No-one would deny that when it comes to 21st century indie, the Killers are pivotal figures. It all began with their blinding 2004 debut Hot Fuss - a record packed top-to-toe with instant classics.
There was the pulse-quickening, technicolor exhilaration of Somebody Told Me, and that eternal dance floor-filler Mr. Brightside - now one of the most omnipresent songs (surely?) in music history.
Nestled among these exuberant rockets sat the record's more thoughtful centrepiece. A song that still generated just as much power to galvanise a crowd as its more lithe siblings.
All These Things That I’ve Done was knocked into shape by a band that were already eyeing-up a life in the spotlight.
Inflamed with a passionate, sermon-like spirit, it was the very sound of the young - then garage-based - band reaching for the towering heights summited by their core influences.
While the track’s impressive heft might have led it to be overshadowed by the more energetic offerings in the band's songbook, it was its captivating (and wrongly assumed to be meaningless) bridge section that would lift the track into an iconic position in popular culture.
The Song: The Killers - All These Things That I’ve Done
The Magic Moment: The irresistable bridge section beginning at 02:31, with Flowers’ repeated ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ mantra, backed by a gospel choir.
Formed in the suburbs of Las Vegas in 2001 - and named from the fictional band that appears in New Order’s video for the song Crystal - the Killers' original line-up consisted of synth-pop obsessive (and then-hotel bellboy) Brandon Flowers and ambidextrous lead guitarist Dave Keuning.
Though the pair were prolific from the get-go, the duo soon expanded their number to four via the addition of bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr.
Indebted to a wealth of British influences, the four young men drew on the jubilant spirit of Britpop (Flowers cites seeing Oasis in 2001 as a life-changing experience), the bubbly synth-pop energy of the aforementioned New Order and early Depeche Mode, as well as the wrought emotional undercurrents of the Smiths and the Cure.
Apt then, that it was a British A&R who first noticed the band’s potential while others on the Vegas scene passed.
Sniffing chart-savaging potential in the likes of Mr. Brightside - which astonishingly was among the first things Flowers and Keuning penned - along with the rest of The Killers’ growing stable of songs, Alex Gilbert hurriedly recommended them to British independent label Lizard King Records.
They were snapped-up in a heartbeat.
Their debut album, Hot Fuss, was helmed by Jeff Saltzman, and would demonstrate a musical breadth beyond its charge-leading salvo of hook-laden singles.
The sludgy Andy, You’re a Star was a semi-ironic paean to a high school jock for which Flowers had something of a crush, while the 80’s-evoking opener Jenny Was a Friend of Mine coursed with a lyric of Robert Smith-esque darkness, suggesting a gloomier side to this otherwise bouncy outfit.
Hot Fuss would be the first of several Killers albums to instantly top the charts in the UK. Their US homeland soon caught up - grappling to find out what all the ‘fuss’ was about…
But, save the extraordinary Mr. Brightside, the album’s most towering moment was its fifth track - All These Things That I’ve Done.
Taking its cues from the epic-scale majesty of U2’s most stirring tracks, the organ-soaked powerhouse rose in intensity from a delicate, piano-note intro, to its throbbing, repeated central riff which wheeled through the song. All the while Flowers’ vocal became increasingly impassioned.
“I was heavily into U2 at the time,” Flowers told Spin. “The way that they incorporated gospel to their music. That was something that had a huge effect on me, and you really hear it in this song. Everything from the chord progression to the actual gospel choir we recorded with. There’s something to guitar music and gospel. You can make something that feels unique and honourable.”
As the song concluded its driving second chorus, it unexpectedly ejects the bulk of its arrangement as it enters the bridge - save the gnawing chug of Keuning’s guitar…
“I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” confessionally repeats Flowers.
He’s soon accompanied by gospel choir (The Sweet Inspirations). The arrangement grows, with guitar, drums and backing vocals rising to meet the seeming gravity of these words - which are soon delivered with a pastor-like fervour.
Some critics (and British comedian Bill Bailey) were confounded by the baffling expression. But the phrase was charged with meaning for Flowers.
The first angle on which to interpret the phrase is the story of a late night conversation with former MTV presenter and Columbia Records vice president of A&R Matt Pinfield in a Las Vegas bar several months prior to recording.
