In a rare, lengthy and wide-ranging interview at his Third Man Records complex in Nashville, Jack White sits down with Brian McCollum to discuss everything from his new album, “Lazaretto,” to his creative freedom at Third Man. He’s got poignant reflections (his late teenage years in Detroit), pointed pronouncements (“entitlement is sort of the disease of modern times”) and even a few marketing ideas for Detroit foodstuffs.

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The setting: White’s personal office at Third Man, where he’s smoking cigarillos (“I don’t inhale”) and music is playing distantly in the background, amid a room of funky knickknacks, animal heads and Americana, including an antique stereopticon device recently gifted to him by a fan. It’s a turn-of-the-century type of slide projector — a magic lantern — and includes slides portraying the tale of Damon and Pythias, the Greek myth about moral fortitude and friendship.
QUESTION: (Third Man is White’s eclectic operation, including retail store, vinyl distributor, recording space and offices. The first building was purchased in 2008.) At that point, did you envision all this?
ANSWER: No, not at all. I had 11 or 12 storage units all over town. Tour gear, things from Detroit, recording equipment. I just wanted to put it all in one place. I’d built my studio at my house to record, but if I said, “Oh, I want to use a Mellotron in this song, or that one amplifier — aahhh, it’s in storage, forget it, it’s too much trouble.” I needed to have one building where I can get everything if I need it really fast. That’s what I was looking for.
I’d also talked to Ben (Blackwell), that we should also get these older White Stripes 45s back in print. I’d regained ownership of them because V2 collapsed, the label the White Stripes were on in America. I got all the records’ ownership back, but just hadn’t figured out how to reissue those. The major labels I was signed to with other projects,Keidel- No Holy War For Holyf, it didn’t really make sense to ask them, “By the way, could you put out these old records of mine?” (Laughs)
So I asked (Ben Blackwell and Ben Swank) if they could come to Nashville for at least a little while and test it out and get those back in print, and maybe they’d move back home or something. Swank was in London, Ben was in Detroit. They came, and it was just baby step after baby step — “Well, it would be great to rehearse back here, because then I don’t have to rent a rehearsal space for tours, we can test the monitors and lighting out in the room. Oh, you know, it would be great since we’re putting out these 45s, what if we put a buzzer out front and you could just sell a couple of records once a week if someone rings the buzzer, probably never happen.” Now there’s like 300 people a day coming to the store.
It started to become: anything that I thought I was going to see when I was younger and got out on tour — what if that was here? Things like the record booth. I always thought I was going to see one of those somewhere, and I never saw one. Or when we started to put on live shows here, and you could tape them on analog tape in the crow’s nest next to the stage — I always thought there were going to be some club in Germany or somewhere that I would be able to play a show and record the show to tape. And there’s no place in the world that does that. And once we got where we were set up here, we got to do the straight-to-acetate studio. That extension, it’s just insanely unique. I’d do anything I could, if I were somewhere else on this planet, to try to figure out a way to get my band to play in this scenario here.
So it just becomes a thing of what did I always want to see when I was out, and never got to, and started to baby step its way up to where it is now.
Q: Are there other ideas you still want to tackle?
A: Mmm-hmm. One of the big projects we’ve been working on for a while is the first record in space. And that’s been a long-going project. And we’re coming close to it. For some reason, it seems like it’s a nice long term goal to attach to, because it sort of means everything and means nothing at the same time. I’ve always worked to finding really deep meaning and also at the same time having it covered in sugar, so it can be taken two or three different ways.
I think it’s interesting to talk about, like — Neil Young’s record ... I saw once we started to work together on that, he showed me that we were very similar in that mindset. That there’s a reason why he’s coming out with Pono and at the very same time coming out with a record recorded on a 1940s recording booth, the most lo-fi recording basically you could think of next to a wire recorder. Because if you can’t get past that, then don’t bother going any farther.
I’ve always felt good in that scenario. I mean, the White Stripes were based all around that. If you couldn’t get past our colors, and the way we look, the style, the art, the way it’s presented, the packaging of the whole idea, you’re never going to get farther down into the blues we were trying to get to. Which is great, because the easy route would have been to go up there in jeans and a T-shirt like everybody does. It’s harder to put yourself in a place where you could easily be seen as a fake. But that’s more interesting to me.
Q: How much of that is a kind of defiance, or a challenge to the public?
A: Much of it is. You see a lot of artists, if you listen to the radio, watch MTV or whatever it is, you see a lot of people kind of taking the easy way out all the time. And it’s hard to pay attention, because it’s sort of like everyone is going through these standard motions — do this, do this, do this.
And you see in certain genres, where country music in Nashville everyone is insanely scared to take any chances, because there’s only one format at radio. And if you don’t get it, they won’t play the song, so don’t even bother. I feel sorry for those kind of worlds too, because they have to live by these restrictions that they didn’t think up. See, I’ve always been making up my own restrictions for myself, from day one, and it’s compelling to me, because it forces me to think. That’s always been a driving force for me.
