Friday, August 10, 2012

Duff McKagan interviews Jack White


Jack White continues to tour in support of his debut solo album, “Blunderbuss.”

Ahead of his Seattle stop next Tuesday, White hooked up with Duff McKagan for an interview that is featured in Duff’s latest column for Seattle Weekly.

The two discuss a range of creative and music topics, including the art and skill of songwriting.

“I always find it kind of boring to write about myself,” explains Jack. “But whatever happens to you, if you've gone through anything--sort of a literal train wreck in your life, for example--you have to have that inside of you in some way; even if you choose not to write about being involved in a train wreck, it would come out of you no matter what choice you have. So whatever characters I was writing about during the record, I'm giving them these problems. But the problems are only things that I probably have seen or experienced sometime along the way.”

“The funny thing is,”
White continues, “I always think I'm writing about, you know, a couple of characters, but by the end I'm mixing the song and listening to it back and thinking, ‘Oh, now I know exactly what this song is about. I'm the only one who's going to know.’ It's very funny.”

As for “Blunderbuss,” some of the songs came together in unexpected ways, according to White.

“This one was a lot of accidents. We had this song on the record called ‘16 Saltines’ and the riff was [written while] sort of checking the reverb unit and seeing how long the reverb would last,” explains the former White Stripe. “I said record this real quick, and we'll come back to it later."

“These things would not have happened years ago in the studio. I used to really force myself to go in there like, oh, a White Stripes album, or Raconteurs, we got to record this, and we have eight days to do it, and we're going to do it for only $5,000, and have all these limitations to myself. But now that I have my own studio, I can take advantage of those things right now--actually record something off the fly and come back to it. I never would have done something like that back in the day."

Read the full session with Jack and Duff at Seattle Weekly here.

White begins a European tour in Lisbon, Portugal on August 31.


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See also:

VIDEO: Jack White rocks Lollapalooza
VIDEO: Jack White – Freedom At 21
Jack White announces more US shows
Jack White debuts atop US album chart
Jack White debuts atop UK album chart
VIDEO: Jack White – watch full concert webcast from New York
VIDEO: Jack White rocks Jools Holland part 2
NOW: Jack White – live webcast from New York
VIDEO: Jack White on The Colbert Report
Jack White to compose score for The Lone Ranger film
VIDEO: Jack White rocks Jools Holland
VIDEO: Jack White rocks German TV
VIDEO: Jack White – Sixteen Saltines
AUDIO: Jack White – Sixteen Saltines
VIDEO: Jack White rocks Saturday Night Live
Jack White to rock Saturday Night Live
VIDEO: Jack White – Love Interruption
AUDIO: Jack White & Tom Jones cover Howlin’ Wolf