The Black Keys: A Big Record Deal Can Destroy You

Growing up in Akron and like you guys had to feel like you were on the outside of the music business, right? Like the business itself was in Nashville and LA and New York and you know growing up in a town. Do you think there's an advantage? Well we did but oddly Pat and I had a connection to the real music business both in our family. My cousin was Robert Quine, a guitar player who played with Lou Reed and Richard Hell and the Voidoids. One of the first punk guitar players. Really influential and then Pat's uncle's Ralph Carney. Saxophone player played on all the Tom Waits records, B-52 records, all kinds of records. It was weird. And these guys weren't like financially successful but they were critically lauded kind of individuals. They were professional musicians. On records and it was just odd. We grew up around the block from each other. So what we wanted, when we looked at that, the idea of making a record was what we want. That's all we wanted to do was make a record and then you know by the time we were selling out like 150, 200 seat rooms we were like we fucking have made it. This is it. This is fucking awesome. This is what we wanted and then we would be like what if we tried to sell out the 400 seat room? What if you know it would just kind of slowly went and then finally we got to this point where we were like well what if we try to play Madison Square Garden? And our manager was like yeah you could do it. And we're like well let's do it. And then we did two nights there. And that's literally what started from playing our tour history like in Brooklyn or in New York was like we opened for a Pascah band and on a Monday night in Brooklyn for 50 bucks we drove all the way from Akron to get there. Eight hours each way. We made 50 dollars. That's our first show in New York. And yeah that to the fucking Barclays or whatever. But it all started it was all like it was like honestly when we got to the point when we were playing a troubadour I was like we fucking have done it. We fucking got there. And they're like well there's another venue down the road. A little bit bigger. Yeah it's well it's always your age like yeah it's another another venue. Well that's why someone who doesn't understand anxiety is never going to understand how a person like you with all that success could still get weirded out. Do you know I mean that's that's what makes it interesting like the the managing of the mind. You know I mean Dan and I are both pretty confident but we're also but we're not like would you know I think you're only as good as your last show really and you're always good as your last record and you know you can't just skate by under shit. Yeah so and we all knew bands growing up that kind of did right they had a couple good albums and then things kind of went off the rails. Dude it's like my favorite band is like growing up with Devo because they're from Akron and they're like this different kind of crazy band punk band. You know and there is something special about Akron though. Yeah there is. Something special about Ohio. Yeah but you watched you watch a band like Devo though I was gonna say get to get to LA and whatever happened there the change that happened and um there's something I mean that's been something that Dan I've been I mean I think actively trying to avoid is that that kind of thing you know um but yeah that's like I go home to Akron I fully get I fully accept and know that I'm gonna get made fun of for certain things I'm not I mean I'm gonna like a real individual get my shit thrown at me by my friends and they're gonna make fun of me for whatever rightfully so um but yeah Akron I mean Ohio and the Midwest it's an inspiring place because it kind of is a vacuum and the people who are operating there like 99 of them are operating just because they have no other choice that and they love doing what they're doing music wise so you go to New York the first time and it's like um you know the smallest little band has a connection to the biggest producer and it's like that here too you know I mean that's why like it's like true people like a little like a group anytime there's like four teenagers playing music together here like A&R oh god we're gonna give you a big deal and get you on MTV it never fucking works out I mean that's like think about the amount of fucking bands that have come from Los Angeles how many great rock and roll bands have come from LA I mean seriously it's a fucking massive city it's the biggest county in the country the music industry is here and the take the last 20 years of great bands from Los Angeles you wouldn't have a long list same with New York City um you know if you go the last 40 years the list doesn't grow that much do you think it's better that's what I'm saying do you think it's better to be on the outside do you think it's better to be in a city where you're in kind of a small town here's what I think is best I think if you can really integrate with the music industry peripherally from the outside it's always best how so what do you mean like if you end up signing a major label like look we almost signed it we got some offers early on to sign to major labels early on we did not do it mostly because like the they kept we kept being strung along like the contract will be there in a week a week would pass it wouldn't show two weeks to pass we'd call it'll be there next week finally we were like fuck this we realized at the age of 22 we realized if we signed this shit and they can't get a contract to us to even look at in six weeks if we make a record there's we're gonna be so fucking log jammed like we're never gonna be able to do this shit so we we took the gamble and we signed with a small indie and just kept fucking going you know and when we finally went to a major it was on a subsidiary of a major with really supportive president and we were kind of on the outside still even though we were inside or on the outside and we were able to do our thing we've never had an argy sit around and tell us to speed the song up or whatever but the problem is if you get in without having some of those boxes ticked and you get in you sign a big big record deal off the bat some fucking dumbass who has a communications degree from like fucking pepperdine they're gonna be sitting down next to you big i think the hi-hat's too loud bro i mean k-rock can't play that the drums are this guy's know he's talking about you know i mean and like that's that right there when you get those notes coming from some dude that's your a and r guy that doesn't really notice i mean there are good a and r guys but most of them are these