Q: That idea of imposing restrictions — that does seem to be such a part of what you do. What is it, exactly, that’s appealing about placing that kind of obstacle you have to jump over creatively?
A: I know that when someone tells me, “I really like that song you did, or that video you did,” I want to know when they say that, at that instant, I know how that was made and how that was done. It was not done using computers and having somebody else write my song for me and three producers and all that jazz. I mean, you’ve got to remember that’s what most people do in the business — they have engineers and producers working on their stuff when they’re not around. They come in and do their bit then go on vacation and come back a month later and their record’s done.
I wouldn’t be able to feel proud about that if someone said, “I really like your song,” and I’d just be like, “Yeah, well, I had about 3% to do with that, that was all engineers and other people.” I wouldn’t feel good about it. I’d feel kind of ashamed. That’s just me. That’s the way I’ve always been — tried to be hands-on wherever I could.
Third Man Records helps all of that happen now. It really takes place in a scenario where we can take the photos here, and do the artwork, and record and mix, cut the vinyl and master here. It’s nice to sort of have a jumping-off point for any of those ideas.
Q: Is there something in your personality, where there’s a control element too, a perfectionist kind of thing?
A: There’s two ways to go about it. I was talking about that to some other people the other day. I think a lot of people come in here and can imagine me breathing down people’s necks — “No no no, don’t paint this that color” or whatever. If you saw me working with construction crews or graphic designers, you’d see how much I’m really hoping for them to bring something to the table and let God in the room and let things happen naturally.
It’s sort of boring just to sit around and boss people around and tell people what to do. I mean, big deal. That’s sort of an ego trip that someone could be on and get some buzz out of it. But that’s not really fulfilling. I think fulfilling is, “Hey, what if we do it like this,” and someone else says, “OK, yeah, but I just discovered this happy accident here.” And then something cool happens: Something exists that didn’t exist before.
That’s what gives me a buzz — something new exists. Onstage, I don’t feel any glory from people clapping in the audience, but when they’re pushing me to do something new, I get something out of: We got somewhere. We got to a new place with that song. That’s a mini-accomplishment for me. That feels good. But the idea of them praising me for doing it doesn’t interest me at all. It interests me more that me and the musicians onstage got somewhere, and the crowd knows it. That’s a hard thing to pull off, but it would be harder to pull off with no safety net. And if you really do it, then you can really be proud of it. …
I’m combining the bands I had on the last tour. I wanted to go out to with both bands again, but there’s a lot of scheduling problems — they’re all in different groups and stuff. Certain people, they’re the only people who can really do what they’re doing, I’ve found. So we had to find out how to make this all happen. So maybe I’ll do that next time I go out, if that’s happening. But for now, we’re just going to combine the two. It’s been feeling really good — compact.
Q: What’s your musical baseline with these guys — what’s the main concept you’ve got in mind when you’re putting this group together?
A: I always try to aim for genre-less and timeless when you’re doing things. And you may not always succeed. People maybe will say, “Oh, that sounds like Buddy Holly” or Devo or Grandmaster Flash or something. You just do what you can do in your head that feels right, and I aim for that and see what happens.
(Nashville) is the perfect scenario and location in the country to do that. There’s so many session musicians here in town, of all different genres. There’s just so much recording going on, so many kinds of musicians in town. I mean, the choices are incredible. And throughout Third Man’s history, you had our blues series, where I’d be calling up — “Does anybody know someone who plays banjo,” “Does anybody know someone who plays mandolin who can come in an hour.” And through that, you just meet all these people. And sometimes they don’t work out. But sometimes we’ve got to have this person back.
And I’ve met basically all these people that way. Like (multi-instrumentalist) Fats Kaplin came through Karen Elson’s project. (Fiddler) Lillie Mae (Rische) came through a blues series. (Mandolinist) Cory Younts was playing with Old Crow Medicine Show and showed up. (Keyboardist) Ikey Owens was in town, playing with Mars Volta.
(Drummer) Daru (Jones) played on a hip-hop record we did with Black Milk, and he played a live show here and I thought he was one of the best drummers I’d seen in my life. I told Black Milk,The Most Subversive Scene In , like, I think we’re going to have to steal your drummer. Jokingly — but he started working with us a lot. (Laughs) And all of these people have moved here or want to move here now. It’s become a real music-based family, where we really get a lot of out of it. The Dead Weather and Raconteurs all live here. We just work on things so often. We were just working — me and Alison (Mosshart) and Dean Fertita — finishing the next Dead Weather single, which we’ll put out on the Vault.
The technical side of things here, the engineers in Nashville and Detroit. Kevin Carrico, which I worked with on car commercials in Detroit, coming down and working on the record booth here with our engineer Josh Smith and bringing (the Neil Young album) to life.
We’ve got a really cool Detroit-Nashville marriage. There’s a lot of Detroit transplants in the building, and a lot of that history is with us, the essence of that Detroit music — things that really go for the jugular from the get-go. The Stooges or the early soul records are really going for your gut. I think that’s really underneath all this stuff.
