[Ronnie Vannucci] I just remember this song being a turning point for us.
We were making up stories about murder,
night clubs, and girlfriends that look like a boyfriend,
and this, all of a sudden, felt deeply personal
and was just like, whoa.
[Flowers] As confident as we felt going into it,
you still know there's a chance that the first album was a fluke,
and this was the moment when I knew that we'd be okay. [laughs]
[Hirway] The Killers are a Multi-Platinum, Grammy-winning band from Las Vegas.
They started making their second album, Sam's Town,
after their first album skyrocketed them to fame.
With that extraordinary success, there was extraordinary pressure to do it again.
In 2006, Sam's Town came out with the song "When You Were Young"
as the first single.
[Flowers] ♪ He doesn't look a thing Like Jesus ♪
♪ But more than you'll ever know ♪
[Hirway] The song and the album both ended up going Platinum.
I'm Hrishikesh Hirway.
This is Song Exploder.
[intro theme music playing]
[strumming chord]
[Flowers] Let me hear those beautiful voices.
[audience cheering]
[Flowers] Our first record, Hot Fuss, it was wildly successful.
We wrote these songs, and it's big,
but it was strange because it just felt so natural to us.
Thank you all very much for listening to us and accepting us.
We're very proud to play here tonight.
[audience cheering]
It was so exciting.
It was the first time any of us had a passport.
And we went everywhere.
[Stoermer] We played, I guess, 400, 500 shows.
It was a grueling tour, but we were excited
because everything was new, and we were happy to be able to do this for a living.
[Vannucci] We knew we had an opportunity. We're from working class families.
We know how rare this thing is.
But we were confident enough to try new things.
[Stoermer] It was one of the last tours of Hot Fuss.
We'd been writing songs during sound checks.
[tuning bass guitar]
There was so much need on our part to get another record going.
[playing bass scale]
[Flowers] There were some chords that were floating around from months before.
[Keuning]] A lot of ideas are created off just a chord progression
you try and do something with, and it evolves from there.
That one was almost accidental.
Towards the end of a practice, towards the end of the night.
Mark was playing around with, um, a bassline.
[playing bass riff]
[Stoermer] Dave said to go up. He added a note.
A three-note riff became a four-note riff because of something he suggested.
He was messing around with three chords.
I was like, "Cool! Add these two, and then go back to it."
[playing bass riff]
It was those first three chords that just, you know, awakened us.
[playing "When You Were Young"]
[Flowers] To have four people be so in tune…
and be able to tap into the universe for a second,
it's magic, you know, and we're really lucky, I think,
you know, to have had that happen at all.
Yeah.
It's nice to know you had something good you could get behind.
But the labor came.
[Vannucci] At that time, some people even thought we were British.
When we were out touring,
we realized that we are from a different place,
and I think we were all anxious to get back to that.
[Keuning] A lot of people think Vegas is so crazy,
because they watched The Hangover and think that's what Vegas is like.
But our interpretation of Vegas is entirely different.
Knowing where the cheapest Chinese food is.
It's just like a local thing.
[Flowers] It makes it easier to draw upon experiences.
You're driving down streets you're familiar with,
memories that you have.
I think that that probably seeped in,
you know, all over the record.
That guitar line sounds like the desert.
[playing riff]
-Wasn't that originally a keyboard part? -It was a keyboard part first.
I just remember the song needed some touchstone or something.
And you thought it was too sweet
because I would play it on a keyboard.
You didn't like it.
-On guitar, I said, "Yes." -When we played it on guitar…
-"There we go." -…you know, that sounds like here.
[playing riff]
The desert is mysterious.
It made us realize how much a part of this place we are.
And we wanted to hone in on that on the record.
[Flood] When you make a record, there's usually a reason
why people want to come to you for a shift.
And as a producer, you've got to be able to sort of see
where they've come from and where they want to go to.
We all come from different places,
but those two had worked on records that we all loved.
[Keuning] Picking a producer is tough.
You don't really know what they'll contribute
until after you've done the record.
They did records we liked, like Violator, for example, Depeche Mode.
Like, well, it seemed to work out great there, so…
We both like pop music, and they're very pop.
They also wanted to be the biggest band in the world
and try different things out.
We wanted to impress them
and show them that we were the real thing,
you know, and I think it helped us.
Brandon is brilliant.
You throw... He's there like this.
There's a picture outside of Flood and Lou Reed and Brandon,
and it sums Brandon up.
Flood and Reed are talking. In the back, Brandon's going…
Worried, scratching his chin, so he just thinks about these things.
