The Black Keys join Zane Lowe in the studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss their new album ‘Dropout Boogie’. The group’s Patrick Carney tells Zane about the blessing of the duo’s lifelong friendship and creative partnership, their evolved mindset pertaining to the band’s career and ambition, auditing a posthumous Michael Jackson release to attain their first Number One album, and working with Billy Gibbons. He also discusses receiving early support from Beck following a chance encounter as a teenager and why he hasn’t watched The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ documentary yet.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Blessing of His Lifelong Friendship with Bandmate Dan Auerbach…
The older we get, the more we believe, the more we realise how special it is, the gift that we were given, to be able to have this connection that we have. And we don’t take it for granted, man. We work on it all the time.There’s a lot of levels to it too. It’s like we grew up around the corner from each other and when we finally kind of… We used to trade baseball cards with each other and we got picked on by the same piece of **** down the street. And when we finally found ourselves into music at the same time, just even recognising the fact that like… Because we were in two different kind of groups of friends, you know? And I guess just having the maturity to be like, this is- This is bigger than all that. And then we… It’s crazy. It’s like at this point I see Dan more than I see anybody else in my family or any friends, you know? So he’s my longest friend, we’ve known each other for 30-something years.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music The Band Almost Has Another Record Done…
We almost have another record done. Yeah, we’ve been hitting the Rolodex hard. Oh, we’ve been making a lot of cool stuff and it’s been fun.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Band Burning Out in 2013 and What He Would Do Differently In Retrospect…
We just burned out. We were going through some heavy stuff and Dan got divorced in 2013. We made a record that year. We should have taken some time off. Dan should have done some side projects. But we worked through it and then we just had to take some time off. So, Dan did the Arcs, he did his solo record, started his label. It was all good. The only thing I would’ve changed is just communicating better to each other that it’s okay to take some time off.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Auditing a Posthumous Michael Jackson Record To Achieve Their First Number One Record…
When we put out ‘Brothers’, it was number three and our previous charting record was 14. I was like, “If we got three, why can’t we get one?” So then we made our next record and it was like number two because Michael Bublé’s Christmas record sold like a billion copies. And we’re like, “That’s **** us right now?” So then we’re like, “We got to get the number one thing.” So we make ‘Turn Blue’ and one of the 50 **** posthumous Michael Jackson records came out and literally we’re sitting at home, our manager calls like, “Yeah, it’s a number two record, Michael Jackson.” I’m like, “Bulll***, there’s no ****** way that that garbage has sold more than us.” And they went and they audited the ***** books and they found out that they were giving the record away at some Cirque du Soleil ****** in Vegas. If you bought a ticket, you got a record and they were counting that ****. So they threw them all out and we got the number one. We had to fight Michael Jackson’s lawyers to get the number one.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Group’s Evolved Mindset Pertaining To Working and Output…
For a long time it was like, “You got to have big first week numbers. You’ve got to do this.” And part of it may be that we have done that. We’ve had the number one record before and you realise, “Oh, these aren’t the things that you really want to chase necessarily.” So for me and for us, we’ve been looking at things less cyclical and more just like, “Oh yeah, we’re a band and we’re making music.” And there’s no, “We’re making a record. We’re putting a record out. We’re touring.” It should all just be, “We’re working.” That’s it. It takes a while to figure that out.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music Why He Hasn’t Watched The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ Documentary Yet…
I have mixed feelings. I want to see it, but at the same time, I talked to a lot of people like who are a little bit younger than us, and they’re just like, “Yeah, I don’t really get the Beatles. It’s just overexposure.” And I’m thinking like, well wait a second, literally at this point we’ve seen every single thing… Well, I’m saying that like, the mystique now is fading. You know what I mean? If you listen to The Clash, imagine if every fight The Clash had was on film? You know what I mean? I don’t know. I feel like it’s just a little bit exhausting. You know? It’s like sometimes a little bit less exposure is good and keeping that stuff under wraps. I don’t know, a 14 hour documentary of the band in the studio, it is something that sounds like I’d watch, but… …if I were to watch it, I’d probably just be like, whoever didn’t tell these guys to go on vacation for two years is a ****** idiot. And they all paid the price for it. You know?
The Black Keys Tells Apple Music About Collaborating With Billy Gibbons…
Patrick: I was a little nervous. It’s the first time I’ve ever recorded with a legend like that.
Dan: He showed up with a bottle of red wine. He didn’t bring a guitar. He played a guitar that I owned that used to be owned by Mississippi Fred McDowell. And so I handed it to him, we plugged it straight into the amp, turned the amp all the way up and it was boom, it was Billy Gibbons. And when he finished the bottle of red wine, he took off. And we had four songs finished by the time he left.
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Receiving Early Support From Beck Following A Chance Encounter With Him Backstage as a Teenager…
I met Beck when I was 16 on the Odelay tour because my uncle Ralph, the who bought the Opticon, he was friends with Smokey Hormel, Beck’s touring guitar player. Anyway, Smokey Hormel put me on the list and I got to go see Beck and I got backstage. It was a big deal. I was 16 and I meet my first rockstar. That record was just so important to me because it was so good, it was so fun. Anyway, I go backstage. I was very nervous and he’s holding the fruit bowl and he was like, “Do you want a pear?,” being so weird. And then, the next time I really run into him, we were on tour with Sleater-Kinney on our first tour with a band showing us the ropes and we’re playing the Roseland Ballroom in New York in February of 2003. And we have a record called Thickfreakness coming out in a couple months and I had a promo in my sleeve and Sleater-Kinney’s like, “Do you want to go to the SNL after party? Beck invited us.” So I was like, “Yeah.” We go there and we’re at this after party. It’s too expensive for us to order a drink so we just start pounding, I’d start pounding on the leftover drinks on the table.And Chris Kattan comes over. And he was like, “Are you drinking other people’s leftovers?” And I was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Dude, can I hang out with you?” Yeah. And then, I got the balls to go say hi to Beck and I was like, “I met you, blah, blah, blah. And here’s this record.” And the next day, I’m sure I was like, “Oh, fuck, I probably sounded an idiot.” And a couple weeks later, our agent calls us and like, “Yeah, Beck just invited you guys to support him on the whole summer tour,” including playing in a show at Brixton Academy in London, which is another big, huge thing. He really was an early big supporter of ours. That was a huge break for us, to get in that tour and meeting the people we got to meet on that tour and getting the confidence of being endorsed by someone that you really, really are a fan of and look up to. And it happened a couple other times with us. It happened once Radiohead took us out, which is another really cool thing. But with Beck, it was different because he was hanging out with us. He was interested in us as … You know?
Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music ‘Delta Kream’ Is One Of His Favourite Records The Band Has Made…
We made that ‘Delta Kream’ record and we had so much fun making it. It was like, we were just excited. Felt good, I don’t know… it was one of our favorite records we made so we just rode that wave right back in the studio. We couldn’t wait to get back in and we started working right away.
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