Black Keys: success on the sly
Ohio band’s slow road to prominence
The Black Keys, the ever-rising bluesrock duo from middle-America’s backwaters, cap off their most successful year this week with a triumphant tour of Britain’s arenas. It culminates at the O2 in London, where they’ve sold all 36,000 tickets across two nights — a feat few would’ve anticipated even two years ago, when their left-field hit album, Brothers, bagged three Grammys. They’re an insular duo, who, on collecting those awards, stayed all of 15 minutes at the ceremony.
When I meet them backstage at Turin’s 12,000-capacity Palasport Olimpico, they do not have the air of rock titans, or even of regular guys who, given some makeup and a lively crowd, will transform into such.
Indeed, three hours after I speak to them, they amble on stage in the same clothes, and crank out their raw, rootsy music with little ceremony.
Yet, the atmosphere is electrifying, and their powerful, singalong sound brings the house down.
The excruciatingly gradual career trajectory of the Black Keys flies in the face of an industry in thrall to overnight success. They’ve slowly ascended the ladder by learning the lessons that will take them up to the next rang, and by being fiercely committed to that upward progress.
Dan Auerbach, their humble, green-eyed, singer, came from a musical family, and was brought up listening to all the classic rock and blues which would later feed into the Keys’ sound.
“It wasn’t something I had to search for,” he says, “it was something I grew up with, since before I knew what music was. My mum’s family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
“Everybody always wants to rebel against their parents’ music, but nobody listened to music louder than my dad.”
Auerbach first started playing with Patrick Carney, the band’s bespectacled drummer, in the mid90s, in their native Akron, Ohio. It began as a casual thing. Carney was a dyedin-the-wool indie kid, first inspired by Nirvana, but increasingly disenchanted by the “math-rock” of Radiohead and their ilk. As a reaction, they plunged into a punky take on the blues. Naming themselves the Black Keys in 2001, they remained a duo by default.
Says Carney: “The only other person that Dan or I could find that was really serious about quitting their jobs to focus on music, to go on tour, make albums, and risk a lot, with nothing guaranteed — was each other.”
As a guitar-drums-andvocals two-piece playing garagey blues, their early years were spent in the shadow of the White Stripes. Critics, in particular, had difficulty getting beyond the comparison, and afforded Jack White’s band the higher ground.
In 2006, they finally cut their first album for a major label, but they soon realized that the changes they needed to make were internal.
“We were too insecure to have a song sound good enough to be radio-worthy,” reasons Auerbach. “None of our first albums were good enough. It was all based on our inability to communicate with somebody who runs a studio.”
To help them, they enlisted Brian Burton, a.k.a. Danger Mouse, who at that point in 2007 was best known as a keyboard-toting hip-hop producer (for Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz, among others), but who has since earned a reputation as a Brian Eno-style musical guru. Burton took them into a proper studio for the first time, and together they dreamt up the exotically textured Attack & Release, which took the band up a level to touring theatres.
At this point, the pair’s equilibrium wobbled. Carney went through a painful divorce, and Auerbach made a solo record without even telling Carney.
“We took a breather to re-evaluate,” says Carney, “and we realized that we both find it easiest to make music with each other, and that it is more enjoyable that way.”
Their next record, 2010s Brothers, was entirely selfrecorded, but for one track, Tighten Up, which they recorded at the very end, with Burton’s help. It was this tune, with its heartwarming whistled intro, stumbling beat and amorous themes, which got them radio airplay, and put them into rock’s top bracket.
“The luckiest break we ever had,” says Carney, “was not to have any major success until we were both over the age of 30. We spent eight years watching other people’s mistakes.”
As a result, the Black Keys are now touring Europe’s arenas as the band of the moment.
Still possessed of a fierce underground mentality, each of them flinches when I ask if they’ve made changes to their act to satisfy bigger audiences.
“The first time we played an arena in Canada, it was a bit surreal,” Carney admits. “But every time you double your crowd, you ask yourself, ‘Do I have to do something different?’ The answer is, ‘You absolutely should not do anything different. You should do whatever it is that got you into those places in the first place.’
“Through the history of rock ’n’ roll, you see lots of bands making the mistake of putting on the tights when they get to arenas.” He laughs. “Don’t do that.” Another lesson, well learned.