Why Brandon Flowers thought Bruce Springsteen was “messing” with him
If any artist is carrying on the heartland rock ethos of Bruce Springsteen in the modern day, it would be The Killers. Famous for their electronic indie sound, Brandon Flowers and his band of rockers actually have quite a bit of heartland in them, which they’ve shown off in albums like Sam’s Town, Battle Born, and their most recent LP, Pressure Machine.
As it turns out, Springsteen himself is a fan of the band, so much so that he reached out to Flowers to collaborate on a re-recorded version of the Day & Age track ‘A Dustland Fairytale’ featuring Springsteen on the majority of the song’s vocals. But when Flowers received the text message from Bruce about wanting to collaborate, a recent cell phone switch led him to believe that somebody might have been putting him on.
“After a new record, I want to get a new phone,” Flowers told Consequence of Sound. “And so that’s why I had a new phone, because we had finished Imploding the Mirage. I hadn’t put Bruce’s number on, so that’s why I didn’t know that [it was him texting].”
“It was just such a nice text… it was like, ‘We’ve got to do ‘Dustland’ one day.'” Flowers explained. “He talked about ‘Be Still’, which is sort of not a well-known song. But for real fans, it’s a real favorite. And so all of a sudden he’s talking about ‘Be Still’ and working on that one, and seeing us play with Johnny Marr and Pet Shop Boys.”
Flowers still didn’t know if the man who was texting him was actually The Boss or not. “I think he was watching [our set at] Glastonbury. And then it finishes off with just ‘Bruce,’ and so I really thought maybe it’s someone messing with me, like, “Who is this? Maybe it’s Bruce Hornsby,” because I also had his number on my old phone. There was a lot going on, a lot of emotion.”
Through some Googling of the phone number’s area code in question (Freehold, New Jersey), Flowers was able to confirm that the “Bruce” in question was, in fact, Bruce Springsteen. From there, it was simply a matter of the two parties meeting up to re-record ‘A Dustland Fairytale’, now simply titled ‘Dustland’, and put it out for an unsuspecting public.
Check out the duet version of ‘Dustland’ down below.
