Jack White is the most adventurous man in music today. Not just because he’s playing for three bands simultaneously or because each of his incarnations are different from each other, but because each of them creates good music.
This year, the White Stripes will release a live album and there are rumours of a solo album. In this interview, he discusses the last decade, turning into a superstar, and Jay-Z.
Before 2001’s White Blood Cells, The White Stripes were still an indie band. And Jack White didn’t think that his band had mainstream potential either. He says, “A hundred years had passed since people could sort of determine the beginning of the blues, and there was an illusion in my head that a new blues was emerging in the scene that we were from — that bands like the White Stripes and the Soledad Brothers and people like that that were bringing a new take on the blues. That was enough to compel me to keep going and going and going, but I had no illusions at all about the mainstream ever thinking it was interesting.”
Jack says that he was never worried about being famous exclusively, but made sure that he was famous only for his music. He says, “I never cared about the whole, ‘I hate to be famous. I'm going to go brood somewhere because people bought my record.’ I've never subscribed to that. I've subscribed to the idea that fame just for the sake of fame is pretty disgusting and worthless so it became about being famous for the right reasons.”
He adds: “And that was what the hardest part for a couple years there — determining if what we were doing was good or if it wasn't. People coming up to you like, ‘Yeah, the Backstreet Boys sell a lot of records, too. What does that mean?’ So we were confused on that level. We didn't really know what we were doing, if it was going to stand the test of time or if people would look at the band as nothing but novelty.”
