Imagine Dragons: ‘If there’s a way to bring Las Vegas more on the map, we’ll do it’

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Feb. 8, 2015 | 10:57 a.m.

Months before they were to unleash the rock ’n’ roll from a temporary, cylindrical, Target-stamped enclave on Fremont Street, members of Imagine Dragons took to a tour bus and talked about their new album and love for Las Vegas.

That conversation was for the current cover story in Vegas Magazine, of which I am familiar, as I wrote the piece. For the interview, I spent upward of an hour with the band as it wrapped a photo shoot at the old Town Lodge Motel, not far from where the temporary Target center is set up for the band’s cutaway appearance on tonight’s 57th Grammy Awards telecast.

The show airs live across the country from Nokia Theater in Los Angeles but is tape delayed on the West Coast at 8 p.m. on CBS.

The band recorded a commercial for Target, the show sponsor, on Friday. Their new album, with the Las Vegas-shaded title “Smoke + Mirrors” (hinting toward the city’s long history of illusionists is my own take on that title), is out Feb. 17, and the CD version is being sold exclusively at Target.

The band had a lot to say in that cover piece, often speaking in four voices with a single, shared thought. A few of the innumerable highlights:

On how the scope of Las Vegas plays into their music.

“We love big songs that are larger than life,” said frontman and vocalist Dan Reynolds. “We’re from the city that’s larger than life, and we want to be that. Those things just come naturally. That’s what Imagine Dragons is, and it just so happens that it was also able to be commercially successful.”

On the band’s early gigs at such haunts as O’Sheas Lounge, Hennessey’s Tavern, Beauty Bar, The Pub at Monte Carlo, South Point Showroom and the now-closed Ovation at Green Valley Ranch.

“We’ve played a lot of empty shows,” Reynolds said. “We’ve played to nobody.” Added bassist Ben McKee: “You have to learn how to interact from the stage with an audience when you’re playing gigs in front of fresh crowds. We would play gigs at O’Sheas where every 45 minutes, you’d take a break and the room would clear out and in would come an entirely new group of people. Here we are, we’d have to make six first impressions every single night.”

On the band’s unending, unbending need to remain authentic.

“At the end of the day, we want to be creating music that is real, the best music that we know how, the music that we love and we embrace with a real message. That is always No. 1 for us,” Reynolds said. “The second we create a song because we’re trying to be something we aren’t, then I think we’ll all be ashamed of each other.”

On how the album’s first single, “I Bet My Life,” was drawn from Reynolds’ own struggles within his family.

“You know, I’ve always kind of had strained relations with my parents just because I was kind of left-of-center compared to what my family comes from, which is a very conservative family of doctors and lawyers,” he said. “I told my mom I wanted to be a musician when I was little, you know. It was scary for her, and she was — she didn’t forbid me, but she didn’t quite … you know, she didn’t …. how can I put it?”

“She didn’t fully embrace it?” drummer Daniel Platzman added. Then McKee finished the thought, “There were a lot of people not embracing the band. There was a time when we were the only ones who seemed to be embracing it.”

On that moment when it became evident the band actually had become rock stars, at last year’s Grammys when Lionel Richie and Kris Kristofferson asked to pose for photographs.

“It’s surreal for these people to ask for a photo with you,” McKee said. “There’s no other way to put it.”

On the band’s unique history among rock superstars as a former hotel-casino lounge act.

“This is a very unique way to become successful as a band,” guitarist Wayne Sermon said. “I don’t know of any band who has done exactly what we’ve done as far as the path we’ve taken. Every band has its own path, but as far as playing lounges in casinos, I don’t know if that’s been done before.”

On what has inspired the compositions on the albums “Night Visions” and “Smoke + Mirrors.”

“We’re all about creating vision boards and putting up pictures,” Reynolds said. “We’d be traveling the world, and we would be inspired by the architecture. There were a lot of things coming together, but there was one definite theme that we started to see through the music, and it was this illusion of being famous compared to who we really are.”

On the band’s continued promotion of Las Vegas.

“If there’s anything we can do to bring Las Vegas more on the map, in different ways than how people see it, we will do it,” Reynolds said. “Las Vegas has a reputation for being this very dangerous and crazy place, but there is so much more to it than that. … We take our representation of Las Vegas very seriously.”

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