Original subtitles

I just remember this song being a turning point for us.

We were making up stories about murder and nightclubs and girlfriends that look

like a boyfriend, and this all of a sudden felt deeply personal and was just

kind of like, whoa.

As confident as we felt going into it, you still know there's a chance.

The first album was a fluke, and this was the moment when I knew that we'd be

okay.

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.

The song and the album both ended up going platinum.

I'm Rishi Kesh, your way.

This is Song Exploder.

Let me hear those beautiful voices!

Our first record, Hopless.

It was wildly successful.

Go, 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 be playing here tonight.

It was so exciting.

It was the first time any of us had a passport.

And we went everywhere.

We play, I guess, 400 or 500 shows.

It was a grueling tour, but we were all excited because everything was new, and

we were just happy to be able to do this for a living.

We knew that we had an opportunity. You know, we're from working -class

families. We know how rare this thing is.

But we were confident enough to try a new thing.

It was one of the last tours of Hot Fuzz.

We'd been writing songs during sound checks.

There was so much need on our part to get another record going.

There were some chords that were floating around from months before.

A lot of ideas are created off just a chord progression that you try and do

something with, and it evolves from there.

That one was almost accidental. Towards the end of a practice, like towards the

end of the night, Mark was playing around with a bass line.

Dave suggested we go up. He added a note. A three -note riff became a four

riff because of something he suggested.

He was messing around with these three chords.

I was like, oh, go add these two and then go back to it.

It was those first three chords that were just, you know, awakened us.

To have four people be so in tune and be able to tap into the universe for

a second is magic.

And we're really lucky, I think, to have had that happen at all. Yeah. It was

just nice to know that you had something good that you could get behind with the

labor team.

At that time, some people even thought we were a British band. I think when we

were out touring, we really realized that we were from a different place.

And I think we were all anxious to get back to that.

A lot of people think Vegas is so crazy because they watch The Hangover or

something and think that's what Vegas is like.

But our interpretation of Vegas is entirely different, knowing where to get

cheapest Chinese food.

It's just like a local thing.

I think it makes it easier to draw upon experiences.

You're driving down the street that you're familiar with, memories that you

have.

I think that that probably seeped in, you know, all over the record.

But like that guitar line, that sounds like the desert.

Wasn't that originally a keyboard part you played? It was a keyboard part

I just remember the song needed some touchstone or something.

And you thought it was too sweet because I would play it on the keyboard and you

didn't like it.

You put it on guitar. But when we played it on the guitar.

There we go. You know, that sounds like here.

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.

When you're making a record, there's usually a reason why people want to come

you for a shift. And as a producer, you've got to be able to sort of see

they've come from and where they want to go to.

We all come from different... But those two had worked on records that we all

loved.

Picking a producer is tough.

I don't think you really know what they're going to contribute until after

you've done the record. They did some records that we liked, like Violator,

example, a Depeche Mode. Well, it seemed to work out great there.

We both like pop music, and they're very pop.

But the Killers also wanted to be the biggest band in the world and wanted to

try different things out.

We wanted to impress them and, you know, 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 because there's Flood and Lou Reed talking in the

background. Brandon's going worried, scratching his chin. So he just thinks

about these things.

At what point do you start coming up with lyrics?

This is another one of those strange moments where I have a lot come to me

away.

He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman like you

imagined when you were young. That was first day.

He doesn't look a thing like Jesus, but he talks like a gentleman like you

imagined when you were young.

So it made it a lot easier to write around because I had something

there.

It helped, I think, direct me for the rest of the record too.

Your ears are 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, and that's what makes the track brilliant.

No, we can make it if we take it slow.

That's taking easy, easy now. Watch it go.

I knew there was some kind of redemption was going to be a thread.

I think it had to do with things that I was going through.

Excess and debauchery in rock and roll had been sort of

glorified and glamorized for so long.

We sort of got thrust into it.

And 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.

So that's a string sound on your synthesizer, but there are real strings

there as well, right?

Yeah, we combined.

It's a mix, right?

Yeah, we combined them, yeah.

At what point did that idea come in? In Vegas. Yeah, was it two girls from UNLV?

Wasn't it Mark's girlfriend at the time?

No, maybe she became his girlfriend later. I don't remember.

Not from that.

One was my ex -girlfriend.

