The Vaccines love "evangelical element" of supporting Kings Of Leon

3 July 2024, 13:46

The Vaccines discuss their time supporting Kings Of Leon. Picture: Dawn Fletcher-Park/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, Press

By Jenny Mensah

Justin Young told Radio X's Sunta Templeton how he loves winning audiences over on KOL's Can We Please Have Fun tour.

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The Vaccines have had "so much fun" as Kings Of Leon's special guests and love the "evangelical element" of their support sets.

The If You Wanna rockers have joined Caleb Followill and on their Can We Please Have Fun tour dates, which included the band's recent date at BST Hyde Park on Sunday (30th June).

Asked if they were looking forward to playing Hyde Park, frontman Justin Young told Radio X's Sunta Templeton at Glastonbury Festival: "I’m from London and it’s quite special to play in the biggest park in your home city, right in the centre of town to however many tens of thousands of people and get to hang out with your friends and watch the headliner and stuff. I always really look forward to those.”

"It’s been great, actually," he added of supporting the Nashville indie giants on their tour in general. "It’s been really fun. I love supporting people, because unlike your own show - a bit like a festival I suppose - you’re not preaching to the converted as much.

"There’s like an evangelical element where you're having to win people over and I think because of their cross-over hits they have this quite mainstream crowd, many of whom don’t know who we are and stuff, so it’s a challenge every night to go out and win people over. I love that."

He added: "In some ways I like it almost more than playing to your own people. It’s maybe not more, but it's just a completely different experience.”

The Vaccines perform If You Wanna

Young also talked about the magic of Glastonbury and what makes UK festivals so different to US ones.

"The festivals in the UK are part of our fabric," mused the frontman. "Whereas I think they’ve had festivals in the States for just as long, I think their popularity or maybe their identity has grown in a different way."

“Glastonbury probably is a bit of an outlier,” the Headphones Baby singer went on. “But I think that this is a sort of debauched utopia, whereas I think American festivals are a bit more sanitised.”

On his best ever Glasto memory, he revealed: "Most of my favourite memories are off stage. I mean it’s such a big event even for artists as music lovers that getting a ticket through performing still just feels like a huge win.

Obviously playing the Pyramid Stage as the sun went down in 2023 was a pretty surreal moment and I remember that year we went on stage with Vampire Weekend and Mumford and Sons and First Aid Kit and closed out the entire festival, so to be able to see what a headliner sees, that was a really special moment, but I think more than anything it’s still a place where half your phonebook comes if they’re lucky to get a ticket and just catching up with old friends and going into the depths of Block9..."