Being 16 years old and getting an electric guitar is never going to get old. There's always going to be kids making music. There's always going to be kids in bands.
I don't make my living making records. Maybe someday I will.
When I learned to play music, I was listening to blues music. And all the blues music I liked was super simple and stripped down. And then all the hip hop I liked was super simple and stripped down and we always heard that connection.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
Songs aren't owned by anyone.
I am nice to everybody. But people really take advantage of it.
A lot of musicians are super - insecure and they take forever and they obsess over the minutia and it's really stifling. It's not that the band The Black Keys is that confident, it's that we're not striving for perfection. We are just trying to have fun. None of the music that we like is perfect. It's good. And real. We just want to make real records, flaws and all.
Coming from a smaller place always made things feel more personal, which is really what it's all about.
Everybody always wants to rebel against their parents' music, but nobody listened to music louder than my dad.
I feel like I live in my own little world, to be honest. I mean, I love my record, but I don't feel tied to it. I sort of created my own little universe in the studio, and that's why all of those musicians who made a living in the Nashville music scene loved coming over to my place so much.
A Grammy is really nice, but having lots of fans is really nice, too. I think just getting a record out is a success on its own.
You get to bring your own sound system when you play an arena, all the lights and visual stuff, which I think is really cool. There's something about those old arenas, where it feels larger than life.
It's hard to be spontaneous when you have 40 people in your crew, and you're playing to 16,000 people every night, and there's giant lighting rigs, it's hard to change direction on a dime.
I'm sure you feel differently about writing than you did when you first started. When you get older and your brain changes, you have to figure out how your job fits into your life as it changes, you know what I mean? I guess everybody goes through that stuff, and I'm no exception, always trying to figure out what I'm doing with music.
The modern video games kind of - they're too three dimensional.
Guitar solos bore the hell out of me. Only a few guitarists interest me, and it's not about the solos they play, it's about the grooves they create.
I'm not too picky about guitars. I love to collect them, mostly oddballs, but I'm not married to any brand or model. Whatever guitar has the best character for the song is the one I want to use, because if you've got a style, you're going to sound like yourself no matter what guitar you play.
I never listen to Led Zeppelin. But, I mean, I don't think Robert Plant or Jimmy Page listen to Led Zeppelin, either. We all probably obsessed over the same old blues records growing up.
That culture, of looking at catchy music as a negative thing, is weird. It has nothing to do with me, or the music I was into growing up. The Stones and the Beatles only tried to write hits. Every Motown song, every Credence Clearwater song - they were trying to write hits.
Bands from Akron have a sense of humor and don't tend to take themselves too seriously.
I'm certainly not your typical front-man material. Some people love being on stage and really open up, and I'm sort of the opposite of that. I don't crave the spotlight. I'm still not comfortable even talking on stage.
I'm really not worried about what fans think.
My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
The Black Keys is just a band that wants to get on stage and rock it.
You know, there's always someone in mind when I'm writing. You know, it's all comes from somewhere inside.