It would be easy to have a place that was very garage-rock and hipster-y or whatever. But what really goes on here is aiming for no genre, and involving bluegrass and country and hip-hop and the history of American music — a giant mixing bowl of American experiences, but trying to move forward to the next stop.
Q: It makes the job tough for guys like me who have to pigeonhole stuff for a living.
A: (Laughs) It’s so funny, because when we first opened, the first few months, people would come in and say, “Oh, this is like Apple Records.” The next person would say, “Oh, this is like Prince’s Paisley Park.” The next person would say, “Oh, this is like Chess Records, or Sun Records.” They kept saying that. Then that all went away, and now people will just say, “This is Third Man Records.” And that’s a good feeling.
Q: I like the concept of the musical trunk that runs up through America from New Orleans, through here and Memphis, up to the branches Detroit and Chicago. And now you’ve come back down the tree, in a sense, to the middle of it all.
A: Yeah, I always found myself recording in Tennessee for some reason. We recorded the White Stripes’ third album in Memphis. Then I worked on Loretta Lynn’s album after that in Nashville and mixed it in Memphis. And always felt, when I was down here on tour, just comfortable in Tennessee. I don’t know why. I didn’t even notice it, you know — I just kind of kept feeling it coming back there.
And Memphis is very much like Detroit. When I was moving, I thought, well, it’s like a lateral move, almost like moving to the same town. And New Orleans, the same way. Like you just said, New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit — they’re almost like these sister cities.
But Nashville is like the best of all the worlds for what I do on a day-to-day. I can do what I need to do and not have to listen to any nonsense to do it. I think this sort of plastic country side of things in town — that kind of really commercial side — balances the whole town out. That I could do what’s going on here and sneak through the cracks. The levels have been balanced.
Q: Did you have a fascination with Southern culture growing up? I think back to that Goober & the Peas kind of idea — that romantic Southern vision, almost a gothic tinge to it, but also sort of quirky.
A: Goober & the Peas definitely opened my eyes to a lot of things about showmanship and the other side of the tracks of country music. In my house, we listened to Johnny Cash and Roger Miller a lot, stuff like that. But I’d never really thought about the Grand Ol’ Opry style of people — the way they dressed and presented themselves. To me, when I was really young, I kind of thought that was more Vegas and fake or something. But Goober & the Peas opened my eyes, that that world was very cool and very beautiful.
So yeah — by the time I was in my late teens, I was a lot more interested in the South, because becoming more and more in love with blues music and where it was coming from. I think if you love music, you keep digging deeper, and you’re going to get down to the South and where everything started — blues and jazz and country. Everything came from down here, and you have these places like New York and Detroit and Chicago where they took it to the next level.Without Chuck Berry and Little Richard down here, you don’t get the Stooges and MC5 there. You don’t get the electric blues artists in Chicago without them down here.
It’s all great history and nice. There’s all those things — just because you move to Seattle doesn’t mean you’re going to start writing grunge music. I guess the best way I could put it is like how I was saying: Third Man feels like this building couldn’t be in any other town anywhere in America or the world. It could really only be in this spot. And for whatever reasons, where I’m at in my life, or have been, or what’s happened to me, and where this town is at in its life — it makes sense. This wouldn’t have worked in Memphis or a lot of other places.
I think, yeah, the history lends itself to that.
I’ve always felt like Detroit is my home. But I’ve always felt like my soul came from some other place. And maybe it is from down South. I don’t really know. Sometimes your physical body and your mental body, your spirit, is drifting too. And maybe no place is comfortable. And that’s a dangerous thought to think about, because if you really open yourself up to that as an artist, you can really become very depressed. You can either let that compel you or not. And I’ve had to struggle with that for a long time, to kind of realize if you really care about what you’re doing, the ultimate sacrifice has already been made, and you didn’t even realize it. I gave myself over to music and art a long time ago, so I don’t get to relax and I don’t get to sit still. The best I can do is constantly create my own environment so it benefits what I need to accomplish in the next step.
But I find it fulfilling on a day-to-day, and I don’t find sitting still fulfilling. That’s not the same as saying I need busy work, or I’m a workaholic or OCD or whatever — that’s just sort of occupying neurotic time, you know. It’s different, when you really feel a need to create something new all the time.
You have that buzz when you’re younger, when you actually created something new. And some people do it with drawing or painting, just creating something you can use in your home. You get a buzz. Some people have that, and they have to go back to real life — they have to go back to getting a job and paying the rent, and then they don’t get to do it. Maybe they’ll take a class in pottery or something, or play in a band on weekends later on in life. But Detroit offered me an opportunity to be able to just have so much freedom to be able to do that, to work on music and work on art, all day long. My upholstery shop was half sculpting studio and music rehearsal place, you know. That was all going on in that room, and that was going on in my house too.
