Last night, The Black Keys joined The Evening Show with Dan O'Connell on Radio X.
Following their performance at the newly re-opened Brixton 02 Academy, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys joined Dan O’Connell on Radio X to talk about performing with Noel Gallagher and working with him on their new album, Ohio Players, saying that ‘there’s no better feeling’ than working with the Oasis legend on music that they’re all proud of.
Key
Dan Auerbach - DB
Patrick Carney - PC
Dan O’Connell - DOC
“It’s going to be hard to beat!” - The Black Keys reflect on ‘incredible’ experience of performing live with Noel Gallagher at Brixton 02 Academy
DOC: “How was last night? Because last night you played your first night in London at the 02 Academy Brixton, newly reopened.
PC: “Yeah, it was great. Yeah, it was actually so much fun.”
DA: “It was incredible, really. I mean, amazing venue; crowd was crazy. And we had Noel [Gallagher] come out and play some songs with us in the encore, and everybody lost their minds. It’s going be hard to beat!”
DOC: “It's a pretty special place. I think we're lucky to have it back. Was that ever a kind of thing for you guys? Did someone say, like, that they're gonna reopen it, you want to play there? Is that what happened?
PC: “I mean, it was always the place that you'd wanted to try to get to. You know, for the first time we came to play over here we were, you know, we were playing like the Camden Barfly. You know? And people would be like, ‘well, Brixton is the place, that’s the big boy.’ And we got to play there the first time in 2003. We opened for Beck that summer.”
The Black Keys claim they were ‘nervous’ working with Noel Gallagher when recording brand-new single ‘On The Game’
DOC: “So, let's talk about our Record of the Week this week, it is your tune. How did ‘On The Game’ come about as a song? Because I know, obviously, you were doing this session with Noel, but what was the inspiration? How did it come to the form we now know it in?”
DA: “We were at a studio called Toe Rag here in London, and we had Noel there on guitar and we had our friend Leon on keyboards. And that was it. And the four of us were in the room in a circle, and we just worked it out from nothing. I mean, we had no references beforehand; we didn’t talk about it. We just got into the studio and let it happen organically. And that's kind of how we worked with him all three days.”
PC: “Yeah.”
DA: “And you know, we were nervous when we first got in, because we didn't know what was going to happen, you know? But after the first day, we got one song under our belt, like, we loosened up a little bit, you know? But ‘On The Game,’ the version that you hear on the record, that take it probably the second time we got through the song without messing up. That’s what you hear on the record.”
DOC: “That’s pretty good, right?”
DA: “Hell yeah.”
PC: “That’s how we roll. And then later that night, after we did the song, we were at the hotel having a drink with Noel, and he was talking about how there might be some people ‘on the game,’ right in the hotel lobby. And we were like, ‘what?’ We’ve never heard that expression before. He’s like, ‘oh, you know. They might be working.’ And we were like, ‘oh my God, I’ve never heard that.’ And then Dan looks around, like, ‘well, it looks like everybody’s on the game here.’”
[...]
DOC: “What a tune, thanks for asking Noel to be part of that. Did you have to feel brave to do that? You know, because a lot of people wouldn't do that, would they? Did you have to get kind of cocky and confident? Are you comfortable asking people you don't know?”
PC: “We didn't realise the pressure until after we finished it. It just seemed like a cool idea. And then after we were basically done with the sessions - It was a couple days later - I was like, ‘oh, that could have gone really bad, actually.’ Like, we could have had, you know, begged Noel to come into the studio, him show up, and then we could have really screwed that up. And Noel would probably let everybody know about that!”
The Black Keys say ‘there’s no better feeling’ than working with Noel Gallagher following Brixton 02 Academy Performance and new album release
DOC: “Have you ever met Liam, by the way?”
PC: “Uhuh.”
DOC: “You get on, did you gel?”
PC: “We met him for the first time his past summer in Milan. We played before him at a festival. And yeah, we hung out for hours. So funny, so nice.”
DA: “Liam gave us some crucial advice.”
PC: “He did.”
DOC: “Oh wow, hit me.”
PC: “Well, I was asking him specifically, because we hadn’t played festivals in a while; it’s been like almost a decade. And I was asking him about the setlist, and he’s like, ‘ah, you’ve got to play your second biggest hit second.’ And I was like, ‘really?’ And we did that the next night when we played in Madrid, and it was awesome! Best show of the tour.”
DA: “He straightened us out.”
DOC: “Out of interest, was Definitely Maybe a big album in Akron, Ohio back in the day?”
DA: “That band was so huge. They were like Tom Petty, where it was like you didn’t even need to own a record to know every single song. Do you know what I mean?”
DOC: “So people were listening that?”
DA: “Absolutely.”
PC: “Everybody knew it. You know, everybody I know knows every one of those Oasis hits.”
DOC: “That’s super interesting, because obviously for us we have no reference point for that, as big as they were in America.”
DA: “Yeah, no. They were huge.”
DOC: “Before you go, I was wondering if you could tell me about your favourite thing about working with Noel Gallagher?”
PC: “My favourite thing about working with Noel? I mean, I think that when you get a chance to work with someone like that, and then make something that you can tell that they're proud of, as well as yourself, there's no feeling better than that. The fact that, you know, we can tell that Noel really likes the songs and is proud of the songs is like… it doesn't really even matter what anybody else thinks about the stuff. It's just like, we made something Noel likes with Noel. It’s cool.”