[Hirway] At what point do you start coming up with lyrics?
This is another strange moment where I have a lot come to me right away.
"Doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but talks like a gentleman
like you imagine when you were young," the first day.
That made it a lot easier to write around because I had something...
foundational there.
It helped, I think,
direct me for the rest of the record too.
Your ears pricked by the word "Jesus,"
and then you get the delivery of the guitar riff.
It sort of fulfills a lot of different emotions.
-It's not an obvious. -No. It's what makes the track brilliant.
♪ Can we climb this mountain? I don't know ♪
♪ Higher now than ever before ♪
♪ I know we can make it If we take it slow ♪
♪ Let's take it easy Easy now, watch it go ♪
I knew there was... You know, some kind of redemption
was going to be a thread.
I think it had to do with what I was going through.
Excess and debauchery... [chuckles]
...in rock and roll,
you know, had been sort of glorified and glamorized for so long.
We sort of got thrust into it. I realized right away that that wasn't for me.
I think I was 24 when we wrote this.
I was, you know, just trying to figure it out.
[playing synth riff]
[Hirway] That's a string sound on a synth, but there are also real strings, right?
-We combined. -A mix, right?
We combined them.
When did that idea come in?
In Vegas. Was it two girls from UNLV?
Wasn't it Mark's girlfriend at the time?
Maybe she became his girlfriend later. I don't remember. Not from this.
One was my ex-girlfriend.
It kind of kept it in the family at the time, and everyone's from Vegas,
and not hiring, like, someone from the LA Symphony or something.
We made some money, and we had all this studio time,
and it was like what can we do?
It's also the first time we ever got to record in a real recording studio.
We wanted to play in stadiums.
I remember, at the time, it was not cool
to want to have that kind of size.
-Kicking against ambition, almost. -Yeah.
[Flowers] We learned from Flood and Moulder about song developing,
and then you hear a new part that comes in on the second verse.
♪ Can we climb this mountain? I don't know ♪
♪ Higher now than ever before ♪
[distorted tone oscillating]
Me and Mark were making that into a microphone,
and then we ran it through this Putney machine that Flood brought.
[laughs]
The Putney is a very, very peculiar synthesizer.
It's one of the earliest synths.
I love it because there's no keyboard on it at all.
So you have to use your ears.
There is, however, what a lot of people think
is a Battleships game,
but it's actually the place where you map everything, inputs and outputs.
And if I just wanted to add reverb,
I can go like this…
take my original sound out.
[distorted percussion playing]
I never really know what'll come out.
So in order to even mask the fact that Brandon is part of this,
Mark's singing with him,
and then stick him through the Putney…
[distorted vocalizing]
It just adds a different sort of timbre
that makes you go,
"I sort of know what that is,"
so that then you can place it further back.
Adds loads more reverb onto it,
and it can go right into the distance.
[synth sound playing]
[Hirway] Tell me about the next step.
Up till then, we always toyed with the idea of having this song
that was just one part, like almost like more punk rock,
but Brandon had this idea that was basically in halftime.
["When You Were Young" playing]
♪ When you were young ♪
[Vannucci] It's that part where the building is imploding,
where the bear is coming at you and you must appear bigger,
so your arms are up.
So, sometimes when you go to halftime, the part seems bigger, fatter, larger.
[Hirway] Was this song totally done when you got in the studio?
We had everything but the bridge.
I think everything was there but the bridge.
In this instance, the bridge was sort of used
to evoke more of the sincere or sensitive side...
to the song without being too abrasive...
or ham-fisted.
[Stoermer] When I saw where it was going,
I thought this would be cool if we combine that world of Springsteen
and Depeche Mode.
There's like the descending scale.
[descending scale riff playing]
[Flowers] An obvious tip of the hat to "Born to Run."
[playing descending scale riff]
I was hoping that we're doing something new, though…
by combining those two things,
the new wave and the classic rock Americana,
and that descending line into the bridge
is definitely the most Bruce-y thing in the whole song, really.
[playing descending scale riff]
[Flowers] ♪ They say the devil's water It ain't so sweet ♪
♪ You don't have to drink right now ♪
♪ But you can dip your feet ♪
♪ Every once in a little while ♪
[Keuning] I love coming out of the bridge.
That's my favorite part, when it says, "just a little while,"
and then I play this slow guitar thing.
[playing guitar riff]
[Flowers] It's a strange note to start the solo on.
It's a seventh.
And then it starts on a ninth.