But also — I was talking to somebody the other day — I feel bad for bands that come out of L.A. and New York. Where did you rehearse? How do you get your band together and rehearse in the middle of Manhattan? That must be really difficult. And Detroit, obviously, we could play at 2 in the morning and I’m sure nobody would mind it. Or notice. (Laughs)
Q: You mentioned the buzz of youthful creating. Because I wanted to ask you about getting older. You’re turning 39 (on July 9). What’s your take on the aging thing, especially as a rock ‘n’ roll guy?
A: I don’t even feel it, until someone mentions it, like a friend. Once you cross 35, you start to hear people make jokes about it. And you’re like, “Oh, that’s right — this is a concern for a lot of people.” And you hear a lot of people, they turn 40 and it really bugs them and they get depressed or whatever. I don’t know — I just don’t feel that way. I still feel 19 years old all the time.
I mean, it’s not a lie. I could easily say, God, I feel 70. Or maybe I seem like I’m 70 or 200 or something to other people, I don’t know. My brain feels 19 all the time. And that’s a good spot.
I remember (at 19) there was a moment in the fall in Detroit, getting out of my car and going to a class at Wayne State and parking on Cass and walking. I just took a really deep breath, and everything was in front of me. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I wasn’t in high school anymore. I didn’t have to mess around with people who were just goofing around in life. I could go to that class, and talk about that, and I could go to this place and build that. I could maybe go to (College for Creative Studies) and learn more about architecture.
I ended up dropping out of that and doing my own thing ever since then. But there was a moment there where I realized, wow, now I am on my own, and I can do it myself. But I am by myself, and I will always be by myself in these thoughts. Because when you say them out loud, you destroy them. And that becomes a choice throughout the years — what thoughts do you let outside and let people possibly walk on? Or let people possibly take to some place new? It’s hard to decide, you know? You get punished for saying certain things, even if it they’re right or not. And you get applauded for saying really fluffy things that don’t really mean anything to anybody.
But that’s also how you present what you sing onstage, what you’re talking about and how you present it. It’s all an interesting jigsaw puzzle. Because you write a record and you have a decision. It matters whether the Beatles were walking across the street on the cover of Abbey Road compared to the White Album. And that’s just one tiny iota of the idea of the presentation of what you do. You’re your own salesman, you know.
Years ago, you put out a record and people would say, “Well, the label would like you to do this, and the publicist wants to know if you’ll do that.” And I always say, you know, the best things that feel right — and in the end, seeming like the best ideas and they worked — are the ones that generated from me to begin with, and the band to begin with: “Why don’t we do this, and if you guys want to, you can come film it and talk to us about, but we’re going to do this.” But when other people bring them to you and try to take you into another spot… it mostly will fail. Because it’s sort of out of place.
But see now — (Third Man) is a place where you can generate things, and we can do a thing — we can film the cover of Rolling Stone here in this studio and charge them for the rental of the equipment to take the photo of what we’re doing! (Laughs) That’s a whole different scenario than flying to L.A. and people telling you,Here are 20 things you never , “Wear this and do that.”
People are always coming to visit my world, instead of the other way around. And I’m very, very fortunate for that. I’d still be doing it in my own little shop in Detroit if people didn’t care. I’d still be doing it. I guess it’s just allowed an expansion of the recordings I did in my living room for Italy Records in Detroit. I’m attacking them mentally the exact same way as recording live to acetate in front of a crowd here. The production ideas are still the same. It’s just a bigger living room, a bigger garage, a bigger attic. (Laughs)
Q: That idea of being careful what you say …
A: People (were) saying that I’m not being nice to Meg, when Rolling Stone came out. I’m kind of shocked. I mean, I’ve praised and preached about the beauty of Meg for a decade, for 15 years, about how amazing she is, and how incredible she is to what we did. Without her, I wouldn’t have been able to do the music that I do now. And so you sort of say, wow, OK, don’t talk about anything unless it’s fluffy or something. All I was doing was talking about it’s very hard to be in a band with someone that doesn’t talk! Maybe people haven’t been in a band before, but it’s not easy. When you go out with a band like the Dead Weather, we all four of us are the leaders of our own bands in a way — Waxwings, and Kills and the Greenhornes.
The beauty of the White Stripes was the dichotomy, you know, the juxtaposition of me and Meg’s personalities. And that’s what I was getting at.
But whatever, it doesn’t matter. Next week people will say the exact opposite. But you have to make choices. Say, like Detroit for example. Detroit is a very thin-skinned town. We take insult very, very fast and very easily. Because we don’t want people picking on us, because we get picked on all the time. But we know why people pick on us, and it’s just that we’ve just got to be very cognizant of how we approach stuff, because we don’t need anything more negative said about it, you know. But you have to be honest at the same time. Politically and socially, those problems are bad and they need to be solved. What do you do? You can’t just live in denial and be fake about it.
Q: Are you feeling any different sense around Detroit these days? There are young people moving into the city.
A: I do. But I think the problem has always been unless insanely drastic measures are made, it’s going to be very difficult. And I mean, like, big ones that people are afraid to think about. I think it should be something like the State of Michigan should come in and erase the city council and start over with people from somewhere else, and treat it like a failing corporation. Which is exactly what they would do — fire the board of directors and get fresh blood in and not people who have been reelected for 30 years who constantly keep failing at their job.
