What’s in an entrance? Five minutes separate the arrival of Brendan Benson
from that of Jack White. In theory, the two frontmen of the Raconteurs
should have a lot in common. Both hail from Detroit. Both have bodies of
work that attract intense devotion from their fans — White, of course, with
the White Stripes; Benson as a solo practitioner of febrile powerpop. If
this afternoon is anything to go by, both share a fondness for grenadine and
Coke.
For all of that, though, one important difference remains. While White, 31,
has sold rather a lot of records, Benson, 36, remains something of a cult.
To reference a song by XTC, one of his favourite bands, Benson’s senses are
working overtime in a bid to get comfy with all this. His old record company
sure never used to book him into New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel. “Man! Am I
the first here?” he half-jokes. “That’s not cool.” Eschewing small talk, he
disappears.
By the time he returns, Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence — the sometime rhythm
section with the Chicago garage-rockers the Greenhornes — have appeared.
Finally White arrives, which is when you really start to feel for the
perpetually self-conscious Benson.
Perhaps we’re witnessing the results of new fatherhood — White’s supermodel
wife Karen Elson recently gave birth to a baby girl — but alpha-male charm
billows off White in alarming quantities. Barely any time passes without him
unleashing a high little machine-gun laugh, both at his own jokes and at
other people’s. Flipping open his laptop, he plays the just-finished video
to the title track of the band’s album Broken Boy Soldiers, before entering
into a conversation about the relative merits of Cheers and Frasier.
“Frasier,” says Benson, only for the rest of the band to opt for Cheers. “No,
you’re right,” he says. “Of course it’s Cheers. What was I thinking?” White,
Keeler and the otherwise silent Lawrence find this hilarious.
If I want this bonhomie to continue, it has been suggested that I proceed with
caution on the S-words — “supergroup” and “side project”. Which is fine. I
have a theory that the Raconteurs’ album bucks the cliché that this is
White’s side project. “Really?” says White. “Let’s hear it.”
I point out that the White Stripes — with their strict dress code and esoteric
blues-rock shoutings — sound far more like the side project of a famous
frontman than the Raconteurs do. It’s effectively as though time’s arrow is
going backwards and this is actually White’s first band.
In precisely the duration it takes for White to point out that Time’s Arrow
happens to be one of his favourite books, a tiny cloud of distress descends
upon Benson. “But do you realise what you’re doing? You’re thinking in terms
of Raconteurs and White Stripes! You’re forgetting the two other main
components of the band!” That’s what I’m not doing, I counter. I’m saying
that this is the proper band! Benson frowns sceptically. “I think that
everyone thinks this is a Jack White side project.”
White attempts to mollify him. “But don’t you think that idea is going away
now?” he says. “When people see us live, they get what we are. I would agree
that it was people’s first inclination, and I can’t really blame them for
thinking that because I would have definitely had preconceptions." The
night before our rendezvous the band played their first New York show
together at the Roseland Ballroom. As befits four friends who have moved to
Nashville just so they can be near each other, the joyous synergy was
palpable from the sustained opening chord of Intimate Secretary. White takes
the compliment, albeit with reservations. He is concerned that people might
read too much into the fact that he seems happy on stage.
“People are assuming that the White Stripes is somehow painful for me, or too
great a burden. But I love the constriction of the White Stripes. It really
makes my brain do what I want my brain to do. If you see me laugh at a
Raconteurs show, it’s because I’ve got time to laugh — because someone else
is playing second guitar, and I can watch him play.”
“There you go,” interjects Keeler impishly. “He’s laughing at Brendan.”
“He’s been laughing at me for years,” intones Benson drily.
Certainly the two go back a long time. Benson and White were familiar faces on
the Detroit indie scene before the promise of a major-label deal prompted
Benson to up sticks for Los Angeles. In the six years that it took him to
extricate himself from his Virgin contract and follow up his debut album One
Mississippi, Benson had seen Jack and Meg White soar to universal acclaim
without even having to leave Detroit. Frustrating? “You wonder whether you
should have chosen a different route, sure,” Benson concedes. “But the
bottom line is that the White Stripes were famous because they wrote good
songs. You can’t take that away from them.”
Not least because it might dissipate his perpetual air of consternation, I
point out to Benson that his songs were good too. “Oh yeah,” he says, as
though the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to him.
“Hey now, let’s not make this a White Stripes bashing,” Keeler deadpans.
Momentarily failing to register the joke, Benson seems mortified. “No, no, I .
