Learning To Not Care About 'Fucking Losers'

It’s hard to recall a band having so much success happen as incrementally as it has over the last decade for Akron-bred blues rockers The Black Keys. From relatively humble beginnings they’ve seemed to gradually climb the world music ladder one rung at a time – there’s no ‘overnight success’ stories in the offing for this duo, just a swag of hard work and a stream of minor wins which have over time accumulated into one massive victory.

"It’s not like he’s trying to make The White Album – that’s fucking obvious."

The pair – Dan Auerbach (guitar/vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) – have certainly displayed a hard work ethic and resilience, so luck has played little part in their ascension. Having kicked off way back in 2001, the band’s first four albums were self-produced and recorded in makeshift studios, and even though these were all well-received it wasn’t until they teamed up with esteemed producer Danger Mouse (aka Brian Burton) for 2008’s fifth long-player Attack & Release that things really started heating up. Not only did that album mark their first time in a professional studio, but it was also the first occasion that The Black Keys had acquiesced to accepting outside production help for one of their albums, a move that immediately started paying handsome dividends.

That collaboration led to the Blakroc project in 2009 – the duo working alongside an array of hip hop artists – which boosted their profile considerably, offering a strong launching pad for 2010’s huge hit Brothers. That album hit #3 on the Billboard album chart and sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide – an astronomical figure which would have appeared comical if ascribed to the band during their early independent years – yet this success blossomed even further with 2011’s follow-up El Camino. That record – containing smash single Lonely Boy, which rose to #2 on the Australian singles chart, with the album itself going double-platinum here as well as in New Zealand and Canada – then made way for 2014’s Turn Blue, which staggeringly debuted at the pinnacle of the album charts in both the USA and Australia.

As you can see a whole heap of little steps when added together can equate to one giant leap, and this pretty much sums up The Black Keys’ career to date. Last time this scribe caught up with Carney it was on the eve of their first Australian tour more than a decade ago – when they were still on the promo trail for their 2003 second album Thickfreakness – so it’s fair to say that a fair bit of water has passed under the bridge since that encounter.

“Oh wow, that’s so long ago,” the drummer chuckles. “I have a hard time wrapping my head around [everything that’s happened since then]. The last four years especially have been pretty wild. But I remember doing phoners in a parking lot in Akron for that Australian tour in 2003/4, that would have been when we spoke.”

Given that Carney is renowned as being someone who actually values the myriad virtues of music itself over the trappings of fame and the industry – that is, a complete music geek – has he enjoyed the rollercoaster ride?

“Yeah, you know, there were some moments in the past four years where I kind of get freaked out, because we’ve had this gradual thing happening for years and then all of a sudden it went pretty wild from say 2010 to 2012,” he reflects. “But now I feel a lot more relaxed and able to really enjoy it. There were some times when I got really stressed out and really nervous about different things, and my dad told me that I need to calm down and enjoy it because it’s not going to last forever – that’s the way I look at it now. We’re lucky to still be making music in general, let alone to be having the most successful period of our career so far; starting a decade in it’s pretty amazing, because I think we’re able to enjoy it more than if it had happened during Thickfreakness when we were 23-year-old dipshits.”

"You’ve just got to say, ‘Fuck it’. Everyone’s entitled to be a prick if they want to be."

Carney believes that the pair’s successes have meant more to them because they haven’t really pandered to radio or compromised their vision to stimulate their achievements, it’s all seemed to happen organically. Burton has definitely played a role; he reprised his production duties on both El Camino and True Blue, but it was the standalone lead single from Attack & Release – that album’s only Danger Mouse credit – which really helped changes the band’s fortunes.

“We’ve made all of our records on our own, with the only exception being meeting Brian,” Carney admits. “And even when we make records with Brian we do it completely on our own terms with him – with the exception of this past studio [Sunset Sound] being in LA because Brian wanted to work there, the records we’ve made with Brian we made in our home studio and then in one small little studio in Ohio.