It needs drastic measures like that. You need to buy up a whole neighborhood and build a factory or build a whole new housing development or something with an entire neighborhood all at once. You can’t build one house at a time. Urban farming is a beautiful idea, but in the essence is it really a positive move for the bigger picture? It’s more of a desperate action in a post-apocalyptic kind of style.
You hear things like people putting up a Robocop statue and stuff like that. I think people think that’s tongue-in-cheek positive. But it’s not. It’s like putting up a statue of Nero in Rome, you know? I don’t agree with some of that kind of stuff. That’s not the right kind of positivity.
When you’ve lived and grew up there, and those streets are so compelling to me. They speak to me and sing to me and they make me really upset sometimes. Last time I went there with the Dead Weather I went and sat around my high school that had been broke down and I cried. Because I couldn’t take that that building had gone. There was the idea that my grandmother might have even worked in that building. There was this rumor when I was in high school that it had been a pickle factory. And my grandmother, when she came from Poland, the first place she worked was a pickle factory on Grand River. And I’ve always wondered, maybe that’s the spot.
I like progression. I’m glad they built a new school there. That’s a really good thing, because it could have been they knocked a building down and that’s it, there’s no school there. I like to see the new school.
There’s just so much beauty in there. You take the towns in America that are very young. When you go to Europe — I mean, America’s so young. It’s like, you’re just getting started, man! But the architecture of Detroit is so incredible. Because you had the car money at the right time. You see in Tulsa, they had oil money at the time of art deco. In Detroit, they had the beautiful architecture. My last place, in Indian Village, was designed by the guy who designed the Fox Theatre. I loved the architecture of that home. It just breathes so nicely.
And I also worked at the Fox Theatre, and I’m playing there for the first time coming up. Never played there, so it’ll be nice.
I made a pizza for Mike Ilitch one time. I worked at the restaurant there. I was busboy, then I became a pizza cook. (Recently) we were talking about, you know, Little Caesars has the square pizza. Talk about another thing with Detroit — they really should be calling it Detroit-style pizza. Jet’s Pizza. Buddy’s. Nicki’s Pizza — all have that thick deep dish style, which should be called Detroit style pizza. It should be a thing, just like Chicago-style is.
It was the street café, the restaurant on the other side of the building. The great thing was, when I was on break as a busboy, I used to go watch bands’ shows. Because there was nobody in the restaurant during the show. So I saw a lot of acts there, that was great to have that kind of access. I remember watching the Black Crowes’ sound check there when I was 16.
That was great. That whole block felt like Detroit from the 1940s, as golden age as it could be, even if across the freeway it became a different story. And still feels that good now. It’s nice that they have all that construction there and keeping that centralized.
We should do another little campaign where we change the name of the Boston Cooler — the Vernors ice cream — to Detroit Cooler. Because there’s no real reason that should be named Boston Cooler. It was invented in Detroit with Vernors. These are the things, marketing-wise, they’re small but they’re big.
Q: And there’s no central place that celebrates Detroit’s musical legacy. I’ve always said they should set up speakers along all the downtown streets pumping out Detroit music. Celebrate the fact it’s a musicial town.
A: Oh, man, this place (Nashville) does. They’ve got people playing at the airport. There are live stages there. Yeah, I don’t know why that is. It’s sort of underground in Detroit. It should be a bigger deal.
There should be something as big as Henry Ford and Greenfield Village, music-wise. Maybe there’s not the location for it, other than the Motown Museum.
Q: What was the motivation for the dual venues you’re playing in Detroit (Monday and Tuesday)?
A: I really wanted to play the big theater at the Masonic, because I didn’t get to do that (in 2012) — the big theater was booked last time I was in town — and I never played the Fox. So I thought, well, we’ll do it next time.
It’s hard for me to play seated theaters because people tend to sit down and get a little bit complacent, so it’s less energy. We did a White Stripes tour — “Get Behind Me Satan” — we did all beautiful, seated theaters of America, and it was not a good idea. It was just very dry and dead. People start to feel like they’re watching a movie. The environment when they walk into it, it’s not standing room only, smoking and drinking and rock ‘n’ roll. So it’s a little bit dangerous to do that. But I think the Fox should be OK. And it doesn’t matter anyway — I’ve still always wanted to play there and it’s about time to do it.
Q: What’s the basic set list makeup?
A: It’s everything. I did that last time, and I’m doing it again, a lot of different songs I didn’t play last time. … There’s 150 recorded White Stripes song to choose from, not counting the covers we did — there were over 100 covers we did in that band. Dead Weather is two albums, Raconteurs is two albums and all their singles, and a lot of Third Man material and other cover songs and things I’ve been involved with. So there’s a lot to pick from. It’s kind of hard to figure that out. But yeah, it’s from everywhere.
Q: Do you have a distinct sense of what the “solo” label is a vehicle for, as opposed to the band projects?
