Brandon Flowers on Vegas: "The Golden Age Is Gone"
Brandon Flowers, frontman of The Killers, has told The Observer that the Las Vegas he grew up in has changed for the worse — "the golden age is gone," he said, describing a city he feels is increasingly pushing out the people who live and work there.
Flowers was born in Nevada and lived in Henderson until age eight, before his family moved to Utah. He returned to Vegas at 16 to live with relatives, and The Killers formed there in 2001. He points to the 2000s as the city's sweet spot, a period when Elton John was running his Red Piano residency. As compiled by Far Out Magazine, Flowers criticized the direction local hotels have taken with fees charged to both tourists and residents: "They're pushing people out."
The valet fee fight, and a 2016 op-ed
Flowers traces the turning point to valet parking charges. He wrote an op-ed on the subject for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, arguing that Vegas culture used to mean tipping the valet when you arrived — a norm upended when hotels began widely charging for both self and valet parking starting in 2016.
He said he was furious at the time, partly because his own cousin worked as a valet and posted the article on the staff break-room wall. In the 2016 piece, Flowers argued hotels introduced parking fees without raising valet workers' pay, even though those workers are the people who keep Vegas running and shouldn't bear the brunt of the change. In the decade since, Vegas has continued building itself into a global entertainment capital, with The Sphere and Allegiant Stadium both opening — a shift the piece frames as favoring tourism and big shows over residents' daily life.
Where the tour — and the new album — go next
Flowers hasn't severed ties with the city. His solo tour closes with two shows at Encore Theater on October 5 and 6. The Killers themselves held a 15-show residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in 2024.
After the US leg wraps, Flowers heads to the UK and Ireland in October in support of his new album Thrasher, with stops announced in the following cities (specific dates not yet released by promoters):
- Bournemouth
- London
- Bristol
- Manchester
- York
- Glasgow
- Birmingham
- Dublin
Thrasher is due out August 21, marking Flowers' first solo album in 11 years. In a separate recent interview, he admitted he's been thinking about how much longer he wants to keep doing this, noting he gets sick after every tour.
What hasn't been announced
- Exact dates for the UK/Ireland tour stops
- Ticket prices or on-sale times for the Encore Theater shows or the UK/Ireland dates
- Ticketing platform links