“The End” by Kings of Leon, Wednesday, July 7, 2021

The follow-up to their multi-platinum album Only by the Night, Come Around Sundown, may not be remembered like their previous album. However, the album scored a higher ranking on the Billboard Hot 100 due to their growth in fans from the last album. Last month, I chronicled the rise and fall of Kings of Leon and their reemergence to a very different rock scene. In that context, Come Around Sundown was the album cycle that lead singer Caleb Followill burned out and succumbed to the "Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle," throwing up on stage and cancelling the tour. Lyrically, Come Around Sundown continues to explore the ghosts of the band's religious past with a dose of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll rebellion, all sung with moody bluesy guitars and a southern drawl.

HE SWEAR'S HE'S GONNA GIVE IT UP, IT'S NEVER GONNA BE ENOUGH. "Son, if you graduate from high school, you can do whatever you want. You can leave the farm, you can go to south. But don't come back here when you fail." In May of 1979, a conflict happened between Jerod and his father. Coming to the end of high school, Jerod only had one dream: getting the hell out of school and getting the hell out of his father's house. They had been going through a pious shift for the past few years, and with a new baby on the way, everything seemed to be about the farm, the baby, and the church. There was a growing tension in the household. Jerod, somewhere in the middle of eight children was on the forefront of "the strict wave." His mom and dad didn't flip out when Dana got pregnant. They had taken Caleb to an Alice Cooper concert. But now that they were good Baptists again, Jerod never heard the end of it when they found his stash of weed. It had been nothing but school and chores and church. But high school was coming to an end and some of Jared's friends were heading down to Florida to get jobs working around Disney World. "Son, if you stay on the farm after you graduate, I'll take care of you. Someone needs to help take care of the camp." 

I SEE YOU IN THE EVENING SITTING ON YOUR THRONE. With that Jerod lost it. Leon had started building the camp as a facility he hoped to rent out to people from the city. In that part of upstate New York, wealthy New York City residents took vacation or conducted business retreats in the Upstate. When Jerod was in middle and high school, he and his older and younger brothers spent all their spare time that they weren't doing chores on the farm, at school, or at church, erecting buildings for their father's dream. Then Leon announced that he would be donating the building to the church. The family mostly bit their tongues, not knowing what this donation meant. Dana had even told her father that it was a good idea. But when an evangelist from Southern Pennsylvania came church to church asking the congregation, "If Jesus gave it all for you, what have you given him lately?" Leon knew what this donation would mean. It would be a youth camp where kids could get saved and learn more about their faith. One night while smoking pot with Jerod, Dana admitted that their father had gone too far. The one advantage of donating land in New York state is not having to pay the taxes, and perhaps Pastor Wolfe wasn't quite aware of the fact that he now had a substantial tax bill. Pastor Wolfe would conduct his summer camps yet never paid the taxes nor the upkeep of the camp, and because the camp was still very close to his house, Leon simply continued to pay the taxes and the upkeep. "No, Dad," Jarod responded to his father, "If I could take back every Saturday that I spent building that goddamn money pit, you'd be better off. You've trusted your life's savings to a charlatan. Whatever penitence you're paying for, I'll have no part of it." So after graduation, Jerod went to Florida which worked out well until it didn't and Jerod and his new wife crawled back to his father. But that's a story for another day.

Read “The End” by Kings of Leon on Genius.