By this point, we’re familiar with the concept of the spit ’n’ sawdust garage-blues duo. But Patrick Carney (drums) and Dan Auerbach (vocals/guitar) can stake a solid claim as originators of the format, launching The Black Keys in Akron, Ohio at the turn of the millennium, and finding their voice (alongside some revved-up covers of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside) on 2002 debut album, The Big Come Up.
The pair’s history as music aficionados and vinylcrate magpies is writ large on the Keys’ latest album Peaches!, and Carney is happy to go deeper down the rabbit hole over a cigarette.
The first music I remember hearing
The first song I can remember being obsessed with was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant. I’ve met a couple of other people around my age who also said it was a track that opened their eyes. There’s just something magical about it. In the video, he’s revving up a motorcycle. And it’s got, like, a modulating Minimoog bass line. Ever since then the fuzzy grind of a Minimoog has always done something for me.
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The first song I performed live
Dan and I started with Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside songs, but the first time we played a rock’n’roll song, it was The Beatles’ She Said She Said. We were too young to know that covering The Beatles is not something you’re supposed to do. My dad gave me Revolver one year for my birthday, and that song just always stuck out to me.
The greatest album of all time
There’s been times when I thought it was London Calling, and other times when I thought it was The Dark Side Of The Moon or the White Album. But today, if I had to turn someone on to a record, I’d say Television’s Marquee Moon. There’s no singles or hits on it. But it’s just this melodic, wonderful thing, with two guitars interweaving in a way that’s not just shredding. There’s very few albums like that, and even that band was unable to create that magic before or after.
The songwriter
Bob Dylan. There’s definitely some hooks, but I think there’s a magical quality about his poetry. He had a run that was kind of unrelenting for about twenty years, into the late seventies, and I actually really enjoy a lot of his recent albums. My favourite is the Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3. I love a song like Santa-Fe, where you can barely even tell what he’s saying. I like the demo quality of it. It’s not precious, it’s capturing a feeling
The guitarist
Marc Ribot, maybe. My uncle played with him in Tom Waits’ band, and when Rain Dogs came out I was five, and my dad would play it all the time. So I grew up with his guitar playing. I love the tone that he gets, even on his acoustic stuff. I like a musician who, when they pick up an instrument, you can tell from the first note it’s them playing.
The singer
I think I’m gonna go with Al Green. He has a run of albums that started in, like, ’71 through about ’75, including Al Green Gets Next To You and Let’s Stay Together. I like the Hi Records sound and the Willie Mitchell production. There’s something about that era of Memphis, post-Stax, that I’m very fond of.
The best band I’ve seen live
There’s been moments when I’ve just been floored, and a lot of that happened when I was a teenager. The first time I saw Beck, in ’96, was pretty powerful. He’s a total showman and has songs that translate well live. It was at a place in Cleveland in front of, like, seven hundred people on the Odelay tour. It was a kind of supernatural experience.
My cult hero
In my book, there’s a ton of bands that even if they’re highly rated, they’re still underrated. Then there’s a lot of bands that are just way fucking overrated. I think Modest Mouse is underrated. If you listen to their first four albums, it’s kind of fucked up what they did there. And they were only kids. I think they were seventeen or eighteen when that first record came out.
My guilty pleasure
I’m kind of interested in late-period Italian disco. And some of that stuff can be borderline cheeseball.
The anthem
I think (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction is designed that way. It’s the Stones’ first great song. It starts a long pattern of them making great singles. It sounds ahead of its time. It’s one of the first songs to use a fuzzbox – and I’m a sucker for a fuzzbox.
My Saturday night party song
It might be The Slits’ cover of I Heard It Through The Grapevine. A buddy played it for me a couple of years ago and I was like: “Yeah, this is just familiar enough”. But then it transforms towards the end into a pretty solid groove. It walks that line between postpunk and disco, which is always fun.
The song I want played at my funeral
Maybe everybody should make a death playlist that gets unsealed when they die. But I wouldn’t put sad songs on it. I think a good song to play at a funeral is Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem.
Peaches! is out now via Easy Eye Sound/Warner
