The Arcs’ Dan Auerbach and Leon Michels remember Richard Swift: ‘He gave you all the confidence in the world’

As they release the last album the indie supergroup recorded together, the Black Keys’ singer and the leader of the El Michels Affair recall their friend and producer’s verve, spirit – and troubled inner life

If you were ever lucky enough to visit Richard Swift’s recording studio in Cottage Grove, Oregon, you would have found a private kingdom hidden in the back yard behind his family home: keyboards triple-stacked among thrift-store finds, a sea of vintage guitars, a custom-made drum kit, plumes of palo santo half-covering the scent of weed.

“It was basically his art space,” says Dan Auerbach, usually of the Black Keys. “He modelled it after the videos of Lee Perry and his studio.” Here, Swift would spend his days honing the warm, soulful sound he brought to his own music and the records he produced. “He used to do all sorts of cool shit,” recalls Leon Michels of El Michels Affair. “One time he told me he recorded a song to cassette and then took the tape out, crumpled it up and put it back. I always thought that was the coolest thing. It sounded completely fucked up.”