The Black Keys’ singer-Âguitarist, Dan Auerbach, surveys his surroundings — a five-star hotel in one of the more salubrious parts of London — and seems satisfied with the trappings of success.
“We stayed at the Columbia Hotel a bunch,” he says, referring to the Âonce legendary hotel where all rock bands would stay when visiting London, from which Oasis and the Fall were banned for bad behaviour, the latter for flooding the hotel.
The ÂColumbia was high-class compared to the Âovernight stays they had been used to in the United States — everything from the back of their car to “fucking foul motels full of insects and meth heads”.
“Once,” he sighs, “we stayed at a motor lodge in Kansas and the police broke in and arrested the guy next door.” Auerbach — who forms half of the Akron, Ohio, duo with drummer Patrick Carney — rubs his weary-looking eyes and explains that they are not quite used to the more lavish treatment they are getting now. “We had business-class seats on the plane and I kept thinking someone was going to throw us out.” He need not worry: Black Keys’ hotel Âtrajectory reflects their career.
Picking up the pace
In July 2002 the duo played their first-ever gig at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland in front of eight people. But in February, their two nights at London’s cavernous Alexandra Palace will result in them playing to a total of 18?000. What changed things was their sixth album, 2010’s Brothers, which hit number three on the US charts, camped in top fives around the world, picked up three Grammys and shifted 850?000 copies in the US alone.
The oddest aspect of the Keys’ ascent is that it has taken place virtually under the radar, with little of the media exposure that usually accompanies a major group. They have become a global pop phenomenon by stealth. “It’s a weird thing to happen 10 years into your career,” says Carney.
“It’s been so gradual that you don’t notice it. One day you look out and the audience consists of 65?000 people. It’s like looking in the mirror and one day you realise you’ve gone grey.”
It is hard to imagine such huge success happening to a more unlikely band. The Black Keys started off recording for small labels such as Alive and Fat Possum and made their first two albums in Carney’s basement. Like the White Stripes, peers of sorts whom they have now outlasted, the Black Keys are a raw, primal Âguitar-based duo in a period when guitar bands are unfashionable.
Perhaps it helps that they do not sound like a guitar band — more a thrillingly primal collision between raucous, soulful garage rock and swinging hip-hop grooves, delivered in catchy three-minute packages.
“I’m definitely a guitar player, but it’s the last thing I listen to in a song after the singer and the drums,” says Auerbach, a hip-hop and blues fan prone to the occasional funk falsetto, whose mantra is “the groove is king”.
Unique sound
Carney, who is an obsessive fan of the Feelies, grew up listening to the Stooges and Nirvana and says he cannot relate to much present music, seems as baffled by the phenomenon as anybody, eventually suggesting that, amid so much processed pop, people have latched on to the Black Keys because they sound “kinda old”.
Unassuming chaps in their early 30s — who prefer to do interviews separately because, Auerbach explains, “we have spent years sat within inches of each other … for hours!” — the unlikely stars do not have a commercially marketable image. But for Auerbach their Âsuccess has more to do with luck, timing, hard work and years of playing steadily bigger shows.
As he puts it: “We’ve put in more hours and driven to further-away places than anyone else we know.”
The pair are polar opposites who grew up a block apart. The wry, taciturn singer-guitarist was a sports-obsessed kid who smoked dope and listened to the radio shock jock Howard Stern. Carney, chattier and open, was the gangly indie geek.
“He’s got more confidence now,” Auerbach says.
“He had those big Buddy Holly glasses and shaved his head. He and his friends were pranksters, sorta jerks. I was a year above, so we didn’t really hang out.”
Switching focus
Carney compares their Âclose-but-spiky relationship to a Venn Âdiagram: “Very different Âpeople, but there’s a very important part of us that’s shared. When we started, he didn’t know anything. He didn’t know the Stooges, anything that wasn’t extremely fucked-up blues or hip-hop. But we’ve switched roles. Back then I was into new music and trying to be cool. Now I just Âlisten to old shit: the Stooges, ÂTelevision, the Beatles.”
Carney got into music first. Aged 12, he had begged his father for a guitar but, despite having lessons, he admits he was one of the worst Âguitarists in the neighbourhood. At 15, when he got a job and started a band, he found himself pushed towards the drum kit in the way small boys who are not good at football are stuck in goal. To this day, Carney has never had a drum lesson or bought a drum magazine unless he was in it, upon which he is embarrassed to find himself in the company of “proper drummers”. “But that’s what’s great about Pat,” says Auerbach. “He doesn’t know how to do a normal rock beat. There’s more technically able kids in music shops but they don’t sound as original.”
By the time he was 18 Auerbach was losing interest in soccer and becoming equally obsessed with music. The pair finally teamed up after realising they were both making cassette recordings: “We made these demos, sent them away and got a record deal.” That was the easy bit: after being paid $10 for that first gig, they would often drive hundreds of miles to play to nobody. Auerbach shrugs. “We thought it was awesome that we’d been paid $10.”
Years of struggle started to pay off when 2008’s Danger ÂMouse-produced Attack & Release briefly hit the US top 20. Carney admits that, along the way, their relationship has “had its ups and downs” but insists: “We’re not like the Gallaghers. We’ve never had a fist fight, or even a screaming match.”
Ironically, their breakthrough came after a period when they had actually stopped speaking. It was 2009 and Carney felt betrayed to Âdiscover Auerbach was touring a solo album, Keep It Hid, which he says was made without his knowledge. “I told him about it, but he likes to think I didn’t,” Auerbach insists. “Pat was going crazy at the time. He was in a really dark place, wrapped up in a shitty life with a complete asshole of a girl who cheated on him and treated him like shit. He was stuck in this awful situation and just needed to get through that.”
Late successes
Today Carney admits: “I was way too sensitive and was taking things personally, but the problem in the band led me to re-evaluate Âeverything.” He made a record with some friends and walked out on his marriage. The pair poured months — if not years — of frustrations into the emotionally raw Brothers. The wild hope was to sell 250?000 copies over two years — a figure shattered within a week.
Ever contrary, Auerbach argues that, by having success so late, they have kept level-headed, but Carney seems to be struggling a little. “This last year freaks me the fuck out,” he admits of a period in which the band has also upped sticks from Akron to Nashville. “I’m 31, I’ve built my whole life around this and there’s a new record and I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says, referring to El Camino, their seventh album, which distills their love of the Clash and the Cramps into what is possibly an even more potent Âcocktail than Brothers.
“We’ve had people say: ‘You’re going to be the biggest band in ÂAmerica in six months.’ I guess that’s possible. But we could also be being made fun of everywhere. ‘Cos everything’s fickle. I don’t pay attention to it. I think Danger Mouse [who produced El Camino] would tell us that we have a fear of success. That’s probably true. I just Âworried so much about not being good enough.
“Maybe that’s an Akron thing. I wasn’t raised super-poor, but my parents got divorced and my mother didn’t have much money. Even now, if I have a cake I’ll eat it slowly and I save most of the money I have. I rent a BMW, I buy shit from the mall. But money has changed us. Fuck, yeah. We’re from a place where if your house costs as much as our houses now, you’re living in a Âmansion. My friends don’t have houses like we have. A lot of them can’t find a job.”
He pauses, shaking his head.
“I had a huge fear, until a couple of years ago, of being broke my whole life. Now it feels like we won the Âfucking lottery.” —