The third single from The Arcs, the side project of Black Keys singer Dan Auerbach, is about a drug dealer peddling his wares on the mean streets, but the inspiration came from a surprisingly innocent source: a little girl. Leon Michels, the band's keyboardist, recalls to the Song Exploder music podcast how his daughter gave him the idea: "She was just picking flowers and she's like: 'I'm gonna to put a flower in my pocket.' And I felt like, oh, 'Put a Flower in Your Pocket,' that's like a cool Temptations' song title or something. So, I just gave that to Dan and then he turned it into something else." Auerbach added: "I just thought about somebody putting like a dime bag in their pocket and we turned it into basically a drug dealer anthem."
The song fell into place when Nashville session guitarist Russ Pahl played the guitar line and everyone else joined in. "We're all kind of orbiting around Russ," Auerbach explained. "This is a live performance. The bass, the guitar, the keyboard and the drums; it's live; there's no edits; second take. You know, this thing just happened; we didn't even have to think about it."
Auerbach said the band experimented with vintage gear to "get really modern sounds."
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