Dan Auerbach says he's glad he held out against pressure from management and Black Keys partner Patrick Carney to reunite until he felt it was the right time.

The duo recently released "Let's Rock," which followed 2014’s Turn Blue and a lengthy hiatus.

“Four years ago, I definitely wouldn’t have been in a place where I wanted to make a record,” Auerbach told Rolling Stone in a new interview. “Because we can’t just make a record. We gotta make a record then tour for two years. So, there’s a lot more that goes along with just making a record. But I’m glad that we took the time to settle our minds and get away from each other for a while; it was really helpful. It made it all better when we got back.”

He continued: “Management would bug me every once in a while, and Pat would let me know, but they weren’t pushy. I just felt like I had things that I needed to do. And I really did. I met people; I wrote a lot of songs. I learned a lot about music and musicians and record-making. And as much as Pat and I are a natural thing, I definitely feel like I am a different person than I was four years ago.

“I’m just so glad that I stuck to my guns and made us take a break. They’d ask and I’d say no, not yet, or I wanna do this first; I got this to do," Auerbach added. "I pushed it back, but then I just finally put it in the calendar. We just put it in the books and got together. I knew that we weren’t going to have trouble making the record.”

Auerbach reported that he was “excited” to play shows and include some of the band’s older material. Asked how he’d gauge the success of "Let's Rock", he replied: “It’s hard to gauge that nowadays because of the way the music business is. But I think that playing the shows, if people come out, I think that’s a sign that they like the record, I guess or like the band, still. … If they’re going to get $10 hot dogs while we’re playing our new songs then we know we’ve done something wrong.”

 

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