I think that's what makes it, you know, unique.
-We're into jazz. -[chuckles]
It's just not what you would normally do and go for.
[Hirway] One of the things that I also got in the stems
is a piece I don't think is in the song.
This part.
[vocalizing playing on recording]
Yeah. This is another--
-Okay, we took acid that night. -[laughs]
Again, Flood and Moulder were crucial here.
You need people to tell you no.
-[both laughing] -There we go.
Saved it from
-loitering in the bargain bins. -Saved it from obscurity.
[men vocalizing on recording]
[Flowers] ♪ I said he doesn't look a thing Like Jesus ♪
Thank heavens it didn't make it onto the final mix.
I'd forgotten about it till just now.
-Yeah. Why do you have that? -How'd that get sent to you?
-[laughs] -We've gotta take his laptop now.
[Hirway] What about the title of the album, Sam's Town?
[chuckles] How do I explain that to people?
You got your casinos on the strip, and then they have these--
[Vannucci] Outliers. Neighborhood casinos.
[Flowers] That they call locals casinos.
And I just grew up with it.
It was just, like, sort of a weird pillar of my life.
[both laugh]
I can't explain it.
Like, we would go there on Christmas
for breakfast on our way to go sledding at this mountain
where Ronnie lives now... [laughs]
...at Mount Charleston.
And again, having left Las Vegas
for the first time for so long as a band,
it made us think about home more.
-And it became symbolic. -Yeah.
His mom was a cocktail waitress for four years.
We all have uncles and parents that worked in them.
It's natural to us.
[Stoermer] It's the place me and Brandon have the most connection to.
And even though it's not the literal Sam's Town, it's our Sam's Town.
[Flowers on recording] ♪ He doesn't look a thing like Jesus ♪
♪ But more than you'll ever know ♪
[Hirway] What's the meaning of that line?
That a savior could come in different forms.
And...
I mean,
we all have those experiences with people in our lives, I think.
Do you imagine that this song is autobiographical?
Most of the time I feel like that.
It's about the man that I wanted to become.
This is sort of me as a 24-year-old, knowing that…
he ain't here yet... [laughs]
...but I hope, you know, that I get to where I'm supposed to get.
[Hirway] How about now? Do you think that you've gotten closer to that?
I feel like I have. My wife thinks I have. [laughs]
We're getting there. It's a process.
[audience cheering]
[playing "When You Were Young"]
[Stoermer] It was a very mature song at the time.
It's possible I connect with it more now,
now we're actually becoming that person that it could be about.
[Vannucci] It was that moment when I think we grew a little taller.
I felt like we were going to something more serious and more meaningful.
It kind of united us and solidified us in a way, I think.
That's exactly right.
[song ends]
[fireworks bursting]
[Hirway] And now here's "When You Were Young" by The Killers in its entirety.
[playing "When You Were Young"]
♪ You sit there in your heartache ♪
♪ Waiting on some beautiful boy to ♪
♪ To save you from your old ways ♪
♪ You play forgiveness ♪
♪ Watch it now, here he comes ♪
♪ He doesn't look a thing like Jesus ♪
♪ But he talks like a gentleman ♪
♪ Like you imagined ♪
♪ When you were young ♪
♪ Can we climb this mountain? I don't know ♪
♪ Higher now than ever before ♪
♪ I know we can make it If we take it slow ♪
♪ Let's take it easy ♪
♪ Easy now, watch it go ♪
♪ We're burning down the highway skyline ♪
♪ On the back of a hurricane That started turning ♪
♪ When you were young ♪
♪ And sometimes you close your eyes ♪
♪ And see the place Where you used to live ♪
♪ When you were young ♪
♪ They say the devil's water It ain't so sweet ♪
♪ You don't have to drink right now ♪
♪ But you can dip your feet ♪
♪ Every once in a little while ♪
[yells]
♪ You sit there in your heartache ♪
♪ Waiting on some beautiful boy to ♪
♪ To save you from your old ways ♪
♪ You play forgiveness ♪
♪ Watch it now, here he comes ♪
♪ He doesn't look a thing like Jesus ♪
♪ But he talks like a gentleman ♪
♪ Like you imagined ♪
♪ When you were young ♪
♪ Talks like a gentleman Like you imagined when ♪
♪ When you were young ♪
♪ I said he doesn't Look a thing like Jesus ♪
♪ He doesn't look a thing like Jesus ♪
♪ But more than you'll ever know ♪
[song ends]
["When You Were Young" instrumental segment playing]