The Black Keys / Photo by Niall O'Brien
Now officially Akron, Ohio's favorite sons (thanks, Lebron!), the Black Keys have become the year's surprise overnight success story. All it took was one decade, six albums, and the salvaging of a brotherly partnership. [Magazine Excerpt]
On a warm late-June evening in the backstage area of London's Hyde Park, the Black Keys are winding down from their biggest ever show, having just played to 65,000 Kings of Leon fans. Singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach, who looks marginally less like a Civil War veteran since he trimmed his beard, sips bourbon from a plastic cup. Lanky drummer Patrick Carney smokes Lucky Strikes and talks to his girlfriend, Emily. A guy walks past, sporting a fulsome rock-star mane. "Famous people have weird hair 'cause that's their thing," says Carney in a tone of languid amusement. "So when I see someone with hair like that, I think, 'Oh, they must be famous.' But no, they just have a gay hairdresser."
The Black Keys, as they readily acknowledge, are not famous, but they're getting there. Carney recently befriended Kings of Leon's Caleb Followill after moving to New York City from the band's hometown of Akron, Ohio–hence their opening slot on this enormous stage. "It was frightening," says Carney, who often removes his thick-framed prescription glasses before going onstage so he can focus on his drumming rather than the audience. He shrugs. "But not bad considering we've never had a hit single."
Followill, a longtime fan, had his reasons for handpicking them. "We wanted them there to pump us up," he says. "They're great drinking buddies, and they're gonna be around a long time." Like Kings, the Black Keys are a relatively old-fashioned proposition: They have built their following brick by brick. Each of their six full-length albums, from 2002's The Big Come Up to this year's Brothers (182,000 sold -- and counting), has been bigger than its predecessor, as their music has expanded from raw-boned basement blues-rock into spookier, swampier, sexier territory.
"Our career's been like this," says Carney, moving his hand on a steady rising gradient. "But we've seen bands who've done the bell curve: straight to the top and then straight to the fucking bottom. They sell five million records, and the next thing you know, no one gives a shit."
For a band with no hits, they do have some high-profile admirers. Thom Yorke has said he looked up to them. Robert Plant volunteered to play bass for them. Damon Dash had them collaborate with the likes of Mos Def and the RZA on last year's Blakroc project. Their songs have been licensed, lucratively, to a prodigious number of commercials (American Express, Victoria's Secret), movies (School of Rock, Zombieland) and TV shows (Entourage, Gossip Girl, Rescue Me). Their 2002 song "I'll Be Your Man," which is the theme to HBO's Hung, is now greeted by audiences as if it were a giant radio hit. "I hear that song and I remember Pat and I in a basement, recording it on a little piece-of-shit recorder," says Auerbach. "That's part of the fun of getting songs in commercials and TV shows, because it cost us $2.50 to record them."
And it may be that humility that's driving the band's current popularity. "I think we've gained a lot of fans for all the reasons we're not played on the radio," says Auerbach, as Kings of Leon thunder away in the background. "People appreciate that we grew up in the Midwest in a small town, that we're friends, that we record in the basement. We've felt like underdogs forever."
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