can hear them singing along. It was not Paris Saint-Germain fans. We never broke through in France. You don’t see it in the footage, but my back is to the French fans and I’m playing to my people. I ate it up. The Killers broke through first in the UK. How do you feel about that two-decade love affair? Fortunate. People don’t realise how it was. We were turned down by every major label in America. Then [now defunct London-based indie label] Lizard King took a chance on us over here. Everything has spawned from that — everything in my life. And I love it here. Here I am, choosing to be here on holiday — and saying holiday instead of vacation. In an Observer interview 20 years ago, you said to me: “Dylan said it best. You can’t be Jewish and cool. You can’t be Mormon and cool”. How has 25 years in glamorous indie rock’n’roll affected your faith? Well, I have discovered you can be Mormon and cool. But it’s been a real journey. I was so young when we started. I was indoctrinated into this church, I understand that. But at some point, you’ve got to decide if it’s going to be your faith or not. That’s where the rubber meets the road. And I deepened my faith once I really committed to that road. I don’t find it nearly as difficult now to decide what choices I’m going to make. I imagine spending so much time early on in the London of “indie sleaze” was a little challenging … It was. That rock’n’roll thing was still alive and well. We would do gigs and Pete Doherty would show up, and it was like, “what is going to happen tonight?”. That’s a tough thing on a young Mormon boy. I assumed that to be authentic I had to do some things. Anyway, I figured it out now. What does the title Thrasher evoke? When we moved to Utah, I learned that kids in the country are different than a kid from Henderson, Nevada [where Flowers’ family previously lived]. Tougher. I got smacked around a bit, and my dad knew. He grew up fighting and one day he was trying to explain to me how to fight. I’m sitting there thinking, I’m not this guy ... But it wasn’t falling on deaf ears, because I use some of the things that he taught me in everyday life, or when I’m writing a song. And if you see me on stage, I’m constantly shadowboxing. And I do it on the album cover, and I realised: I’m still trying to show my dad that I can do what he does. So a thrasher is a particular kind of fighter? Yeah, who wins. You thrash somebody, you knock them out. So, I’m a thrasher in the songwriting field. • Thrasher releases on Island Records on August 21.