. .”
“Jack’s sitting right here,” says Keeler.
“Hey now, remember,” urges White. “You guys made a pact — never when I’m
around.”
Finally, Benson regains his thread: “At the time, I thought I was going to be
the next big thing.”
“And he wasn’t the only one,” says White. “Everyone in Detroit sat around
wondering why it was taking so long for Brendan to get famous, from the punk
rockers to the Brendan wannabes.”
White is not ashamed to admit that — as a self-employed upholsterer in the
mid-1990s — he was once among the latter. Though you would struggle to
locate a single bluesy note in Benson’s lysergic pop canon (think more Mr
Blue Sky than Mr Blues Guy), the feeling has been mutual. In 1999 the two
even played a Detroit gig where they covered each other’s songs. “I had
forgotten about that,” says White, “until recently, when a fan gave me a
video of the show.”
It was only six years later, with the addition of the Greenhornes’ rhythm
section, that this alliance blossomed into something more formal.
Having used Keeler and Lawrence on Van Lear Rose — the album he co-wrote and
produced for the country superstar Loretta Lynn — White tracked down Benson.
Within minutes of their first session together, the group had written Steady
as She Goes — the Top Five hit that sounded like Nirvana covering Joe
Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? The rest of Broken Boy Soldiers
swiftly followed.
With passing nods to early Deep Purple, Wings, the Raspberries and Led
Zeppelin, the zeal with which the Raconteurs plunder their sources has
resulted in the most straight-up enjoyable album any of them has played on.
The only thing is, you have to be careful how you tell them.
“That Deep Purple thing,” Benson frets. “Do people think that we sit there in
the studio thinking: ‘Hey, let’s use a Hammond B-3 because it sounds like
Deep Purple’? Everyone assumes that this stuff is thought-out and
premeditated, and that when you present something to the public you have
considered all the theories and options.”
Do we, the public, think that bands really do that? Surely, we don’t. “I think
they do,” White insists. “On the latest White Stripes album I didn’t play
much electric guitar and it was a big deal to some people. But I honestly
didn’t notice until it was out and people pointed it out to me.”
Well, it’s all just part of rock discourse, I suggest. Nobody imagines the
Raconteurs were lifting bits of records by Deep Purple for inspiration. It’s
just that maybe, on an unconscious level . . .
“The truth is,” White says, “if a person comes up to you and says, ‘You guys
are great, man. You’ve got that Deep Purple sound down to a tee’, you’re not
gonna like it. Because, at the end of the day, nobody wants to sound like
anyone else.”
In a commercially successful, critically acclaimed, internally harmonious
band, mere niggles expand to fill the void. I tell the Raconteurs as much —
but then an odd thing happens. Benson, who has been quiet for several
minutes, finally speaks up: “Wai-wai-wai-wait! You say it’s all part of the
discourse and it’s all in fun? You’re totally right. That’s what I talk
about with my friends when I listen to Wings records, and I’m thinking of
how Paul McCartney was influenced by the Everly Brothers. But when you do it
in public, and you’re already up against this retro thing, it’s a touchy
subject.”
I’ll say.
“And then you have people who are really retro,” adds White. “In hip-hop you
use a drum machine, and that instantly makes it cutting edge. They’ve been
doing that for 25 f***ing years. I mean, that s*** is f***ing old.”
“There’s retro and there’s retro,” ponders Keeler, who throughout this entire
conversation has been grinning like an indie rock Cheshire cat.
“Logistically, it’s difficult to steal from the future.”
So what’s the next Raconteurs album going to sound like? “Deep Purple,” says
White, quick as a flash. “Mixed with a little Cat Stevens. But using drum
machines.”
This time, Benson laughs as well.
The single Broken Boy Soldier is released on Oct 23; the album of the same
name is out now, both on XL. The Raconteurs play Liverpool Academy on
Friday, then tour (www.theraconteurs.com)
Storyville — free Raconteurs podcast
This week, the Sounds podcast features more of Pete Paphides’ interview with
the Raconteurs in New York, as well as music from their excellent Broken Boy
Soldiers album, including their forthcoming single.
Listen to the band talking about their forthcoming tour with Bob Dylan, plans
for a second album and their name-change dispute with the Australian band of
the same name.
For all of which and links to more than 30 previous Sounds podcast episodes,
including Beck, Scissor Sisters, Elton John and Corinne Bailey Rae, go to
timesonline.co.uk/ podcasts or iTunes.
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