Kings Of Leon's Caleb Followill Talks Teenage Anorexia Struggle

Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill has opened up about his teenage struggles with anorexia in the new issue of Q. According to Followill, he was constantly trying to find ways to either trim down his frame or avoid eating. "I always thought I wasn't good enough," Followill said, adding that he'd do "anything to keep my hands and mouth busy without eating." Followill found an unusual cure for his struggles, however: Marijuana and the inevitable munchies. Now, rather than trimming down, Followill instead tries to bulk up. "I want to look like I can defend myself. I want a guy to look at me in a bar and know that he can't talk shit to me or run me over, even though he probably could," Followill said.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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