It kind of kept in the family at the time, and everyone's from Vegas, and not

hiring someone from the L .A. Symphony or something.

We made some money, and we had all the studio time, and it was like, what can

do? It was also the first time we ever got to really record in a real recording

studio.

We wanted to play in a stadium.

I remember at the time, It was not cool to want to have that kind of size.

You're like kicking against the ambition almost. Yeah. One of the great things

we learned from Flood and Molder was about the song developing.

And you hear a new part that comes in on the second verse.

Can we climb this mountain? I don't...

Me and Marv were making that into a microphone and then we ran it through

Putney machine that Vlad brought.

The Putney is a very, very peculiar synthesizer. It's one of the earliest

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 and then go

like this take my original sound out

i never really

know what's going to come out so in order to even mark the fact that brandon

part of this mark singing with him and then stick him through the putney

It just adds a different sort of timbre that makes you go, well, I sort of know

what that is.

So that then you can place it further back. Adds loads more reverb onto it,

it could go right into the distance.

So tell me about the next step then in the process.

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 Branham had this idea that

Basically in halftime.

When you were young.

It's that part where the building is imploding, where the bear is coming at

and you have to be bigger than you are, so your arms are up.

Sometimes when you go to halftime, the part seems bigger, fatter, larger.

Was the song totally done by the time you got into the studio?

We had everything but the bridge, I think. I think everything was there but

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.

When I saw where the vibe was going, I thought this would be cool if we

that world of Springsteen and Depeche Mode.

There's like the descending scale.

It's an obvious little bit of a tip of the hat to Born to Run.

I was hoping that we're doing something new, though, by combining those two

things in a new way than the classic rock Americana.

And that descending line into the bridge is definitely the most proofy thing in

the whole song, really.

They say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet You don't have to drink right

now But you can tip your feet Every

once in a little while

I love coming out of the bridge. That's my favorite part when it's just a little

while. And then I play the slow guitar thing.

It's a strange note to start the solo on.

It's seventh.

And then it starts on the ninth.

I think that's what makes it, you know, unique.

We're into jazz.

It's just not what you would normally do and go for.

One of the things that I also got in the stem is a piece of the song that I

don't think is in the song, this part.

Yeah.

There's another.

Okay, we took acid that night.

This is again where Flood and Molder were crucial. You know, you need people

tell you no.

There we go.

Saved it from loitering in the bargain bin.

Thank heavens I didn't make it on to the final mix.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about it until just now.

Yeah.

How did I get this into you?

Why do you have that?

Take his laptop now.

What about the title of the album, Sam's Town?

How do I explain that to people?

You know, you've got your casinos on the strip, and then they have these...

Outliers. Yeah, these... neighborhood casinos yeah that they call locals

and i just grew up with it it was just like sort of a weird pillar of my life

i can't explain it like we would go there on christmas for breakfast on our

way to go sledding at the mountains where ronnie lives now at mount

and again that 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 40 years. We all have uncles and parents

that worked in them, and it's natural to us.

It's literally the place that me and Brandon actually have the most

to.

And even though it's not the literal Samstown, but it's our Samstown.

Can you explain the meaning of that last line?

That a savior could come in different forms.

And, I mean, we all have those experiences with people in our lives, I

Do you imagine that this song is autobiographical?

Most of the time I feel like that, yeah.

And it's about the man that I wanted to become.

It's just sort of me as a 24 -year -old knowing that he ain't here yet.

But I hope, you know, that I get to where I'm supposed to get.

And how about now? Do you think that you've gotten closer to that?

I feel like I have. My wife thinks I have.

We're getting there.

It's a process.

It was a very mature song at the time.

And it's possibly connected to more now.

Now we're actually becoming that person that it could be about.

It was that moment where I think we grew a little bit taller.

And I felt like we were going into something more serious and more

It kind of united us and solidified us in a way, I think.

Yeah, you're right.

Here's When You Were Young by The Killers in its entirety.

to save you from your old ways. You play forgiveness.

Watch it now. Here he comes. He doesn't love the thing like Jesus, but he talks

like a gentleman like you imagined when you were young.

We take it slow.

That's making it easy. Easy now. Watch it go.

We're burning.

oh boy they

say

the devil's water it ain't so sweet you don't have to drink right

But you can tip your feet every once in a little

while.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.