When Jack White talks about playing drums, he does so with more than a hint of
someone fondly addressing an old friend he hasn’t seen in a while. “I always
knew I’d come back to drumming at some point,” he insists as he sits in a
midtown Manhattan hotel. “It’s just taken me a minute to get around to it
because I’ve been so busy with my other adventures.” In truth, that “minute”
is nigh on 20 years and the other “adventures” include conquering the rock
world with a guitar strapped around his shoulders for both the White Stripes
and the Raconteurs, not to mention racking up dozens of guest spots and
production credits for everyone from Alicia Keys to the Rolling Stones. But
now White is back playing the instrument that started his love affair with
music as one quarter of Dead Weather, a snarling blues-rock outfit with a
formidable musical pedigree. Aside from White’s substantial skills behind
the kit, they also boast the strapping bass work of his fellow Raconteur
Jack Lawrence and the Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, who
adds wonderfully uncouth touches of guitar and keyboards into the mix.
Fronting this aggressive-sounding ensemble is Alison Mosshart, the Kills
front woman and hip style icon, who uses her permanent pout to inject a
sexual charge.
Such is each member’s prowess in their respective roles that it’s enough to
make you think that Dead Weather were hand-picked and brought together by
some kind of scheming music svengali attempting to create an all-star
rock’n’roll dream team. The disappointing truth, however, is that this bona
fide super-group began as nothing more than a drunken lark one night last
summer in White’s home studio in Nashville. Having become friends during a
lengthy American tour on which the Kills opened for the Raconteurs, White,
Mosshart and Lawrence decided to record a one-off cover of Gary Numan’s
synth-pop classic Are Friends Electric? just for kicks. But the trio rapidly
began to write their own songs, too, while Fertita (who was lodging chez
White at the time) simply happened to wander into the studio and began
throwing in his tuppence worth. A three-week recording session was
subsequently booked in the fleeting period that all four had time away from
their numerous other commitments, and from that emerged their White-produced
debut album, Horehound. “It was like a really good accident,” recalls
Mosshart, clearly still bemused by just how fortuitously Dead Weather came
together. “We just liked playing together, so we carried on doing it and all
of a sudden we had a record.” She breaks off for a second and looks at
White with a look that is almost accusatory: “…it was so quick”.
It’s hardly surprising that Mosshart feels like she’s been swept off her feet;
such speed and spontaneity have always been central to White’s milieu and,
drummer or not, it is a method he has applied to Dead Weather as their de
facto leader. Even so, it has been a long time since any of White’s projects
have felt quite as rough and ready as Horehound. “When I was writing with
Brendan [Benson] in the Raconteurs, it was more relaxed and poppy,”
continues White. “There was also a lot of structure and craftsmanship to
those songs — which is an aspect of writing that I really enjoyed exploring.
Dead Weather isn’t like that at all; it’s so guttural and dirty and
forceful. It’s great to be able to have that juxtaposition.”
Mosshart also confesses to be revelling in the chance to spend time away from
the more regimented song-writing process and mechanised rhythms that the
Kills work with: “The way that Dead Weather plays is honest. The record
sounds exactly the way it does when we play. Who does that these days?
That’s what I want from my bands… to know how good they really are.”
Not that Dead Weather are necessarily world-beaters just yet, but her broader
point is easy to understand and is underlined in practice when I see them
play later that evening at the city’s Bowery Ballroom venue. It’s an
excitingly loose set in which they take as much glee in fluffs and errors as
they do when they reach their striding peak. They mask nothing and it’s
proof that Dead Weather’s central motive is to try recklessly to capture a
moment rather than to strive meticulously for perfection. White, for one, is
noticeably frustrated at how rare that trait has become. “All I can think to
do is to fight against technology,” he says. “We’re at a time in music when
everything is nailed to the f***ing grid. It’s the age of digital perfection. People just make their songs perfectly in tune, have the vocals
in perfect pitch, and it seems like the only way to be punk and rebellious
is to not do that and record and perform realistically. To make something
real and soulful. It’s the same in the movies, I think. Like when you’d see
a train go off a cliff or something, in times gone by you’d think, ‘Holy
hell, they really made a train go off a cliff.’ But now, of course, there’s
no way they would do that. You’d be shocked if someone said that it was for
real.”
White Stripes fans will, of course, have heard his Luddite-like rhetoric many
times before, but now it’s something that White is preparing to spread even
further, through his newly opened Third Man HQ in Nashville. Not only does
the complex in Nashville house operations for the Third Man record label, it
also provides an eight-track recording studio, a performance and practice
stage, a photography studio, dark room, a vinyl-only record store and is
quite deliberately located close to a local pressing plant. Dead Weather
were the first band to use the facilities and also made their live debut on
the premises in March — in front of a specially invited audience. White has
designed this ambitious project as a “one-stop shop” for like-minded
musicians to record and release their work with minimal fuss; despite only
being operational for a few months, there are five separate Third Man
projects being worked on already.
Taking into account a comprehensive reissuing campaign of the White Stripes
back catalogue on vinyl (including many out-of-print 7in records) and future
releases by some “big name” acts he refuses to identify, White feels Third
Man could easily turn a profit — practically an alien concept in the current
climate. However, as he explains with almost rabid determination, the main
intent is not primarily to add a zero or two to his already bulging bank
balance, but to restore value to a rapidly depreciating art form: “I’ve been
talking for so long about the importance of having tangible music that you
can hold in your hand, but I also have a responsibility to get my hands
dirty and walk the walk as well as talk the talk. We all sit around talking
about how the music business is in peril and it’s all falling apart; well,
let’s do something about it. I don’t want the next generation of music fans
to think of it as disposable, as just a shuffle playlist you can fast
forward and delete. I think it’s disrespectful.”
With Dead Weather set to tour through the summer and Third Man a going
concern, White concedes that he doesn’t have too much time to devote to the
band that made him famous. The White Stripes remain on ice following the
cancellation of tour dates in 2008, due to Meg White’s reported problems
with acute anxiety, although the duo did briefly reconvene in February to
make an emotional appearance on the final episode of the American chat show
Late Night with Conan O’Brien at the presenter’s specific request. The only
other activity scheduled for the near future is the release of a full-length
documentary about the band’s tour of every province of Canada, due later in
the year. “There will definitely be more White Stripes records,” he offers
by way of assurance. “People got worried when I did the first Raconteurs
album in 2005, but there turned out to be another White Stripes album, too.
I’d like to do another five White Stripes albums in the next 10 years, but
it’ll probably take a minute to get round to that.” White’s elastic idea of
a “minute” means that nobody, least of all Meg, should be holding their
breath. “It’s okay, she’s used to me being busy. When we started the White
Stripes, I was in three different bands.”
But what about the family, I wonder. Where do they fit in to all this?
“Well,” smiles the husband of the model Karen Elson and father of Scarlett, 3,
and Henry, 1. “I’ve been told I have children. I’d really love to meet them
one day.”
It might take him “a minute” to get round to that, too, but he will. He always
does.
Horehound is released on July 13
