B0R3D
5.
matthew followill.
4.
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chad micheal murray.
3.
cillian murphy.
2.
jared followill.
1.
WHO'DA THUNK IT. my baby boy caleb. hahah.
i'm such a loser.
i love this article. read it. what's not to love?
“I want a roller-skating girlfriend!” announces Kings of Leon singer Caleb Followill, working on his second glass of white wine in a Nashville bad and grill. “We’re tired of staring at each other. We need women.”
It’s 5:30 P.M. and Blender is sitting at a table stacked high with ravaged plates. Composed of brothers Caleb, Nathan, and Jared and self-effacing cousin Matthew, the hipster Partridge family have been eating like pigs. Then again, the stomach fortifying is well-needed. Armed with $848 of Blender’s cash, the Followill boys have decided to stock up on top-shelf liquor, tailgate in a parking lot with 30-odd of their very odd friends and then throw a roller-skating party. Or, as bassist Jared puts it, “We’re gonna get drunk and watch people fall!”
“We didn’t have much time to roller-skate as kids,” drummer Nathan says. Sons of a travelling Pentecostal preacher, the boys were hustled from town to town. “There was one year we settled down and went to one school,” Nathan adds. For the Kings, tonight is a way to revisit that wonder year. “I dated the richest girl in town, and her parents owned a roller-skating rink,” Caleb recalls.
After two months touring Europe, the band is glad to be back home. Chart-topping celebrities in the U.K., they’re relieved to be able to walk down the road without an escort. “It’s hard not to get depressed on tour - you’re either working, or you’re working on your buzz,” Caleb explains. Jared agrees: “You snap really easily.” This sense of frustration pervades their second album, Aha Shake Heartbreak, a set of blues-rock and Southern boogie executed with cosmopolitan cool. “It’s a really personal album,” says Caleb. “The press talks about how I went to bed with a supermodel? Well I wrote a song about how I couldn’t get it up with her.”
Spells of impotence aside, the Kings don’t mind that their concerts often play like Fashion Week after parties - Kate Moss, Liv Tyler, and Frankie Rayder are among their fans. “It’s nice to walk back to your room with a good looking girl,” drummer Nathan notes. “Or an ugly girl. Or if you’re doing well, both.”
Nashville bars run more on Alan Jackson tribute acts than Vogue cover stars, though, and the Kings are clearly in withdrawal from their seven-week diet of catwalk beauties. Which leads to the second reason behind the roller-skating idea. “I’m horny as hell,” Caleb confesses. “We do have the world’s largest porn store in Nashville,” Jared offers. “There’s 50 peeping rooms, and they’ve got everything: grandmas, midgets on bicycles…”
The first stop of the night is a local liquor emporium. Little did Blender know, however, that we’re travelling with a bunch of oenophiles. “I’d love a 2001 Chablis Premier Cru,” Nathan proclaims. “On tour, we have wine-offs,” Caleb says. “Everyone brings a different bottle, we drink them all and whoever brought the best buys the next one. We’ve spent about $5700 in one night.”
Sadly, since half of tonight’s entertainment budget will go to renting out the rink, Premier Cru isn’t in the cards. “This’ll do!” Jared yells, hoisting a jumbo-sized silo of Grey Goose roughly the circumference of his string-bean torso. “Now let’s get some Captain Morgan for the girls.”
Thirty minutes and $407 later, we leave the booze store with enough hooch to resurrect Jim Morrison, John Bonham, and Keith Moon, then kill them all over again. Matthew surveys the three packed cardboard boxes. “We should get some beer,” he decides.
At 7 P.M., we pull in to the parking lot of the Skate Center, barren save for a few cars belonging to the staff. The Kings have spent the past few days inviting friends but, at start time, none have arrived. “This looks great,” Jared deadpans. “We’ve got enough alcohol for a small wedding,” Matthew observes. “We’re trying to perfect a drinking problem,” Nathan shrugs, half-empty bottle of chardonnay in his hand. “It takes practice.”
Surely, Blender asks, their God-fearing father would frown on this sort of debauchery? “If our dad was here tonight, he’d be the one roller-skating in his underwear,” Nathan says. Later on, we learn that the senior Followill was defrocked a few years ago for “infractions” and has since enjoyed several DUI arrests.
An hour later, our tailgate party is holding steady at an underwhelming 12. “We should’ve paid bums to show up,” Jared observes. “Twenty dollars extra to fight.”
Thankfully, his girlfriend soon arrives. She’s the first in a small caravan of beat-up compacts that unloads a dozen girls, doubling our attendance and balancing the gender ratio. Suddenly the parking lot looks like something out of Dazed and Confused: Skinny girls and skinnier boys model vintage Eagles tees and toddler-sized Members Only jackets, downing PBR and White Russians hastily mixed in Dixie cups.
A light drizzle signals the start of the roller-skating party. The rink, an anonymous brick building situated off a highway, opens into a bright panorama of wax and neon. First on the floor, Matthew lands on his ass within .003 seconds. Brushing himself off, he mumbles sheepishly, “I’m not used to speed skates.”
Caleb shows him up, doing a fantastic robot dance in time to Usher’s “Yeah!” The DJ is a stout, excitable young man who calls himself Swade. He works a party-starting mix that includes ACDC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and Destiny Child’s “Lose My Breath.” Winning the kids over, Swade urges the kids to sneak drinks in, despite a firm interdiction from the manager. Indeed, the rink’s eight ounce sodas don’t quite cut it, so the band and posse start pouring Jameson 12 into Styrofoam cups. Galvanized by the trick, Jared takes a deep swig and beams, “I wanna see the sun when I walk out of this bitch!”
At one point, Blender counts 27 skaters on the rink, with a handful of partygoers scattered around the air-hockey table and the pizza counter. There’s even a heart-warming moment during “couples skate.” As Jessica Simpson’s “With You” chirps from the P.A. system, several boys pair off and hold hands, circling slowly. Despite the pre-game booze orgy, everyone seems remarkably composed. “Watch out,” Nathan warns Blender. “That girl in the yellow looks like she was born to puke in somebody’s lap.”
Duly warned, we check back in with Caleb, who is trying to rally a slender blonde into a game of spin the bottle outside. She’s not going for it. “I’m dating J.T.!” she protests. “Who’s J.T.?” we ask. “Exactly,” mutters Caleb, spinning on his heels. He’s clearly unaccustomed to such a display of resistance to his charms. Indefatigable, he heads back inside and adopts a different strategy, keeping an eye out for tumbles on the rink: “You get a girl to fall down, the hard part’s over.” So that’s how you get a supermodel into bed.