Imagine Dragons turn the tables

NZ Herald·

8 Sep, 2015 08:00 AM4 mins to read

Auckland visitors Imagine Dragons, (from left) Ben McKee, Daniel Wayne Sermon, Dan Reynolds and Daniel Platzma.

One of the world’s biggest acts has thrown a door open to fans, as frontman Dan Reynolds tells Chris Schulz.

Imagine Dragons have won a Grammy award, earned 385 million views for just one song on YouTube, and been told by Jay Z that they're among his favourite bands. But Dan Reynolds isn't in the mood to talk about any of that.

"I answer questions all day about myself," the Imagine Dragons singer says, sounding a little weary after stepping off a plane in Melbourne.

Feeling a little bored camping out in his hotel room, Reynolds instead wants to do a bit of a switcheroo on this Herald journalist. He wants to play at being a reporter - and he says he wants to hear stories from other people.

Reynolds has set up an email - ourpolaroidstories@gmail.com - for fans to send their stories, good and bad. Those that send his favourites will meet Reynolds on camera, kind of like a worldwide video version of the Humans of New York page.

The opportunity is available to Kiwi fans of Imagine Dragons when the band is in Auckland this week for tonight's Vector Arena show - a return visit after a much smaller Powerstation show in 2013.

"I put this [email address] online five hours ago and I've got 1000 emails," he says. "One's about the life of a transgender, another's about a man who got his foot cut off and became a rock climber, then got his leg cut off. One's a simple story about a mother who works four jobs to support her kids.

"I want to meet that person, I want to sit down with them and hear that story."

You'd think being frontman for one of the world's most popular touring acts might prevent Reynolds from taking on a project like this.

But Reynolds says all those flights means he's "literally sitting here doing nothing" for much of the day.

The project is a timekiller and a way for the group to reconnect with their core fans after an explosion in popularity over the past two years, thanks to hits like Radioactive and Demons.

The Vegas act went from "playing casino gigs competing against slot machines" to become an arena-dominating pop act. Their quickfire success was crowned with a masterful mash-up with Kendrick Lamar at the 2014 Grammys, when they took home the best rock performance award for Radioactive.

They haven't slowed down: they released their second album Smoke + Mirrors earlier this year, and they've been touring in support of it ever since.

Reynolds admits the four-piece - with Daniel Wayne Sermon, Daniel Platzman and Ben McKee - have come a long way.

"We were totally broke. We only had two cars between the four of us and we'd load all of our own gear.

"It was like that for four years but now I'm glad we went through that. If we'd exploded overnight we wouldn't appreciate it."

Travelling in nicer tour buses and being able to pay their bills "is a wonderful thing", says Reynolds. But being popular and famous was never their mission.

"I can honestly say we never had a goal of being rich and famous and having the spotlight. That's never been the goal. The goal is to create music we like and being able to support ourselves. If that means living really poor that's fine, none of us have big cars or expensive homes. We just want to be able to make a living doing what we love. We want to do it until we're old and grey."

And they'll be bringing a little bit of Vegas with them for their Auckland show, Reynolds says.

"We have 15 drums on stage. It has a tribal feel to it. We really try to make an honest attempt to bring it full force every night and put as much passion into it as the night we made the song.

"We want to put it all out there every night on stage."