“When I first met the Killers, I was trying to sign them to Columbia records,” Pinfield told SiriusXM’s Volume. “I had been called by the US Army to go and mentor returning soldiers from Iraq that either had PTSD or were wounded but who were musicians in Colorado.”
Pinfield spent three days with the recovering soldiers, then flew directly to Las Vegas in an attempt to sign the Killers - then in the midst of writing their debut record.
Matt was invited along to watch the band in drummer Ronnie Vanucci’s parents’ garage and was bowled-over by the platter of obvious chart-ready winners the four had rustled up. It was clear something special was brewing.
Pinfield enthusiastically took them out to dinner.
“After dinner I said ‘Hey, does anybody want to give me a ride back to my hotel?’ Brandon Flowers who was still a bellboy in Vegas at the time said ‘I’ll drive you back’”
Cut to Pinfield’s hotel several hours later, where the pair were propping up the bar - trading stories and experiences over several rounds of drinks.
“We’re sitting there, it’s a Tuesday night. We just started talking about life - I told him about mentoring the soldiers, I was just about to go through a divorce. I was going through a bit of a rough time.”
Flowers was captivated by Pinfield’s story and, after finishing his last drink, went home - his head swimming with ideas.
He quickly penned the first draft of All These Things That I’ve Done that night, with the empathetic subtext of Pinfield’s story undulating in his head.
While Pinfield cites his mentoring story as the core inspiration for the line “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier” (which he states was confirmed by the band’s manager on the phone the very next day) Flowers has given some more broader responses when asked about the line in later years.
In a 2009 Rolling Stone interview, Brandon recalled that, “I can specifically remember being in Ronnie Vannucci's garage when I wrote it that. I don't know why I wrote it, but I know I'd been listening to a lot of U2's Joshua Tree and All That You Can't Leave Behind. Some people act like that line is nonsense, and I just don't understand that. If you listen to the song, it makes perfect sense. Our fans get it.”
But last year, an older Flowers had a more coherent thematic interpretation of his own youthful words. “I was barely 21 when we wrote it,” Flowers told The Story Behind the Song podcast. “We had already written [the album’s other singles]. But, there was something else I wanted. I was already looking for something a little bit more than entertainment.”
Flowers continued his reflective read on the twenty year-old song, and recalled a more personal meaning, “I’m a religious person, and here I am at this crossroads where I’m in this rock ’n’ roll band and we’re basically about to shoot to the stratosphere. I had a bit of trepidation about that and I think you can hear that searching in All These Things That I’ve Done.
“You can hear that questioning boy in the song, and that’s a vulnerability I don’t think that you hear a lot in rock ’n’ roll.”
Flowers also cited David Bowie as a particularly big influence on this track's arrangement, with the repetitive bassline of 2002’s Slow Burn as an element that the band consciously pilfered. “I just took the bassline straight from Slow Burn,” Flowers admitted.
It’s a line, then, that encapsulates all these inspirations - that conversation with Pinfield and his experiences with the mentoring program are intertwined with the technical ambition to reach a U2-scale stature (particularly their song I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For - and their notion of songs as ‘prayers’) as well as - and perhaps most centrally - Flowers’ own tussle with his faith and its conflict with his desire for rock stardom.
“It’s a prayer - and it goes back to bands that introduced me to that form of writing. I’m speaking to God in the chorus. I want to know I’m going to be okay,” said Flowers.
It’s rare for a band to pop off an outright masterpiece on their first album, yet the still remarkably young Killers, managed to serve up at least two on Hot Fuss.
Imbued with its organ, its gospel choir and these spiritually-charged words, All These Things That I’ve Done resonated with millions around the globe when released as a single in August 2004.
With Flowers’ interpretation in mind, the line ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ evokes a universal theme of hesitation in the face of an inevitable decision.
If not for his band's success, Brandon’s Mormon background would likely have imposed a very different way of life for him.
Still remaining true to his faith, whilst fulfilling his inescapable desire to pursue his ambitions, is the core conflict that lay behind this line.
“[The line] means that I can be a worthy person and not check every box that I’m supposed to check,” Flowers told The Story Behind the Song. “If I’m going to make a hundred thousand people sing it every night with me - just let us know that it’s ok”.
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