A: It’s almost a question for people to think about when I first did it the last album: “Oh, this is called Jack White now.” I think maybe some people might say, “Well, what was the White Stripes?” I produced all of those albums — Dead Weather, Raconteurs, White Stripes, this. In one sense or another, they’re all my albums, because of that. It’s sort of like a director who directs films. Sometimes a director stars in a scene, or is a main character like “Citizen Kane,” or sometimes you’re just a director. So in a way they’re all my records. We just call them different things. We could have called the Dead Weather “Alison Mosshart and the Dead Weather.” We could have called the Raconteurs “Brendan Benson and Friends.”
What you choose to call something sort of trips people up in a way. Billy Corgan can go out and call it Smashing Pumpkins and it’s a different scenario than if he calls it Billy Corgan, even though it’s the same people. It’s what you’re telling people it is that has a lot to do with it. It’s kind of interesting that way — that old vaudeville top billing name situation is still very effective with people’s concept of what it is.
But I have a lot of things about myself — I would never go out with the “White Stripes” with some other drummer. (Laughs)
Q: So each of these projects does take on its own personality in your mind.
A: I can say, well, I wrote a song like “You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket” in the White Stripes and it’s very, very me — it’s 100% me. I think maybe Meg didn’t even play on that song. It makes sense for me to play that with whoever I want to, whenever I want to.
Something like covering “Jolene” was very me and Meg, which I wouldn’t bother touching again. It shows itself. Some things feel right, and some things don’t. “Blue Veins” from the Raconteurs, we tried it once playing solo, it just does not work. It’s really only for the Raconteurs. I mean, I wouldn’t touch the songs Alison really sings in the Dead Weather, for instance. Things kind of make themselves evident with what makes sense.
It’s a whole new zone. I’m always starting over again. Started with the Raconteurs all over again. Started with the Dead Weather all over again. Each one of those things, I’ve gone to playing the small club and built it back up again. It’s really not what you’re supposed to do. (Laughs) It’s supposed to keep going with that band that people are digging and take it as far as you can.
But shaking things up has always been good for me.
Q: Is there more flexibility with the solo work, in terms of getting to use certain instruments, and crafting songs in a way you can’t in a band format?
A: For sure. It’s dangerous for me. Because I’ve always been limited in my brain about putting things together. But it’s very open when you’re just calling the thing quote-unquote “Jack White.” That name on the bill kind of means, well, what’s going on there? Is this a one-man show? Is this 15 people standing behind you, or three people standing behind you? What can you do with it? So I really have to constantly think about how to attack certain songs and how to present it in a certain way.
I’ve always gotten bored with people who just have these five boring people standing behind you that learned your album and play it exactly like it is, and you have these nostalgia moments onstage. I want to move forward and take it to some newer place.
But luckily, I think, because of Third Man existing, a newer kind of album like Wanda Jackson’s record, where I put a band together for her — a big band with a lot of people — that production attack really paved the way for me to do my own thing. I knew what we can do with strings or horns or seven people in the room, and what’s good and bad about it.
Q: A track like “Lazaretto” — it’s almost like a Jimmy Page kind of production to me. It’s got that organic sizzle running through it, that real rock thing, but there’s also the aspect where it’s been shaped in the studio, with sounds sliding in and out.
A: Yeah, thanks. You take a drummer like Daru, who’s really hip-hop based, and he’s really providing a structure of hip-hop to a song like that. It’s a very hip-hop song that somehow by the end becomes a bluegrass song in a lot of ways. And there’s punk synth and garage-rock guitar and all of that mixed in. Every 10 seconds, it feels like a different sound, without losing its main goal.
And it has another trick of mine that I’ve always tried to push into certain songs, like maybe “Seven Nation Army,” where there’s no chorus. It’s very hard to write a mainstream, appealing song without a chorus. And I take that challenge on really heavily — don’t do it, don’t do it, can you get away with not doing it on this song?!
And “Lazaretto” is a really interesting one too because a lot of people with the record label at Columbia, and the radio people, said it’s great, it’s an obvious single, but it ends with music and you’re not supposed to do that with radio. You’re supposed to have vocals all the way to the end of the song. It’s a big no-no at radio, because it makes people want to fade out the song. But no one’s been fading it out. People have been letting it play all the way through, which is shocking to me. I thought, oh they’ll definitely fade out the fiddle solo. (Laughs) But it’s worked out all right. The DJs, on their own, are believing in that moment.
Q: When you go in to create a record like that, do you already have a conception of “I hear a fiddle here” or whatnot? Or does that happen more spontaneously as you go, maybe trying things and discarding?
A: I’ve been in other scenarios where people are working on records and they’ll say, “Well, that’s good and I want to put fiddle on here, but we’ll do that next Tuesday. We’ll send them the song, let them practice, send them the charts.” Mine is more like: Oh, wow, Fats Kaplin is here today — he plays fiddle and he also plays mandolin. What can I do with Fats on this song? OK, let’s try that. Maybe it won’t work. If it doesn’t work, just don’t use it. But he’s here, let’s try it right now.
