A scattered few may have predicted that The White Stripes would become international rock stars based on their first two catchy, witty neo-garage albums, but even those early supporters probably doubted that Jack White and his ex-wife Meg would be able to maintain creative momentum for long with a sound based solely on drums, guitar, and the occasional piano. Yet after flirting with platinum-level sales with their third and fourth albums, 2001's rangy White Blood Cells and 2003's gritty Elephant—and after making a brief, pipe-cleaning stylistic detour with the moody 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan—The White Stripes have returned to blistering, riffy blues-rock with renewed confidence and skill on their Warner Bros. debut, Icky Thump. The album also finds them experimenting with distorted organ, bongos, and bagpipes, as well as bringing back Jack White's more overtly comic side. White recently spoke with The A.V. Club about writing and recording Icky Thump, the importance of spontaneity, and why a man who likes to control his music and his image frequently puts both in the hands of director Michel Gondry.
The A.V. Club: You reportedly spent three weeks in the studio working on Icky Thump, which is the longest The White Stripes have ever spent on an album. What did the extra time do for you?
Jack White: I haven't been able to figure that out yet. Sometimes when something sounds better, you play it back and you start wondering. Is it the new engineer? The new microphone we never used before? The type of tape stock? Or are we just a little bit more experienced than we used to be? I think this record sounds… the songs sound better, you know? And I don't know if that had anything to do with how much time we spent. Mostly the reason we spent more time was that we got really sidetracked while we were writing. In rehearsal, we got called away to do all this other stupid junk that was unavoidable. So we ended up needing more time in the studio to just finish writing the songs. I guess it's all for the better, though, 'cause we're happy with the finished product.
AVC: The record still feels very loose, though. Not like you've worked the songs over and over.
JW: Oh, good. Probably because, like most of our records, it was half-written in the studio right before we pressed "record." That always lends a sense of urgency and immediacy to the songs, to do it in that fashion. I like to work under those conditions.
AVC: The song "Rag And Bone" is mostly a spontaneous-sounding dialogue between you and Meg. How much of that was written ahead of time, and how much did you improvise?
JW: The music was written at my house, but all the dialogue was written in the studio. We actually have three different versions of that song, and I was worried that the version we have on the album now was a little too funny, and that people wouldn't get the metaphor because it was just too humorous. For a while there, we went back and forth deciding if we should put it on the record. At the last second, we said, "Eh, forget it, let's see what happens." And I'm glad we did, because people have responded to it really well.
AVC:The White Stripes have always written a lot of funny songs, though you rarely get recognized for that.
JW: I just get worried that sometimes when it's really up front, it overwhelms the longevity, the timelessness of the song. Sometimes if you hear a joke, "Ha ha, it's funny," but the next time your friend tells you the joke, you're like, "Eh, I already heard that joke." That's what worries me. But I think this song might just escape that.
AVC: "Funny" often seems to be a matter of performance. You've done some acting. How would you compare performing as an actor vs. performing as a singer?
JW: Well, it's different in front of a camera. I've learned from watching playbacks on a movie set that what you think is fake in your head comes off as not enough on camera, a lot of times. You almost have to overdo it, in this overly, sort of Broadway, large-gestures kind of way to come off as being realistic on camera. It's strange. I think a lot of people think, "Well, bad actors are just people who don't act like themselves. They don't act real enough, they act fake." But it's almost backward. You almost have to act really fake to come off looking real.
Musically, though, you're a character and you're singing a song. If you're not your own character, you're the character in the song, most of the time. Even blues musicians, a lot of them who were the most realistic, at times, they were singing a song and portraying a character in the song. There's something to be said for getting involved in the emotion of a song, too, with the characters.
AVC: A lot of your songs are written in second person. Do you have a certain person in mind when you write a song that's written to an unnamed "you?" Or are you sort of aiming into the ether?
JW: I tend to write about other people's problems more than my own. I'm just saying, if everyone in the room put all their problems on the table, you'd take yours back before you took anyone else's in exchange. You know that phrase? I think that may be true for real life, that you might want to take your problems back, because they're the ones you can manage. But when it comes to writing songs, my problems are the least interesting to me. I'd rather get interested in other people's situations, you know, and attack it like a psychologist.
AVC: Last year, when you were talking about the Raconteurs album, you said that you could tell that songs you wrote for The Raconteurs weren't White Stripes songs. Does a White Stripes song have certain parameters?
JW: Oh yeah, lots of them do. There's an overall structure of simplicity, and it revolves around Meg's drumming style. And it can't be beat. We can't do those structures in The Raconteurs. We couldn't do them if we wanted to, and that's the beauty of Meg. In The Raconteurs, there's so many more components, so many more personalities involved. If you get another person in the room, you're dealing with something else. It's a different kind of collaboration, you know?
But yeah, the parameters of the White Stripes… you know, 70 to 80 percent of what we do is constriction, and the other 20 to 30 percent is us breaking that constriction to see what happens. And when we do break the rules, like, "What if we do 16 tracks of vocals on this?", it's something we obviously can't do live. And people notice that, because of the structure of the band. "There's two people here, and this song is explosive and crazy, there's no way they could do this live." Not the case with The Raconteurs. People listen to it and don't think about it at all. They just go, "Oh, there's a bunch of guys in this band, someone must be playing that synthesizer." No one says "How the hell are you going to play 'Broken Boy Soldier' live? You guys don't have a pump organ onstage!" But they say it to The White Stripes. It becomes a debate, which is great, that people realize that those rules are in existence. That's a great thing to recognize.
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