A close encounter with Jack White
Songs focus on death
Blunderbuss by Jack White is in stores today.
The inside of Jack White’s Third Man Records in the warehouse district of Nashville is like a rock club as designed by Vincent Price. Alongside skulls of sabretoothed tigers and hippos is a fully stuffed mounting of an elephant, surrounded by various horns, heads and heirlooms from both the ani- mal kingdom and the history of rock.
White, 36, who founded the White Stripes in 1997 and has gone on to front both the Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, is one of rock’s great eccentrics and to meet him inside Third Man Records is like meeting Willy Wonka inside his Chocolate Factory.
The place is an absolute theme park; even the tiles alongside the back wall match the White Stripes’ redand-black colour scheme.
It’s hard to overstate the nine-time Grammy winner’s effect on the last decade of music and culture, but the White Stripes helped usher in the popular look and feel of indie garage rock that saw the rise of everyone from director Michel Gondry (he handled some of their best musical videos) to the Black Keys. White, famous for his minimalist esthetic, falsetto and love of the blues, is finally releasing an album under his own name. The new disc is called Blunderbuss and White has invited media from all over the world into his lair to catch a performance and talk about how it was made.
“A lot of songs centre around the idea of death,” says White, whose personal style very much reflects the old country esthetic, sporting a vintage baby-blue suit during his concert and wearing a minimalist black-on-black-on-black jeans, boots and T-shirt ensemble today. “The White Stripes sort of died and one of my brothers and sisters died, but I’m from a family that made jokes on my father’s death bed and I’ve never been afraid of death. Sometimes I wonder why these ideas crept into the lyrics, but you don’t see it until the whole piece is done.”
Blunderbuss, which White wrote and produced, features him singing and playing guitar and piano, and some of the musician’s most personal lyrics to date. White is recently divorced after a six-year marriage to Karen Elson, the mother of his daughter, Scarlett Teresa, and son, Henry Lee.
That breakup inspired White’s writing on the new album. Track after track features stories about being disillusioned by love.
“No matter how much I try to write a song about characters and the interactions they’re having, no matter what I do, I can never make it not come from my own experiences,” says White, whose new record features tunes called Love Interruption, Trash Tongue Talker and Hypocritical Kiss. “As an artist, you’re a victim to your environment. I’d like to make up a scenario, but my writing ends up having a lot to with things I’ve felt and observed.”
Between fronting rock outfits — and both the Raconteurs and The Dead Weather are still active bands — White has also been busy resurrecting his influences from Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame. He’s produced albums for Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson, and signed Jerry Lee Lewis to a record deal. Recently, he cut a single with Tom Jones.
“The Loretta Lynn album happened at the height of Elephant blowing up and when people thought I should get out on the road and tour the album — that would’ve been the smart business move. I knew working with the greatest female songwriter of the last century was exactly what I should do,” says White, also a novice inventor, who makes a guitar in the documentary It Might Get Loud and sells a portable record player at his record company gift shop. “When I was in Detroit, people didn’t care that the Supremes went to my high school, but Nashville respects its music history and I captured something beautiful from these artists. It’s a big deal to me that Hank Williams used to live on my street.”