The Killers Reveal ‘Weird Feeling’ About Chris Cornell’s Death

14
211

The Killers discussed the deaths of Chris Cornell and other rock legends in a new Hot Press interview.

Cornell’s death hit Killers drummer Ronnie Vanucci Jr. hard. “I didn’t think I’d react the way I did but I got… it sucked when Chris Cornell died, weirdly. It was such a weird feeling that overcame me, because it was that sort of era in time where I was listening to a lot of their music maybe. Yeah, that’s terrible, too. It sucks.”

Frontman Brandon Flowers nods. “I think if you haven’t been thinking about them, it all comes rushing in and it’s magnified their influence on your life, even if it’s just for a brief moment. And I had a similar thing with Leonard Cohen. I’m not a massive fan. I mean, I’m a fan but I don’t have every record – but I started singing ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ just to myself in a car on the day that I heard. And I just was overwhelmed with gratitude. There’s a line in that song that just blows me away, where he’s thanking a guy ‘for the trouble you took from her eyes’. And it’s like, ‘Whoooa!!!’ This line is so crazy to think that you would thank someone that took your woman for a little while because he made her happy again and you didn’t.”

Flowers later said about the band’s heroes, ““We’ve been really lucky in that we’ve met almost all of them,” he enthuses. “It’s incredible. Like, [David] Bowie came and saw us. Bowie saw us early on in New York and that was a real highlight for us, obviously. You know, even when we were writing Hot Fuss, even, not just his ‘70s stuff, Heathen had come out and had a huge impact on us. The bassline for ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ is directly ripped from a song on Heathen. We were really listening to that stuff and it was incredible to have him come to a gig. And [Tony] Visconti came with him to the gig, talking about T-Rex, and we were like, ‘This is crazy!’”