Making time with the Dragons

Just when you were worried that rock was dying, a band like Imagine Dragons shows up and saves the day. The indie rock quartet from Las Vegas rocked it loud and clear with their viral hit, “It’s Time”, which earned millions of hits on YouTube and a nomination for MTV’s Best Rock Video Award last year. With 3 EPs to their credit the band recently released their studio debut, “Night Visions”, to critical acclaim. Among their admirers is Billboard magazine, who called them one of “2012’s Brightest New Stars”.

Earlier this month, Dan Reynolds, Wayne Sermon and Dan Platzman gave an interview to the Asian media. 

 

What can we expect from the band in 2013? 

Sermon: This year will be spent almost entirely touring, both in the US and Europe. Hopefully, we’ll get to go to other places too. If all goes well, we’ll get to see the world. 

 

What was the inspiration behind the album? 

Reynolds: “Night Visions” draws a lot of inspiration from different nightmares, dreams and aspirations that I’ve had. A lot of the lyrics came to me in the middle of the night. Also, Wayne is a clinical insomniac and the instrumentation he would send to me to write took place after he’d been awake for four days straight. Being from Las Vegas, which is a city that’s always awake at night, it seems appropriate for “Night Visions” to be the [album] title. 

 

What was your emotional state when you wrote “It’s Time”? 

Reynolds: “It's Time” started late one night in my kitchen. I was by myself and it was a bit of a low point in my life. I was going through a transitional space; I’d dropped out of college and wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life. I was just sitting in my kitchen, and started stomping my feet and clapping my hands. I had this melody in my mind. Then I wrote this poem and began to sing it. It became “It's Time”, which is a song about staying true to your roots, finding out who you are, sticking to that, and not trying to be anything other than what you are. I never intended it to be listened to by anybody or for it to be on radio. To see where it has gone today is pretty mind-boggling. 

 

Your tracks been featured on film trailers and even “Glee”.  Was there a defining moment that made you feel like you’ve made it?

Reyonolds: It’s really great as an artiste to see your music put into visuals. When I hear music I always see some kind of visual in my mind, so to be able to see that – especially since I grew up playing video games like FIFA and Assassins Creed and watching all these television shows and movies – is pretty incredible.  

Sermon: It hit me when I went to see a movie with a friend of mine the other day. We were watching the preview when back-to-back trailers had our music as the background music. Hearing that in the theatre, I kind of got stuck in my chair, hoping that people might...

Platzman: [Interrupts] But then he stood up and was like, “That’s my song!” [Laughs]

 

How has life changed? 

Platzman: We’ve been a band for four years, and we’ve pretty much lived on the bus the whole time, so I guess the real change is that there are now aeroplanes thrown in every now and then, 

Sermon: We eat a lot better than we used to. It used to be ramen noodles and tomato paste. You throw them together and you make a meal. But now we might eat bean and cheese burritos just to get by. We still eat those things of course, because they’re delicious, but now 

there are other things thrown in for variety.