“It feels like it’s all been very DIY – we’ve never had an A&R guy or any of that bullshit. Actually when we first got played on the radio in the United States, we’d made this song with Danger Mouse and it was the second time we’d recorded with him – it was this song called Tighten Up – and we were told straight up that that song would never be played on the radio, and we were fine with that because we’d never experienced it. Then somehow we were on tour three or four months after the record came out and we got a call from our management company saying that the record was getting played a lot on the radio, and we hadn’t even heard it because we’d been sleeping all day and playing all night on tour. That’s when things changed really quickly, and that’s when I started getting a little bit freaked out. I just felt all of this pressure and I’m not really sure why – I think it was just kind of like growing pains.”

Surely it’s got to be a massive life change just coping with the scrutiny that accompanies the level of fame that The Black Keys have achieved of late?

“Yeah it felt that way for a while, and then you just realise that you can’t please everybody all of the time, and most people who want to say something negative – whether it be about the band or something personal or whatever – are usually just fucking losers so it doesn’t really matter.”

Fortunately Carney attests that, somewhat surprisingly – the odd jerk aside –The Black Keys have not copped a lot of backlash or fallen victim to the dreaded tall poppy syndrome since their relatively massive successes.

“No I don’t think so, it doesn’t really feel like it,” he smiles. “Maybe a little bit here or there. Sometimes I’ll walk into a record store and I’ll feel like there’s a little bit of attitude with somebody, some younger kid, but it never bothers me because I probably would have acted the same way when I was their age. You’ve just got to say, ‘Fuck it’. Everyone’s entitled to be a prick if they want to be.”

What has been slightly surreal for the pair has been adjusting to their newfound celebrity – one just needs to see how recent spats with fellow music luminaries Justin Bieber and Jack White played out in the public eye to realise that becoming famous comes with its own steep learning curve.

“Honestly, it’s just sad man,” Carney sighs. “I made a joke about Nickleback and those guys responded to it and I felt really, really bad. It was like they didn’t know that no one takes them seriously and I was the first one to point it out: I felt like I let the cat out of the bag or something. But I really did feel like a total dickhead about it, because who am I to say what’s good and what’s not good? Really, everyone’s entitled to their opinion and whatever. The whole thing about Justin Bieber, I was like a little bit drunk because we’d just played the Grammys and we’d won some Grammys and we were partying, and I was in a parking lot and I was just trying to say that the dude should be happy that he’s successful, you know? There are so many people way more talented than him or I or most musicians who will for whatever reason never be successful, and it’s not like he’s trying to make The White Album – that’s fucking obvious, he’s trying to be successful and he’s good at doing that – but either way his reaction was strange. I mean the last thing I want in my life is when you search my name for it to come up ‘Patrick Carney/Justin Bieber’. You know what – you kind of got me there.”

What hasn’t changed along with the band’s profile is Carney’s unabashed love of music – even with his life now revolving around the industry this hasn’t stopped him getting his daily fix of cool tunes.

“Yeah, I probably buy an album every day still,” he offers. “I joined a gym about three months ago, and I have a thing where I try to listen to a different album in its entirety every day at the gym – it keeps me on my toes listening to a lot of music, I can devote a solid 45 minutes to really focussed listening. Because I hate working out so much that it makes me pay really close attention to the music.

"If I’m at the gym and I really need to get motivated there’s only one record that will actually do it – Wu-Tang Forever."

“I’ve been listening to a lot of random shit to be honest. I bought this LiLiPUT album – this Swiss punk band [from the early-‘80s] – last week I was listening to a lot of that, and then a lot of weird ‘70s English stuff. This is stuff where I’m not even sure if it’s good – I seriously can’t even tell if it’s any good. And I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘90s hip hop – a lot of Biggie Smalls recently. I think he might be the best rapper that’s ever lived – he’s up there, he’s in the top ten for sure, but it’s hard to tell because he only made two records. And one of them was probably fucked with after he died – it was a posthumous release, so it’s hard to tell what parts was his vision. And then I’ve been listening to a lot of indie rock and indie pop – I like that [self-titled] Sylvan Esso album. I have pretty diverse tastes I guess, but if I’m at the gym and I really need to get motivated there’s only one record that will actually do it – Wu-Tang Forever. It’s foolproof really.”