If I told him, “Come on Tuesday and here’s the track we’re working on, see if you can think of something,” he’ll go and practice like any musician would, and he’d come with a different well-prepared scenario. I mean, that fiddle solo at the end of “Lazaretto,” that’s like — “OK, and after that: Fiddle solo, here we go!” And that’s immediately what he did, and that’s what’s on the record. The first try. You don’t always get lucky with first tries, but when it does happen, it’s magical.
Q: There’s a lot of piano here as well. You’re writing a lot on piano these days?
A: Mmm-hmm. Always. And also, unlike the Dead Weather, we don’t have a piano player with us. Dean (in the Dead Weather) does the guitar and keys, but it’s more guitar-based, because that’s what we do live in a room together. And the White Stripes, I would write on piano or acoustic guitar, and then sometimes I’d perform it that way and sometimes move it to electric. Now we have a couple of piano players in the scenario all the time so that would happen a lot.
It grounds a lot of things when it’s a guitar and a piano. Over the years, you’re going to say, God, it’s a shame you have to have certain songs with these roots in them. When you can stray farther away, it’s very interesting — it just appeals to less people. Sometimes you do that it’s really worth it and sometimes it’s not. But it’s compelling.
When we made that guitar movie with Jimmy Page and the Edge, it was: What’s up with this instrument? Why is this instrument so important to everybody? Why do we need this instrument to get us involved in ideas and poetry and thoughts and metaphors? We need that thing we’re all comfortable with. We like to see somebody on stage holding that. In India, it would be seeing somebody onstage holding a sitar, to help us get there. It’s common ground, I guess. And I think piano is super, super common ground for the world.
Q: What is you relationship with your guitar these days? You’ve said there are times now when you feel like you have to play it (because it’s expected).
A: Yeah, there’s times… I mean, really, I’m still a drummer in my head. And these are all alternates: OK, I’ll play guitar because nobody else in the room is going to do it. That’s my mindset all the time, with wanting to make things happen. I’ve said before: I’m the guy when you walk into a restaurant, the hostess will ask, “how many people,” I’ll look around and nobody will say anything, and I’ll say “Table for six.” Why do I have to be the one to say it? I just want to sit here and let someone else. So all right, I guess I’ll play the guitar.
I was starting with Brian Muldoon when we started the Upholsterers. I wanted to play drums, but he’s a drummer. When I played drums, it was really hard to find people to come over and play guitar and sing and write songs together. So that turned me into a songwriter that way, just so I could be able to play with other people.
Q: Do you still get that charge of plugging into that jack and hearing that crackle?
A: Yeah, it always feels good. It’s really energetic. It feels dangerous and illicit to plug into an amplifier. Something feels dirty about it, always. I don’t know where that comes from. Because people are scared you’re going to play too loud when you’re first starting out or something. (Laughs) But it’s definitely an abrasive moment. It’s not like sitting down at a harpsichord where anybody and your grandma will be happy to hear what you’re going to do. It’s a little scary mentally.
Q: One of the hooks with the new album was your tapping into the old writings you found. What did you discover about that 19-year-old guy?
A: Sort of like I was saying about that Wayne State moment earlier — having the whole world in front of me, inklings of what I could do. But not enough experience in life. Social experiences in high school, they get you ready for how harsh the world can be. But it’s not really enough to sit down and write a novel about. They weren’t great writings or anything, they were just initial ideas from a youngster, but I thought it would just be interesting to collaborate with myself.
I was in a strange position because I’d written music that I hadn’t written vocals for, for months. So I had to figure out before I walk in to do that, where am I coming from now? I’m not from the same place anymore; this is a new scenario for me. And I thought, OK, work with yourself, teach your younger self how to write a song, how to twist metaphors and make them into something compelling for more than just you, but for other people, how things can have triple meaning.
Anybody can go out and say, oh, this is a song I wrote from my heart about something I experienced that’s bad for me. That’s not that big a deal. But to take it to another level where it’s not about you, but about anybody, and anybody can get something from it that’s very interesting, that’s hard to do. It’s a lofty goal. But that’s what I was trying to do.
Q: A song like “Alone in My Home,” I think it’s easy for people to read it as, “This is Jack White telling us what he wants.” That simple interpretation people will tend to make.
A: Yeah. As an artist, you take things from your environment, and there’s going to be a style coming out of your environment. Like that song, it has nothing to do with me — but the notion of being alone in my home is very, very hard for me. Because I grew up with nine brothers and sisters. I grew up with madness around me all the time. So whenever I’m by myself in a hotel room in Japan, it’s very hard for me.
But there are scenarios in my life where I create family when I can, and I try to encourage family all around, and there’s times where I have to be by myself. I probably could have a hip-hop-style entourage of 40 people coming with me to the club or whatever, and I don’t do that. And I think sometimes maybe I should. (Laughs) It just makes things easier — if you don’t like being by yourself, maybe just don’t do it ever. I haven’t learned that lesson yet.
