The closed Las Vegas pub that inspired The Killers’ most popular song

Posted on: July 6, 2024, 08:17.

Last updated on: July 6, 2024, 08:19.

When the Crown & Anchor suddenly closed on July 2 without warning or explanation, Las Vegas lost more than just a beloved British pub that had been in business for nearly 30 years.

A piece of rock’n’roll history was lost.

The best-selling British single of all time that never reached the top of the charts – the song Rolling Stone ranked 378th on the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list – owes its existence to a scene that Brandon Flowers, singer of the Las Vegas rock band The Killers, experienced at the Crown & Anchor when he was 19 or 20 years old.

It was his girlfriend who cheated on him.

“I just can’t look, it’s killing me!” Flowers sings “Mr. Brightside,” the first song The Killers completed together.

Although The Killers were children of Sin City, they were huge Anglophiles, obsessed with British synthpop bands New Order and The Smiths.

This obsession led to Flowers often having a late-night beer at the Crown & Anchor, which was two miles from Flowers’ job as a bellboy at the Gold Coast Casino.

Lead guitarist Dave Keuning composed the music for “Mr. Brightside” before he met Flowers. When they began jamming together, Flowers was emotionally inspired by watching his girlfriend share a cigarette with a stranger at the Crown & Anchor. He was living at the time in a room he rented from his sister for $200 a month.

It was just a kiss
Now I fall asleep and she calls a taxi
While he smokes and she takes a drag
Now they’re going to bed and I feel sick.

“I was sleeping and I knew something was wrong,” Flowers explained the text to Q Magazine in 2009. “I have these instincts. I was at the Crown and Anchor and my girlfriend was there with another guy.”

Flowers should thank this friend from the bottom of his heart for cheating on him.

In 2004, “Mr. Brightside” became the quartet’s debut single. Although it didn’t make much of an impression at first, it peaked at number 10 on both sides of the pond when it was re-released following the success of the group’s second single, “Somebody Told Me.”

Although 11 Killers Songs the Billboard “Mr. Brightside” has made it onto the Hot 100 charts in the 20 years since its creation and hasn’t gone out of style today. In the UK, the song is still regularly sung at football games and is the unofficial fight song of the Michigan Wolverines, who usually play it to get their fans fired up towards the end of the third quarter.

Jealousy that turns saints into the sea.
Swimming through sick lullabies and choking on your alibis.
But that is only the price I pay, fate calls me
Open my eager eyes, for I am Mr. Brightside.

“All the emotions in the song are real,” Flowers told the British Far Magazine in 2023. “When I wrote the lyrics, my wounds were still fresh. I’m ‘Mr. Brightside,’ but I think that’s why the song endures – because it’s real.”