Brandon Flowers: 'I'm not crazy'

BRANDON Flowers has revealed it KILLS him when people mock him for being a Mormon.

The Killers’ frontman, who was raised in the Church by his parents, is often SHUNNED for his religious beliefs despite being a global superstar.

He told Rated: “I feel more and more alone as a person of faith.

“It’s not just rock stars who aren’t cool if they’re religious—it’s like it’s a taboo for any young person to be religious now.

“If you love someone, and you know that love is real—that’s how I feel about God. I’ve had feelings I can’t describe that are unexplainable to me, unless there is a God.

“But if I say that, people look at me like I’m crazy.”

Chatting to us at London’s swanky Brown’s hotel, Brandon admits he does believe in aliens.

The song Spaceman, on the band’s sensational new album Day & Age, tells of an alien trying to communicate with Earth.

Brandon, who lives near Area 51— the famous US military base in Nevada where spaceships have reportedly crash-landed and aliens been experimented on—explains: “I don’t believe in the bug-eyed aliens.

“I think they’d be more similar to us humans but, yeah, I believe in alien life. Our drummer Ronnie is obsessed by aliens. He thinks they’re here already—that they’re in another dimension, drifting in and out of ours.

“Living near Area 51, maybe it’s only a matter of time before one of us has an encounter. Probably Ronnie!”

But Brandon says he remains grounded—by his resposibilities as a dad and husband.

He and wife Tana, a fashion-store manager, named their 16-month-old son Ammon, after a Mormon prophet.

Brandon was the youngest of six kids and hopes to have a big family himself.He told us: “Yeah, I want a lot of kids.

“There’s a great quote by Abraham Lincoln— ‘Whatever you are, be a good one.’ I have that hanging in our kitchen and I desperately try to live by that quote, whether as a singer, parent or husband. It’s what I want Tana and Ammon to do too.”

Brandon believes his success is largely down to his mum and dad, who raised him in Las Vegas to be a hard worker. Another song on the new album, A Dustland Fairytale, describes how his parents met at a trailer park when they were 15, in 1956.

Brandon says his first meeting with Tana was less evocative—it was seven years ago at the secondhand clothes store in Las Vegas where Tana worked.

The Killers—who include guitarist Dave Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vanucci—were unsigned at the time. Brandon said: “It wasn’t the coolest meeting and I’ve never thought about writing a song about it. We were in the store looking for clothes for our first show, trying to find the killer Killers look. And there was Tana . . . ”

Famously shy off-stage, Brandon admits he transforms himself for The Killers’ mega concerts, such as headlining Glastonbury Festival last year.

“There’s a sense of inadequacy, of not having a lot to say,” he sighs. “If you’re like that, which I am, when you present your songs to the world you’ve got to make people realise you’re worth taking notice of.

“If I don’t transform the person who I am off-stage, people wouldn’t pay attention.” JOHN EARLS

Day & Age is out on November 24. The single, Human, is out now.