Dave Keuning shut himself inside the closet of his Las Vegas apartment when he first strummed a guitar chord that he thought sounded pretty good.…
Dave Keuning shut himself inside the closet of his Las Vegas apartment when he first strummed a guitar chord that he thought sounded pretty good.
He played the chord on his Epiphone SG, running the guitar through a fuzzbox to give each note a scruffy texture.
He knew he was on to something.
« I just thought I liked the feel of that chord, » he said.
So he did what any aspiring guitarist would’ve done in the early aughts and grabbed his Tascam four-track tape recorder — « I’m terrible with computers,” he said — to cut a demo.
He huddled between his clothes, the best spot in his apartment drown out noise, noodling with the chord. He pieced together parts of a song, layering the demo in guitar ideas.
Keuning emerged from the 5-by-5-foot makeshift studio with the outline of what would become one of his generation’s paramount rock songs.
“I was kinda just messing around on this high chord, trying different shapes of it,” Keuning, 42, said. “And it fell into ‘Mr. Brightside.’”
This fall marks 15 years since an independent label first released « Mr. Brightside, » a one-verse, three-and-a-half minute tale drenched so heavily in agony that the world still sings as loud today as it did the first time Brandon Flowers bellowed « Let. Me. Go. » into a microphone.
Co-written by Keuning, « Mr. Brightside » continues to entrance fans with its story of foreboding told through a timeless high chord.
How did a kid reared in the tulip-and-windmill covered hills of Pella, Iowa, end up in Las Vegas? As lead guitarist in one of this century’s most prominent rock ‘n’ roll outfits?
That started with $40 and a « voracious appetite » for the guitar.
Keuning first put fingers to guitar strings at age 14. He asked for the instrument for Christmas, picking out a “cheapo” model from a Sears catalog — the Amazon of rural America in 1989 — for his parents’ consideration.
But the holidays passed, and he found himself no closer to mastering the day’s best riffs.
« I got everything on the list except the guitar,” he said. “I don’t know why my parents didn’t get me it.”
If his parents were subtly thwarting Keuning’s attempt to infiltrate rock ‘n’ roll — “They just always wanted me to have a back-up plan for a real job,” he said — it didn’t stick. Keuning scored a used six string from a classmate for $40.
He immersed himself in Metallica, Aerosmith and AC/DC, the radio giants of his childhood. Intrigued by each’s respective sound, he practiced radio’s biggest behemoths daily.
And he was fueled by competitive spirit. A school friend, Ross, had been playing longer. Keuning needed to catch up.
« I just couldn’t put it down whenever I got it, » he said. « I was so intrigued by it. »
It was around the time Keuning began punching power chords that Chris Hopkins, a seasoned regional club player, ran an advertisement in the local newspaper looking for aspiring guitarists to teach. He remembered Keuning as one of the first to answer the ad and the two began tearing through material at a ferocious pace.
They studied song composition — like Metallica’s classic 1991 “Black” album — without weighing down lessons with too much music theory.
“He kind of spoiled me as far as guitar students,” Hopkins said. “He had a voracious appetite for knowledge and licks and whatnot. I’d give him an assignment and he’d come back the next week and he had it digested.”
Keuning studied stagecraft by driving 100-mile round trips to Des Moines, where groups like Fugazi, Smashing Pumpkins and Mudhoney ripped sets in the 1990s at memorable downtown nightclub Hairy Mary’s.
He often slipped into a show alone, watching on stage the way the bassist worked in-step with guitarist or how the drummer communicated with each. Keuning studied how musicians fed off one another, a trait he later learned isn’t shared with most music fans.
“(I’d) just slip in for a couple hours, talk to no one, not buy any drinks and go back home, » he said. « I just wanted to see live music.”
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Keuning graduated from Kirkwood Community College before taking a chance at the University of Iowa, where he’d study music.
But his time in Iowa City was short-lived. Keuning neglected classes outside of music and dropped out after a year.
“Even though it was a great school, it was costing me money,” he said. “I wasn’t really taking it seriously.… All I ever wanted to do was play guitar in a band.”
So, he started saving money and set his sights west, on the alluring neon lights of Las Vegas.
Vegas seems an interesting choice for an aspiring musician at the turn of the millennium. Why not the beaten artistic path of New York or Los Angeles?
Money.
“It’s not very cool, but it’s the truth, » he said.
Each coast may be packed with working musicians, but Keuning knew he’d be so weighed down by the four jobs necessary to pay rent that there’d be no time for songwriting. Las Vegas offered opportunity at a more affordable rate.
Plus, it’s close enough to Los Angeles. If opportunity did strike, he could move four hours west with relative ease.
Not to mention, Vegas felt exotic to a 20-something-year-old from Pella.
« It was a lot easier to live and I had more time to work on music, » he said.
Keuning worked a few day jobs and kept writing songs. He put out calls for musicians but none stuck until he placed an ad in the Las Vegas Weekly seeking for players influenced by David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis and Radiohead.
Musically, Keuning had graduated from Motley Crue and Aerosmith to 1990s songwriters like Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan, as well as a love for styth pop à la New Order.
An aspiring singer in 2001 named Brandon Flowers liked Kuening’s influences and answered his ad, forming half of the four-piece that would bring the world “Somebody Told Me,” “When We Were Young,” “Human” and, yes, “Mr. Brightside.”
The first time Kuening met Flowers, the curly-haired Iowan handed a « Brightside » demo to the desert native with a vibrant smile. The two bonded over Keuning’s appreciation for the Cure and Flowers’ taste in the Smiths and Depeche Mode.
« I was so happy to meet someone like that, » he said.
The would-be bandmates shared a distaste for modern radio rock.
« Our common link was we didn’t really like what was happening at the time, and we both liked ’80s music, » Keuning said. “We were on the same page there and started creating things.”
The singer returned a few nights later with lyrics to Keuning’s demo.
One verse, repeated twice, the chorus and an outro — each bleeding with heartache, jealousy and a cry of inescapable infidelity to echo through a generation.
“He was in a little bit of pain at that time,” Keuning said. “That’s what came flowing out of him.”
Drummer Ronnie Vannucci and bassist Mark Stoermer rounded out the Killers. The band began gigging the Vegas circuit, self-releasing a demo featuring “Brightside.”
“A lot of people maybe around Vegas have (that) somewhere, » Keuning said.
The band gained attention from the coasts. Warner Bros. invited the Killers to a showcase, but Kuening said the label passed because the group wasn’t tight enough live.
“I remember them saying they didn’t think Brandon was good looking enough,” Keuning said, with a laugh. “That’s too bad. I know there (were) uglier singers out there.”
The Killers recorded most of “Brightside” prior to the Warner Bros showcase, he said, during a weekend trip to a San Francisco Bay-area studio.
The San Francisco tracks were intended as demos to court record labels, but most of what the band tracked evolved into the song that’s been streamed 500 million times on Spotify.
“We did go back and add… some keyboards, some vocals and toyed with the drums, » Keuning said. « But 90 percent of that song was recorded in those demo sessions.”
Warner wasn’t alone in passing. Another label passed. And another. Until the group struck a deal with now-defunct British independent Lizard King Records.
“Mr. Brightside” was released as a single on Sept. 29,2003, in the United Kingdom. The Killers supported the song on a British tour, playing clubs in small cities like Lincoln and Bath, Keuning said.
