In 2008, while The Raconteurs and The Kills were touring the USA, the lead vocalist of The Raconteurs, Jack White got a cold and lost his voice. The vocalist of The Kills, Alison Mosshart agreed to replace him. A little later, White asked Alison to join him and Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs to record a cover version to Gary Numan’s “Are Friends Electric?”
When the artists were working at Third Man Studios, in Nashville, the keyboardist of Queens of The Stone Age, Dean Fertita decided to join them. That’s how The Dead Weather was formed. Jack White decided to remember his youth, when he worked with a Detroit group, Goober & The Peas, and started playing the drums. In January 2009, in just three weeks, the band recorded a sufficient number of songs for a debut LP.
In March 2009, The Dead Weather arranged its first performance at the recording studio for a limited number of listeners. The musicians gave out 150 vinyl records with their first single, “Hang You from the Heavens”. The song reached the 9th spot of Billboard Hot 100. In 2009, the band’s second single, “Treat Me Like Your Mother”, settled on the 40th spot of Billboard's Alternative Songs Chart and came in 168th on the UK Singles Chart. The music video filmed for the single reached the top spot of the 2009 top-50 music video list by NME TV in the United Kingdom. Many organizers tried hard to book The Dead Weather for their events, but musicians were often too busy.
