The Black Keys On Their Creative Partnership

How do you guys write songs? Do you write them and do you come to each other independently? Do you collaborate like only in studio? Do you write them in studio? We've for the most part always just made them up, just improvised them. Like in the moment. And then said you liked it, let's try to put that down again. We just sort of gravitate towards what we like and then just start building on it. And all the stuff that doesn't work, just push it away and just keep going forward. Do you have disagreements on what works or doesn't work when you're inventing it? Not really. No? Not usually. It's always been like that ever since we were 16 and 17. Wow. I've never really, I don't think, the older I get the more I realize how special that is. You know, I always took it for granted. I mean, I remember when we were trying to audition bass players, we had this one guy try to come and play with us. And I just remember it just fucked everything up. It's like we couldn't even play. It didn't even sound like us. Why? It just didn't work. And then when this other person left, all of a sudden it sounded like a big band again. It was weird. We learned to play together. I never even played, I've never, I mean, I never played drums with anybody aside from it, Dan. And me even playing drums in the band, it's like, because it was kind of an accident. I only had a drum set because I wanted to be a guitar player and I wanted people to come to my house and play the drums before I had a driver's license. I got a job washing dishes and bought this drum set. I bought everything you need for a band. And it was like, my friends would come over and they were all pretty much better at guitar than me. But Dan came over and he was like the best guitar player of all my friends. And I was like, fuck, what do I do? Bass or drums? I was like, well, you can't just jam guitar and bass. I sat down at the drums and that's what we did in high school. So we learned to play together, man. So because of that, there's like, there is like a psychic kind of connection. I mean, we play now on stage with a couple other guys and it's good. It's easy. It's fun. But there is something when the two of us start playing where it is, we can work in between beats. It's pretty liquid. Our goal has never been to be this tight kind of rigid, like, you know what I mean? Like tightness isn't something, it's more about like the energy, the feeling. It's hard to describe, but it's like... Yeah, we're never worried about if we got it perfect. We always, it was always, this is the one that feels best. Always. Most important. Do you write the lyrics down? Do you write the music down? Sometimes I'll write lyrics, sometimes I'll improvise words. A lot of the new record was a lot of like improvising syllables and words. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's just no rules, absolutely no rules, but a lot of times I'll be singing a melody while I'm doing chord changes, but I can see Pat. You know, that's the thing that we've always done. We've always been able to see each other when we play and record. So, you know, go with his movements and follow him that way. So you guys just know each other so well? You can see when he's turning? We hadn't been in the studio for five and a half years and we didn't do any pre-production or anything and the very first idea that we had made the record. Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's just a thing we've had. Crazy connection. Yeah, man. That's so unusual. It really is. The older I get, the more I realize that. Well, you guys have been together for so long and the thing with bands is like keeping them together. But this is my first band. I was never in another, like the Black Keys is like the first real band I was in. Yeah, it's the first real band I've been in. It's so crazy. So I didn't know any different. I thought all bands felt like this. Do you know what I mean? That's the saddest thing when you see bands and the lead guitar players, Matt, the singer, and it's like, oh guys, come on, really? Yeah, it's always over some dumb shit. It's usually like someone's wife is like fucking mean. Yeah, wasn't that what the David Lee Roth fan hell in time? Hey, we've been through that shit, man. We've been through it, man. It's hard. It's hard, you know? I mean, if I could go back in time and give our 22-year-old selves one piece of advice, it would be like don't tour with your girlfriends until you have a kid and they can come out for a couple of shows. Just avoid that shit. And also probably don't really have a girlfriend until you're in your late 20s, probably. What's the problem with touring with the girlfriend? Dude, it's just codependent motherfucker like me that it was just really hard. I had to get through. I've grown up a lot, you know what I mean? But yeah, it's just hard. The hard part is that I'm up for the work and Dan's up for the work. And when we're on tour, I go through periods of time where I get phone calls and be like, what the fuck are you doing, motherfucker? I miss you, that guilt. I'm literally in the back of a Fordicano van with a torn up copy of TV Guide reading it for the fifth time because we don't have any money. No cell phone or like with a Nokia phone, like getting the guilt trip and stuff. It's like too real to even talk about. Our first tour, I remember Dan having to stop at the payphone. Look at him laughing. Dan would be at the payphone every hour and I'd be like, I remember my brother Mike was with us. I'd be like, oh man, like sucks to be Dan. And then like literally like an hour later, I'd be like, I have to get to the payphone myself. Dumbasses, man. But you have to go through that. You have to learn to appreciate a good relationship. You got to go through those. Where the fuck are you? Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing is like, it's, uh, well, I guess what does it kill you makes you stronger. Although I read somewhere that that's not actually true. It's like, fuck your body up. Yeah. It's pretty hard. Just takes the years off your life. Maybe it didn't kill you. Yeah. Took a decade off your longevity. You know, that's why, that's why we're able to get to this spot where here we are 2019 and we're, I don't think we're insane people. We're pretty close to the same people we were when we were in our twenties. Still wearing some insane t-shirts. I'm not because it was way too small for me. Um, but yeah, you know, I think that there's, there's a time like maybe 2012, our shit was really blowing up. I mean, we could do no wrong. And uh, there was, I bet there was, there was, there was the alternate universe for sure where we turned into complete dickheads. An infinite number of dickheads actually. We died multiple times at the Chateau. It's like, yeah, in this, it is in this version of reality, Dan and Patrick don't play the Spike TV video game words. They overdosed at the Chateau, Vermont. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have to appreciate though that you guys have gone through quite the gauntlet. It's pretty amazing. I think that the best thing that ever happened to us is that we didn't experience success to our sixth album. And when, and what it is, because if we would have got that when we were 23, we would have never been able to sit down and realize what the fuck was going on. Yeah. Yeah. Everything, everything about us has been just sort of ridiculously synchronistic. Yeah. And it's also that kind of luck and timing and. Right. But that's where the simulation comes in, bro. I think that's just where the, that's, I think that's just where like the uniqueness and the, the crazy thing, that's the crazy thing about life is that it is certain things are rare. It shouldn't be that crazy that a relationship like Dan and I's is so rare, but it is. Yeah.