Live in Vegas: Takeaways from new Imagine Dragons concert film

It was a short one, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s first interview with the Imagine Dragons — just four emailed questions sent to the band as part of a weekly Q&A series with local acts.

Run date: Nov. 26, 2009, Thanksgiving day, but four months after the group got their start.

R-J: “What do Imagine Dragons sound like?”

The future superstars: “Our songs are synth-y, loud and dance-inducing. But we try not to take ourselves too seriously and hope that our music is, above all else, a lot of fun.”

Does Las Vegas manifest itself in your music much?

“It’s impossible to live in a city with as much personality as Las Vegas and not be influenced by it….The vibe here is energetic and electric. That energy is probably what manifests most in our music. We try to funnel it into every aspect of our work.”

The interview ended with a link to their Myspace page. (Remember those?)

Thirteen years later, Imagine Dragons would headline the biggest concert ever by a Vegas band, selling out Allegiant Stadium on Sept. 10, 2022.

That loud, sweaty, pyro-enhanced night is captured in a new concert documentary, “Imagine Dragons Live in Las Vegas,” which premieres Friday on Hulu.

It’s a candid, behind-the-scenes look at the Imagine Dragons’ packed-to-the-rafters homecoming.

Even if you’ve followed the band from day one, you’ll likely learn a thing or two about the group and their rise to multi-platinum-selling success from the film.

Here are a few takeaways from the two-hour documentary:

They definitely paid their dues

The footage is occasionally a little grainy, but the message it conveys is much more clear: Imagine Dragons hustled hard back in the day en route to filling stadiums, as evidenced by some live video clips of their early years featured in the documentary.

They there are performing in a small room at Caesars Palace, on morning talk shows, at Bite of Las Vegas, now long-haired guitarist Wayne Sermon rocking a crew cut and a blue sport coat in the middle of the afternoon during one of their break-out shows.

One time, they even opened up for a mime at a local mall.

“Looking back at a lot of those early shows in Las Vegas, we should have been embarrassed by some of them,” Sermon acknowledges in the documentary. “There’s times when, admittedly, I was like, ‘What am I doing?’”

Imagine Dragons’ first regular gig: playing five nights a week at O’Shea’s — “cheapest beer on the Strip,” singer Dan Reynolds notes from the stage during the concert portion of the film — performing covers and trying to drum up interest for their shows on the weekend, when they played their own material.

Back then, they were just trying to feed themselves, sans day jobs.

“Our goal was to be a self-sustained indie band that could make enough money to pay rent and have food,” Reynolds explains at the beginning of the film. “No idea that it would be what it is. You can’t ever predict that.”

Dan Reynolds may be the most unabashedly emotional frontman in all of music

He doesn’t try to hide his emotions — that would be like asking a bird not to fly or the cat not to destroy the furniture — and so instead he’s an open book, pages occasionally damp with tears.

At multiple points in the film, we see Reynolds nearly overcome by emotion, both while performing and being interviewed.

Sometimes, those tears are born of elation — like when Reynolds reflects on his hometown, listing all the schools he attended here early in the show — at others, they’re conjured by loss: one of the concert’s most poignant moments is when he dedicates the song “Demons” to his late sister-in-law Alisha Reynolds, who died from cancer.

He speaks openly from the stage about his ongoing time in therapy, urging others who struggle with depression and anxiety to hang on, and seek help.

“You are not alone,” Reynolds tells the crowd. “Your life is always worth living. Stay with us. I have lost too many people who think that their life doesn’t matter.”

It’s taken a minute for him to get to the point where he can share his feelings like this on stage: as he explains in the film, it’s only recently that he’s become truly comfortable with what Imagine Dragons represent, what they’re trying to impart to their fans.

“This last year is the first time I just really felt I knew who we are — and that feels really great,” he says.

To underscore as much, at one point during the show, while the band is playing a short acoustic set in the middle of the stadium, Reynolds gets so caught up in the excitement of the moment that he bolts from the stage, runs a lap around the venue floor, dodging fans, hurtling stanchions, no security detail able to keep up with him.

“When you’re feeling that complete freedom,” he notes afterward, “it’s like, why not go for a run?”

Imagine Dragons are Las Vegas through-and-through

The only-in-Vegas moment comes late in the show via an aerialist in a flowing red dress spinning herself to rafters amid a phalanx of dancers and a fellow in a silver trenchcoat gripping a smoke-spewing teapot.

During a seismic rendition of “Sharks,” Imagine Dragons are joined on stage by a crew of Cirque Du Soleil performers

Afterward, Reynolds shares an anecdote about seeing Cirque perform when he was a teenager, taking a date there after his first high school dance.

“I was a janitor at a law firm here in Las Vegas,” he recalled. “I saved up all my money, and we went to see ‘Mystere.’ Long story short, I never thought in my entire life that I’d be on stage with Cirque Du Soleil.”

Makes sense, though: Imagine Dragons and Cirque are bonded by the showmanship inherent in the city both have become synonymous with.

“The energy, the larger-than-life mentality that we bring to every performance is Las Vegas personified,” bassist Ben McKee says in the film.

Sermon elaborates.

“I don’t think our band would have been anything like what it is if we had been in any other city than Las Vegas,” he contends.

Born and raised here, Reynolds carries himself as if indivisible from the place he seems destined to forever call home.

“I don’t ever want to leave this town,” Reynolds sings on “It’s Time,” the first single from the band’s debut album “Night Visions,” released nearly 10 years to the day of the concert in question.

Despite touring the world ever since, he never really has.

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @jbracelin76 on Instagram