But that was the notion I had, you can take that sentence, “alone in my home” — it rhymes, it has the same syllables, it has a couple of different meanings, and anybody could relate to it. Some people are happy with that — “Thank God everyone’s going, peace and quiet for myself.” Other people say that’s my biggest fear. So it can have double meaning.
Q: I think “Three Women” is a song people are going to read a lot into as well.
A: (Laughs) Yeah.
Q: There you have the out that you’re reinterpreting someone else’s work. But you’re also reinterpreting it in a very specific way, with specific place names. Should we be reading anything into this song?
A: I think, yeah, you kind of read “Who’s singing this?” If it was Pete Townshend, he’d be saying Brighton and London. If it’s Jack White singing, he’s gonna say Nashville and Detroit. When Blind Willie McTell sang it, he said Macon and Atlanta. That was the notion I was giving there: This is who’s singing it.
When I did a Blind Willie McTell song on the White Stripes, the line “All these women won’t let Willie McTell rest,” I changed it to “All these women won’t let Mr. Jack White rest.” It’s the same idea — it’s sort of like I found myself singing a Blind Willie McTell song, like I had done 10 years ago, and why am I doing this? I’d written this other music that had nothing to do with three women, but I just sang that line as a placeholder, and then I ended rewriting the whole song, and it became about perspective, about who the singer is, who Blind Willie McTell is, and reality was for the blues. How much of it is something that never really happened to any of these people?
And the listener can take it to that place, and even narrator of the song is saying, “I know what you’re thinking — what gives me the right to even SAY this to you?!” It’s sort of like a great opening thing for the whole album, and then the next line is: “I know what you’re thinking — what gives YOU the right to walk in here and immediately make judgments without thinking first?” And that’s a great way to — laughingly, for me — to start the record off, because it sort of sets us all on the same zone. Like, don’t confuse the narrator with the notion.
Q: You’re warning listeners to set their expectations aside as they go in.
A: Yeah, yeah. It’s like where I said my name in the White Stripes’ Blind Willie McTell cover, this time it’s like putting all the pressure on the listener.
You can trip people up. A title like “Three Women” is provocative. But look at R. Kelly’s song titles, Jesus. I mean, not much room for interpretation! (Laughs)
Q: Explicit in both senses of the word. And there’s your new song “Entitlement,” which I think for some people will be: “Here’s Jack White being the curmudgeon.” Is that it, or do you have a more nuanced take?
A: I think it’s harder, when you’re… maybe the sound of voices is where that comes from, for me. The sound of voices of teenage kids at the mall now, the way those kids sound when they say “like” every three words now. And you go back to how kids sounded in the late ‘60s, and in the 1920s maybe, when you hear old recordings. And what are people going to sound like 20 years from now, and how is the Internet going to affect that?
You start with something like that. And you think, I don’t want my kids to say the word “like” every two words, and how can I help them not do that? And then you can start thinking about what kids think they have a right to as a human being — and what they really do have a right to as a human being. What do we have a right to? It seems like from day one we’re told pretty explicitly, either through religion or society, which things we have a right to and which things we don’t, and we have to figure out that for ourselves.
And the hard part about that song is it’s two people talking to each other, but it’s all sung from one voice. I tried for a second to have a girl singing half of it, but then I didn’t want people to think it was a male-female thing, so I took that out of it. And just had it be, well people will have to figure out who’s talking here. Because the words don’t make sense if you read one line and the next line seems to be contradictory.
But I think if anything, it’s a sort of a heavier thought about modern times. Entitlement is sort of the disease of modern times. You didn’t have that problem during the Depression, that’s for sure. So if I’m here right now, it felt like the right thing to sing about for a second.
Q: A lot of people will read it as a cultural judgment, because I think it’s a sentiment that a lot of people share.
A: Yeah, they can. I played it for Jack Lawrence, bass player for the Dead Weather and Raconteurs, and he said, “Hell yeah!” when he heard the end of it. “Finally, a song that’s saying something to me.” I wasn’t looking for that reaction from him, but that was interesting and compelling to hear that. You don’t really hear people saying much anymore, except about themselves.
It can be an interesting exploration. I talked at length with Paul Simon about that song, trying to find out what he was getting from it, what he thought was powerful and didn’t. It’s interesting when you write songs if you can talk to another songwriter and get their take on it, everyone will attack it in a different way, you know.
Q: What was his take?
A: He comes from a school of “sneak the medicine in the mashed potatoes,” which I’ve done a lot. And I think this one I just wanted to force the medicine down someone’s throat a little bit. And that’s a more dangerous place to be. Because yeah, you can be called a curmudgeon or whatever, there’s no doubt, when you take that kind of chance. Dylan has always been good at not really saying it very often, but letting you make it yourself. But that’s OK.
Q: Yeah, I think it is one of the more straightforward lyrical deliveries you’ve done.
A: Yeah, I mean the title is “Entitlement.” If I was looking at that, I’d, “Oh, I want to hear that song first!” (Laughs)