Kings Of Leon apologise for Reading Festival 2009 performance

Kings Of Leon's Caleb Followill has apologised for his band's much-criticised headline performance at Reading Festival in 2009.

The singer/guitarist told BBC 6Music that the band were to blame for not performing as they should have – despite admitting to "taking it out" on the crowd at the time.

The band slammed the Reading crowd on Twitter following the show, while many fans hit out at the four-piece online.

"After we finished the tour [in 2009], after we went home, after about three weeks I came to terms with it and I was proud of what we'd done," he said.

He added: "I wanted to do some interviews and just apologise for my attitude. We took it out on a lot of people, me particularly, I took it out on audiences. I forget which festival it was - was it Reading? - where we had a big backlash. I took it out on the crowd, and at the end of the day it was probably our fault. Because of the success I expected everyone to [cheer] for everything we did."

Followill said that having realised it was him who was at fault at the time, he now looks back on the period as his "Kurt Cobain moment".

He said: "That was my Kurt Cobain moment when I was hating the success and I was scared that people were thinking that we did this on purpose, that we made this record [2008's 'Only by The Night'] so that it could be big."