From The Archive: The Black Keys

Akron, Ohio, 1998. The record store on the high street is doing good business, selling not just CDs and vinyl but also dope paraphernalia and a shady line in unofficial tour t-shirts. The staff are a strange variety of folk: geeks, nerds and indie rock fans - each one taking it in turn to flip records onto the loudspeaker system. This year Pavement are getting a lot of love.

Every now and then it's the turn of the self-proclaimed hermit at the back of the shop. "Auerbach!" a nerd shouts, "it's your go on the stereo!" Dan Auerbach raises an eyebrow then casually walks over, perhaps stopping to quietly sharing his thoughts of the last album. Then without making much fuss about anything, he sticks on the Northern Mississippi blues of Fred Mcdowell, and stand there... tapping his foot.

New York City, 2010. The Black Keys are in town to do a couple of weeks' worth of press and fundraisers. Auerbach and his fellow bandmate Patrick Carney are surfing the wave of excitement caused by their new record, Brothers, and although there's been no official countdown on the radio, news has just come down the wire that the album's shot through the roof of the Billboard charts, stealing number three. Dan is happy as hell. In fact, let's hear the man say it himself.

"I was happy as all hell. I can't say I was disappointed that we weren't number one, but in the back of my mind I did know that if it had been released a week before or a week after, it would have got there. They'd released a soundtrack to some mind numbing TV show, and at number two was the Stones' Exile on Main Street, which beat us by 2000 records! That's a rough one."

Confession number one: this 'record store hermit' to 'boom town chart-smasher' story that I've thrown together is a wild juxtaposition. The band's rise in popularity is more complex, more interesting. It was a cheap shot, but an illustrative one: I'd always perceived The Black Keys are outsiders, the rogues of the road - and the last band you'd expect to kick down the Billboard doors to do battle with Glee and The Stones.

Dan is currently zooming between the UK and the US like a hyperactive species of pelican, but when Artrocker finally gets to sit down with him, the battle victory is still fresh in his mind. So what happens when Mother America shines her torch on a band?

"Well, things are strange," he says, relaxing. "One thing that was a first for us, was that a couple of kids got caught trying to get backstage with fake passes. They'd gone to the trouble of making them up - lamination, chain, everything. I thought it was great! If I was a kid I would do exactly the same thing. But here's the question: what were they expecting to do once they got back there? It's not like Valhalla* or anything - there's just pretzles and bottled water. It's boring!"

Confession number two: Dan did play blues records at that record shop, but he also listened to bands like Frank Black and the Catholics. They're categorically not a blues band, although as Dan says; "At the time that I learnt guitar I was into the blues, so it just became the foundation of how I play." Distinction established, let's get round to what the new album is. The first word that leapt into my head when I heard 'Lighten Up, I say, was Tarantino.

"Sure," he smiles, "I think the whole record sounds like it could be a Tarantino soundtrack - and he can use it if he wants to! He's done some really great soundtracks."

Pulp Fiction has got to be the benchmark, I suggest. Everybody be cool, this is a robbery!

"If any of you fucking pigs MOVE..... " screeches Dan in a high pitched voice, before busting into a cackle. "I listened to that a lot at high school."

It’s a well-known fact that The Black Keys recorded Brothers in Muscle Shoals studios, where previous giants like Aretha Franklin and The (cough cough) Rolling Stones had also cut records. Yet any notion that the band were 'tapping into' the music of the old greats is far off the mark;

"We recorded ten out of the fifteen songs there, and yeah - the first day we went there we felt 'it', and the thought of all those musicians passing through was quite inspiring. But for the rest of the time it was just a single block building to us. We didn't go there to make a 'history record' - we went there to get down to business."

The business they got down to resulted in some of the band's best music – as well as some of their most personal lyrics. A song like 'I'm Not The One' for example, has the singer asking his lover to leave him, for her own good. That’s quite a difficult thing to say, isn't it?

"It's an uncomfortable thing to say. That one came together pretty quickly. It's based on real life experience - the rest of the songs are based on personal experiences too. Except the ones that involve murder!

"I had fun on this record with the storytelling aspect. It's nice to match the music with the lyrics and I think we got that right here, maybe for the first time. With 'Too Afraid To Love You', the music is spooky, paranoid and manic to match lines like 'my gears they grind more each day'. With 'I'm Not The One' there's a wide open space to allow simplicity to happen. I don't like there to be an unnecessary amount of words.”