types of dudes and they'll be like yeah man like and it's it's basically what they are doing right then when they're telling they're giving in your head like you gotta change the hi-hat on the mix man what they're saying is when this record fucking fails and i can't deliver that any sort of fandom to you that i'm going to say that you turned the hi-hat down too low or i turned the hi-hat you didn't turn down low enough there's all cop-outs everywhere and the only way to get through that is to we we learned how to make records ourselves in a basement we had a tape machine a hundred dollar tape machine and radio shack microphones and we recorded our first record like that we did our second record like that our third record like that our fourth record like that and finally we we went into the studio danger mouse and we we knew how to run a mixing desk you know what i mean we knew what we liked so if someone came in that wasn't danger mouse and was like this or or one of the mixing engineers we've worked with if someone came in and said the kick drum sounds like shit we'd be like fuck off we know what a kick drum drum can sound like we've been doing this um and i think basically if you can spend the time get the time and get the that's why that's why like back in the day it's like you know a record deal a record a band takes years to develop you know i mean it took us took us eight years before we got a song on the radio of actively making records and touring um and a lot of this stuff set up with labels where they want like a hit on the second record you know my i'm married to a woman who sold millions and millions of albums and um of songs that she wrote you know and when she turned in uh an americana record like warner brothers gave her such the run around they shelved the record to cost 800 grand to make because they said there wasn't any hits on it that's that's no way to be an artist do you know what i mean yeah and so we've just always avoided that so they shelved the record they just didn't even bother trying to release them to cut their losses no man and then they charged her for it and then they drop her i mean that's that's that's why so they shelve it they never release it yeah they've never released and they just drop her yeah dude that's how that that's how they do this shit the archives of these labels are filled up with shit that's been shelved really hell yeah man and i don't know the business well my my i learned all this stuff early on because my uncle ralph who damn mentioned was signed to warner brothers in the late 70s he made a record um with his band called tin hui it sold like 5000 albums you know like failure um and then they gave him like 30 grand to fuck off uh and they made some they made a record in between then and this fucking shelter it happens all the time how many good records do they have shelved what do they do with them ultimately like if people know about dude i think there's a lot of good records but i also i also think i imagine there's probably hundreds i think there's a lot of records that started off really good and then some pepper dine dude just like remix this you need to remix it you need to do that you need to add this you need to do this do this some dude just guessing you know yeah it's like it's not hard to just guess it's like if i'm if you're like looking at remodeling your kitchen it's like and you're an idiot you just put the stove here oh not fucked up put it over to the left actually right oh redo you know i mean but if you're really a producer musician that makes records and you turn it like you turn in a record it's so frustrating when you get someone that doesn't know what they're doing coming back like oh maybe you should do this i actually had that happen to me there's this band called the sheepdogs this canadian band that actually uh this record ended up going platinum in canada and in the u.s it never even got pushed to radio not not even one song but um this guy chad blake who dan and i work with all the time who's mixed our last four records he mixed this record this guy's like a genius an audio wizard yeah he's a wizard so he lives in wales in a little house on his his wife works with horses he's got a little side room just tiny little room just like half the size of this and he mixes huge records so this guy's he's a badass this whole record's budget was like 60 grand including them living off of it and shit so i took the entire budget and let the for and it was spent on a little cheap studio um of some friend a friend of mine who's going to engineer it them to live and the rest of it went to chad to mix it so i get the i get the mixes back and this anr guy listening to the mixes and it's like i think uh i think that hi-hat is too loud on this song i'm not joking and i'm i'm on tour i'm on tour with dan and i'm like i called danger by something what do i do he's like you know what to do i was like send him the same mix and label it mix four and tell him it's been lowered he's like that's right but but then he's like you also need to remember you you are fucked down they will never service this song because that's the cop out i was like bullshit is it just watch and it is exactly what happened oh my god and i called him like a year later and he's like dude you're fucking genius he's like oh well i've been through this shit wow yeah because check it out if you're an anr guy right you're getting like probably six figures you report to a senior anr who reports to a vice president who reports to the president and that if you stick your neck out and you say i want to take a million dollars from the fucking machine and i want to i want i bet bet it all in this band or even a quarter million dollars the odds of any band making it are like probably one in a hundred i'm talking about even breaking even so if you're only an idiot would ever really get behind a band that is unproven so your whole job is to deflect blame you know what i mean so like that's why that's what the problem is you know like if i was going to sign a band and someone offered me they said i had a million dollar budget to sign a new band like i also wouldn't give them all the money because there was no way i'd make it back you know i mean yeah um but yeah that's the music industry dude is fucked up and then you know you spend years and years and years uh and if you're lucky like dan and i have lucked out and then you look back and it's like i don't even know how how it happened there's all these other factors that come into it you know and you go try to help a band one thing something that worked for us would never work for another band so there's no there's no formula to it