According to Josh, the title Palace for the People comes from a real palace in England designed for use by the public. “It’s such a Greta concept,” he muses. “When we play shows, it’s incredibly inclusive and you see everybody from everywhere, and all ages. It’s a real-life palace for the people.” (Tickets for their globe-trotting Into the Beginning tour, launching next year, go on sale October 15 and will be offered exclusively at face value.)
Here, Josh Kiszka explains why, after a three-year break, Greta Van Fleet is back and more plugged in than ever.
Vogue: You’ve managed to stand the test of time for the better part of a decade. What do you attribute that to?
Josh Kiszka: We’ve hurdled over so many obstacles growing up inside of this group. Even just out of high school, I remember Sam and Danny missed their school prom because we had to be playing some show. So we never really had the chance or circumstance to grow up in some kind of organized, traditional, or conventional sort of environment because of the early success in our career. Only recently have I thought back and realized that that was really absurd to be inside of. So if we were to fall or collapse or divide, it would’ve happened earlier. There’s a brotherhood there. Without the four of us and that sort of support system, we wouldn’t be making the music we’re making and we certainly wouldn’t still be here now.
How do you grapple with being one of the few rock bands to break out in the modern era? Have you felt an added pressure as a result?
I think there’s a pressure there, to an extent, because of the responsibility that we have to this hallowed genre. When you’re steeped in it, you’re thinking: Oh, boy, we better be really on and be our greatest. But it seems that we are kind of a minority and I think that’s why we decided to make music. We’re providing something that wasn’t there when we were growing up. Nobody was making rock ’n’ roll music. But it’s a beautiful, elastic genre that encompasses so many different sorts of influences, and it’s like a melting pot. It’s almost an analogy for the human fucking experience. I don’t think anyone’s really doing what we’re doing or has done what we’ve done. I mean that objectively, without any form of pretension or subjectivity.