“Because it allows room for the listener’s imagination?”

"It allows songs to sound unforced and more real. It becomes a story as opposed to someone reading out loads of fucking words, trying to show off how many lyrics they can fit into the space. It becomes like breathing... it's not such a rigid cadence."

"Cadence?" I ask, feeling a trifle dumb.

"Cadence is the rhythm of the lyrics, how they hop along. So a less rigid cadence helps to match up to the instrumentation."

As well as being a very modern-sounding record, there's an echo of tradition to Brothers, too. I try to recite some of Dan's lyrics - wrongly, it transpires - out loud to him.

"The Devil can hear us... he's got great ears."

"The Devil's got great ears?! You're butchering my lyrics, man!" (laughs)

"Woops! Er... what I'm getting at, anyway, is that here's the Devil again. What is it with the Devil and rock and roll, do you think?"

"What is it about the Devil and anything! He's in poetry, novels, movies... the Devil's in everyone. He represents vice, and the human inclination to do wrong. Did you ever meet someone who just felt evil?"

Don't think of your ex-girlfriend. Don't think of your ex-girlfriend.

"Well," I suggest, "I've met people who kind of drain your energy just by being around them, and that feels kind of... evil?"

"Well that's the Devil, that's the fun stuff!" he laughs. "The Devil can be a she, an 'it'... it can take on any form. The Devil and the Saints are the peanut butter and jelly of songwriting."

There's a pause into the conversation as I absorb those fantastic words. If I were you, I'd put down this magazine and do the same. Back with us? Good, because now we're gonna ask Dan about the 'sell-out' theory. Rumour has it, The Black Keys were asked to soundtrack a margarine commercial in the UK, and they turned it down. Is there any truth in this?

"It was a mayonnaise commercial. That was one of the most surreal offers, and we turned it down, stupidly. I say stupid because it was hilarious in a few different ways - firstly here's this big company that wants to pay us a huge amount of money so they could use a song we recorded in a basement for like $2, and secondly because, at the time, we were driving everywhere - criss-crossing the country in a Fordor! So for us to turn it down because we didn't want to be sell outs was stupid. It's a weird world."

"Do you think that, in this age of record sale declines, bands should feel free to sell their music to commercials?"

"Bands can do whatever they want to do. Pat and I made our first four records on our own, and they cost next to nothing. We worked harder than pretty much any band I've ever met, never setting foot in a first class plane seat but travelling all over the world. We never once had anyone else have an artistic say in what we do - Pat's brother did the artwork for our first demo, and he still does the artwork for our records.

"So as long as you can keep in control of your art, what does it matter where it gets played? What's the point of going on the road and touring, trying to promote your record, then turning down the opportunity to have your music played because of some bullshit stigma? It's all in everybody's head."

The Black Keys, as you've probably figured out by now, are a hard working band. In one interview, Dan has even been heard to speak the poetic theory that "sleep is the cousin of death". But, I ask him:

"Surely even a hard working blues band...

"You did it again! You called us a blues band!"

Error. Reverse.

"Sorry! I mean, surely even a hard working rock and roll band has to take a break every now and then. What's your relaxation method of choice?"

"I sit and worry! That's my relaxation method of choice! I don't like sitting around doing nothing, it's always been the way. Because I start focusing on this sort of endless que of worries... but that's what keeps me going. Nothing seems worse to me than the idea of sitting around on a beach."

"What if you had.. I don't know, an iPad so you could work on the beach?"

"An iPad?! Well you could just as easily bring a pencil and paper! I'm a restless person - I don't sleep well. But it all works together."

As the interview winds to a close, I ask Dan about this "endless que of worries" that he speaks of. Wouldn’t he want to shorten this que, if he had the choice? Naturally the answer is a pass: it's what keeps the fuel in the fire, it's what keeps The Black Keys going, and presumably, it's what's propelled them into a chart duel with The Stones.

"Speaking of the charts", I say, "what do you make of them ordinarily?"

"The charts? I don't ever pay attention to them," he smiles. "I mean, look at the top ten. It's all music from TV shows!"

* Valhalla: an ancient place in German mythology, where "great warriors feast on the flesh of boar, day and night" and "drink liquor that flows from the udders of goats."