The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney – HuffPost 5.16.14

Mike Ragogna: Patrick, what is your advice for new artists?

Patrick Carney: Dan and I are heavily under the influence of rock ‘n’ roll; we wear it on our sleeves. We play music because we’re fans of music. The only advice I have to anybody who’s doing anything is to make your art for yourself, and hopefully people come around. But even if they don’t, you’ll always know that you made stuff that you love, that you’re happy with. I think that’s the best advice that you can give.

MR: Beautiful. And you and Dan are pretty much making stuff that you love and that you’re happy with, right?

PC: Yeah. That’s the thing, we get flak sometimes because our records sound different from one to the next, and it makes sense to break that down by saying, “Well, Danger Mouse was there,” or, “They went to the studio in LA,” or whatever. But the reality is that I’m thirty-four, Dan’s thirty-five, and we’ve been making music since I was twenty-one and he was twenty-two, so our tastes change, our influences change, and we embrace it. We roll with it, and I think that’s an important thing; know that your thirty-five-year-old self is going to look back at your twenty-one-year-old self, and be interested in what you were thinking, but at the same time, you’re going to be a completely different person. And if you don’t think that you are and you’re not, then something’s f**king wrong with you.