They talk about your fashion. About your influences and your new music. About your supposed Hollywood desires. About your Grammy experience, and how your experience at Coachella last year determined why you won’t play the California festival this weekend. About the small venues you’re touring, including a a sold-out Paramount Theatre gig on Tuesday. And other such gossip.
Ronnie Vannucci, who throws down behind the drum kit for The Killers, is here to dispel a few rumors – and lend credibility to others, starting with the so-called indelible link between the band’s music and its fashion. Just mention the word fashion to Vannucci and prepare yourself for the comedy of his curiosity.
“Where did all that come from?” Vannucci asked from Edmonton, Canada, this week. “It’s weird that people have put such a focus on fashion, and while I guess I understand it, I think it’s just another thing that people like to talk about.
“I guess it’s important because so many bands are up there in jeans and a T-shirt, and believe me, for simplicity sake, we’d much rather be performing in jeans and a T-shirt, but it doesn’t work for our music,” he said. “Still, it’s strange that all the ceremony and red-carpet people put such focus on, ‘Wow, these guys wear nice suits, and look at his hair, oooh.’ ”
As a listener, it’s natural to link The Killers’ music, which is fronted by Flowers’ confident howl and his soaring synths, to Duran Duran – especially this year amid the ’80s band’s return to the spotlight. But as a band, The Killers never set out to make the neo-“Rio.”
“I see where they get that, and I know it’s so popular to say we sound like Duran Duran, but our influences are a lot deeper,” Vannucci said. “We were thinking more along the lines of bands like U2 and bands like The Rolling Stones.”
U2 and The Stones aren’t as obvious influences as Duran Duran or Depeche Mode. Listen to The Killers’ “Hot Fuss,” and the link is downright confusing. Fans on message boards are already worried the band is ditching its trademark ’80s-rooting and using less synth on its new songs.
And the fans aren’t exactly wrong.
“The new songs are still Killers songs,” Vannucci said, “but they’re a little more – it’s tough at this point to say – but there’s a little less keyboard involved, there’s a little more guitar.”
One of Vannucci’s favorite bits of recent gossip has the band forsaking its humble Las Vegas roots in favor of the flashier scene in Los Angeles.
“That’s another rumor, that we’ve gone Hollywood and moved to L.A.,” Vannucci said with a laugh. “But we all still live in Vegas. Maybe some day I could see myself having another place elsewhere, but we’ll see. It’s like putting the horse before the carriage right now.”
But it’s hard to put the horse and the carriage in the right order when you’re an essential part of the indie- rock explosion of 2004-’05. As bad as mainstream radio is, The Killers and Modest Mouse and Franz Ferdinand and The Decemberists have raised the bar. The excitement came to a head, for The Killers at least, when they were nominated for three Grammys.
“That was the biggest surprise for me,” Vannucci said. “I mean, it’s our first record, and it’s not like we won a Grammy, but to be recognized by your peers in the recording industry was huge.”
The band was all over the place in the last year. Its set at the Spin magazine party during South by Southwest 2004 set the tone for everything, and a few months later it played the Coachella Music Festival with blazing authority underneath a relentless sun. It opted out of this year’s fest, though Vannucci downplayed rumors that the band didn’t want to return. “It just wasn’t good for the scheduling of the tour, that’s all.”
When The Killers show at the Paramount sold out as soon as it went on sale, many fans – especially those shut out of the band’s last Denver gig, a sold-out mess at the Bluebird a few months ago – wondered why they chose the Paramount over a bigger venue such as the Fillmore or Magness.
“It was the band’s idea, and our booking agent has great foresight for us not to play bigger rooms and not to oversell the band,” Vannucci said. “Even though we’re ready for the bigger stages … right now the small venues are more about us making more of a connection with our audience.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
The Killers
SYNTH-POP|Paramount Theatre, 8 p.m. Tuesday with Tegan & Sara opening|sold out|any last-minute releases will be available via Ticketmaster, 303-830-8497 or www.ticketmaster.com.
3more
BRIGHT EYES Conor Oberst makes music that touches a nerve. With his band’s sold-out show tonight at the Ogden, which he shares with labelmates The Faint, lets hope he experiments with the beautiful juxtoposition of his two newish records, “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” and “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning.”
MATES OF STATE They may be opening the sold-out show Sunday at the Fillmore for Jimmy Eat World and Taking Back Sunday, but Mates of State is the more interesting group on the bill. The playful electro-pop coming from Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner is happy-music, but it’s also super-smart.
ELTON JOHN The venerable singer-songwriter plays Tuesday at the Pepsi Center, and while he’ll certainly draw from his recent “Peachtree Road,” the hits will be there too.
– Ricardo Baca