Having such diverse tastes has probably helped endear Carney to the wonderful line-ups of Byron Bay Bluesfest, the annual Easter shindig which The Black Keys have now played a few times – the only difference being that for the 2015 instalment their name is right up near the top of the poster, in the big writing reserved for superstar headliners.

“We’ve played it a couple of times,” Carney enthuses. “Dan and I have a really close friend who lives in Byron Bay called Paul McNeil – he’s from Christchurch – and he’s a huge music fan and we always hang out with him when we’re in Byron Bay. It’s always so much fun, it’s like hanging out with an older brother. But the coolest story I have about Bluesfest – apart from seeing a giant fucking tarantula once – is seeing James Brown down there right before he died. And after he died there was this huge fight, I think in Detroit – it made national headlines because somebody got shot over an argument about James Brown’s height – and I just wish I was there because I could have settled the fight for them: he was really short!”

Is it different being a headliner at a festival such as Bluesfest compared to the band’s early years of playing daytime slots?

“Oh yeah, before we got radio play and before we ever sold any albums on a major level we got to play all of these festivals like Byron Bay and Falls Fest and Coachella and Lollapalooza, and we were always on at like 3.30pm in the afternoon or something like that,” Carney continues. “And that’s been the most surreal thing in the last couple of years, getting to headline festivals when we used to be in the smallest print on the flyer. Although when you play at 3.30pm you can get drunk later and watch all the other bands and have a lot of fun, but if you’re playing you’ve got to keep your shit together.

“And some [festivals] are better than others. I’ve always liked the Byron Bay festival. Sometimes they’re just really hot dust pits – and even those can be fun sometimes – but Byron Bay is such a special place that it’s hard not to enjoy that festival. Although it’s hard to enjoy a festival when you’re headlining, especially a Coachella or a Lollapalooza, because they’re just so fucking huge and there’s a lot of pressure and I always get really fucking nervous – you walk out there and you just feel like you’ve just showed up at school naked on the first day.”

"It’s hard to enjoy a festival when you’re headlining, especially a Coachella or a Lollapalooza, because they’re just so fucking huge."

And even just their early wins in Australia have endeared The Black Keys to our continent, with Aussie fans not only being early adopters but also remaining with the band as they’ve crept into the big leagues.

“Other than the flight we’ve always loved coming down to Australia,” Carney laughs. “The first time we went down there was in September of 2003, and it was the first time that we were consistently playing 500 capacity rooms – everywhere else it was like really small clubs still, except for maybe LA or New York. It felt like Australia was always ahead of the curve, and we’ve toured there more than any foreign country, even England. It’s only been the last couple of years that we haven’t been there as much; since Brothers came out we’ve only been there in 2012.

“We were supposed to come out in January of 2011, but we were fucking fried! We’d been on tour non-stop since the start of the previous April, and we were in New York playing SNL for the first time, and then this snowstorm hit the day after SNL and we were supposed to leave about five days later or something, and we basically spent the royalty cheque that we’d just got cancelling the tour – that’s how badly we needed a break. But we ended up basically going straight into the studio and recording El Camino, so we took advantage of the time off – we kept working, but we just needed to be at home. We’d both just moved to Nashville at that time and we just felt like we hadn’t even spent any time here at all.”

And Carney is adamant that Aussie followers will be stoked with how the material from Turn Blue has transitioned into the live realm. “Yeah, I think it’s going over well,” he posits. “We just started playing the song Weight Of Love, and it’s been a lot of fun playing that. We’re doing a pretty even mixture of the last four records, and then kind of switching up what songs we’re playing off the first four here and there. But I think by the time we get to Australia we’ll be playing a lot of them – right now there’s like 33 songs which rotate throughout the set-list, and by the time we get there it will probably be like 45 or something. We were looking through our catalogue and with the songs that we’ve put on compilations and albums and singles and everything we’ve released around 100 songs or something, and there’s some songs that we’ve never even tried to play live for whatever reason. But we’ll get around to learning some of those in the next couple of weeks.”