Here’s some news that rocks.
Long before he helped Imagine Dragons win a Grammy Award, an American Music Award and a Teen Choice Award, lead singer Dan Reynolds earned the Eagle Scout Award.
Yes, the vocalist for the band that MTV in 2013 called “the year’s biggest breakout band” got his start in Scouting. Reynolds, now 26, earned the BSA’s top rank in 2004 as a member of a Scout unit chartered to the LDS church in Nevada.
His life since has been equally impressive, with his band’s platinum-selling debut album, Night Visions, racking up 2 million copies sold in the U.S. alone.
The band’s best-known song is “Radioactive,” which Rolling Stone magazine called “the biggest rock hit of the year.”
But the Eagle Scout frontman’s life hasn’t always involved tricked-out tour buses and sold-out arenas.
At age 18, he began a two-year Mormon mission trip to Nebraska. It wasn’t easy, he told the San Francisco Examiner.
“It was such a growing experience for me, and it humbled me and made me realize that the world’s a lot bigger than where you’re raised,” he says. “There are people dealing with so many more problems than you, and it makes all your problems seem really small. So you just forget all about yourself.”
Reynolds’ missionary garb was regularly pelted with Slurpees from passing cars in Nebraska.
“But when I got home, I saw the world in a different way — it was more important for me to do something positive than to be cool.”
A life lesson he certainly learned in Scouting before carrying it with him into life.
These days, Reynolds and Imagine Dragons are touring the world; they’re doing a European festival circuit this summer that takes them from Switzerland to the U.K.
But even still, Reynolds’ selflessness continues today. The band co-created and regularly contributes to the Tyler Robinson Foundation, which helps young people battling cancer. And you’ll often find them playing at benefit shows to raise money for worthy causes.
If success has changed this Eagle Scout, it’s only for the better.
Images courtesy of Interscope Records. Top: Reid Rolls, Secondary: Alexandra Sermon. Thanks to Boston Minuteman Council Scout Executive Chuck Eaton for the tip!
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