The Black Keys have lots of fans, but probably very few know how the band got its name.
Interviewed on this week's edition of Spin magazine's Lipps Service podcast, drummer Patrick Carney credits a schizophrenic artist from their hometown of Akron, Ohio named Alfred McMoore as the source.
He explained, "My dad was a journalist for the local paper [and he] wrote an article about [McMoore after hearing] about him through [my bandmate Dan Auerbach's] father. The guy's whole deal was that he would do these crazy five-foot-tall, 50-foot-long scrolls of just the most insane crayon drawings [that were] all cross-dressing police officers that morphed into a gas pump. I mean, it was out there. But it was really interesting.
"He would call our fathers and leave the same message, like five or 10 times a day, saying 'I need Diet Coke,' or 'I need pipe tobacco.' He'd have his list of needs, whatever he needed. He lived in a halfway house, he had no money, and our dads would drop him off stuff. But he'd always end [his messages] with, 'If you don't do this, you're a D flat. You're a black key. Don't be a black key.'
"He was just drilling it into me, so I knew to name the band The Black Keys."
Source: Triple A Daily