Vannucci found bandmates as ‘crazy’ as he was
Killers’ work ethic remains part of its DNA 20 years later
He liked them both, liked their band. There was just one nagging concern: He wasn’t 100% sure they were sufficiently out of their minds.
For sure, Ronnie Vannucci Jr. qualified as such back then.
He still does, playing as if his drumsticks were dusted in gunpowder. The 46-year-old remains a rock ’n’ roll ghost hunter of sorts, chasing after the spirit of John Bonham, one of his earliest, most profound influences, dating back to when Vannucci was 9 years old and his mother played him “Led Zeppelin IV” for the first time.
Twenty years ago in August, Vannucci joined the Killers, Las Vegas’ biggest band ever, founded in 2002 by singer Brandon Flowers and guitarist Dave Keuning.
It took some convincing. “It’s not like I wasn’t interested,” recalls Vannucci, a University of Las Vegas student at the time. “I was interested — I just wasn’t sure I could pull it off. I was so close to finishing school, and I was really dedicated to school at the time.
“I think I was a little down on being in a band,” he acknowledges. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to trust these guys to be as crazy as I wanted to be about rehearsing every day and writing every day and being very methodical with the way we do things, because I didn’t want to waste any more time.”
And then he got to know Flowers and Keuning.
“They were crazy as I was — maybe even crazier,” Vannucci says, his voice tinged with a mix of incredulity and respect. “We
practiced every day. We’d break for a 20-minute dinner and then go back in and play for three more hours. It was like the army — and we loved it.
“I loved to see shows and concerts and have so many heroes, and I knew that the only way they got to be where they’re at is through all that time it takes to become good,” he continues. “I just wasn’t sure if that was even possible, that anybody in Las Vegas had that kind of unrelenting ambition or drive, because it seemed to be very trendy to be almost fair weather, to not really care about, you know, wanting to play in stadiums — but I wanted to played in stadiums.”
Two decades later, Vannucci spent the summer doing just that, the Killers selling out stadiums, in mere hours in some cases, on its recently completed European tour,
playing in front of gargantuan crowds of 50,000-plus from England to Poland to the Czech Republic.
Hit YouTube and check out fan-filmed footage of one of the band’s London gigs in June: The crowd is so frenzied, bouncing in unison on the venue floor, it’s as if tens of thousands of bodies have been fused into one sweaty mass of seriously overtaxed adrenal glands.
And now, the Killers are back in the States, on the road again. The tour is its first full-fledged U.S. outing in support of the band’s two most recent records, 2020’s “Imploding the Mirage” and last year’s “Pressure Machine.”
What does it take to be a Killer? Start with some well-decorated poster board, a concert ticket, a little luck, maybe.
That, and the chops to handle the dizzy surge of
“For Reasons Unknown” on your instrument of choice.
A recurring signature at the Killers shows in recent years has been recruiting a fan from the crowd to jam with the band during the aforementioned standout from its album “Sam’s Town.”
It’s a consistently emotional thing to behold, someone’s dream coming true in real time, if only for a few raucous minutes.
The way it works: Crowd members bring homemade signs to a show, the more eye-catching the better, in hopes of getting the band’s attention. The Killers then choose someone to join them on stage, usually to play drums, leaving Vannucci to switch to guitar.
“Well, you know, I’m 46 now, and I need a break once in a while from playing the drums,” Vannucci
quips. “I think it’s just sort of a moment of spontaneity. People make these ornate signs.
“People just kind of know that that’s a thing,” he adds. “Sometimes they jump on bass or keyboard, but it’s mostly drums. Any time you get to have a moment in the set where you break that wall, that barrier, down for people, it certainly makes it a night. It’s fun for everybody.”
The band has also been keeping things fresh lately by mixing up its set list, swapping in a variety of new songs as well as airing some rarely played tunes.
A new tool for helping determine which chestnuts to play where?
Metrics.
“What’s really fun is that now there’s data out that lets you know what people are listening to, what people are streaming in what territory or country or sometimes city,” Vannucci says. “We’ll be in, like, Mexico, what are people listening to in Monterrey, Mexico? They really like the song ‘Just Another Girl’ — we never played it. It was just sort of a cutting room floor song that our good friends in Mexico liked, so we put it in the set list there. They go bonkers for it.”
Another vintage album cut that the band has been playing sporadically of late is the propulsive “Midnight Show,” which hasn’t been a regular part of the Killers’ performances since the band was touring its smash 2004 album “Hot Fuss.”
It was among the songs the band performed way back in 2003 when it first hit the United Kingdom for a run of shows that lit the fuse on the Killers’ career, garnering early press acclaim. After all those hours in the practice room, the Killers had learned how to knock ’em dead.
“It felt like nothing was going to stop us after we played, like, a week’s worth of shows in London in these little places,” Vannucci recalls, noting the presence of some influential British magazines at the shows. “NME was out there, and Q magazine was out there. All these people were out there to just kind of look at this band that sort of had one or two songs to see if we could pull it off live. And they’re like, ‘Oh … these guys are doing something.’
“It just felt awesome to be regarded as being worth watching,” he continues, “being one of those bands that you hear about. Now, suddenly, we were one of those bands. I think that was a big propeller for us to keep going. We knew that the work ethic was sort of crazy, but this was like, ‘OK, well, this makes sense. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep doing this.’ That’s kind of remained part of our DNA as a band ever since.”