In response to media reports implying he was angry that a college newspaper leaked his top secret guacamole recipe, Jack White has released a statement clarifying that he wasn‘t angry about the guacamole per se, but about the student newspaper’s—and the profession in general’s—lack of ethics in guacamole journalism. In his 20 years of playing music, he says, he’s never had his tour rider or contract revealed publicly, and that’s what really makes him mad. Besides, that’s not even his recipe. He can’t cook for shit.
In an apparently hastily composed email released through his publicist’s office (subject line: “FOR GOD SAKES!”), White says that the whole guacamole thing was “my hilarious tour managers inside joke with the local promoters, it’s his recipe, not mine…though i wouldn’t know because i’ve never had it.” Besides, he says, “i can’t even make kool aid [,] let alone cook any real food enough to have a ‘recipe’. sorry, i dont have that talent.”
The majority of White’s wrath, however, is directed towards the implication that he was somehow being “difficult” by asking for the items on his rider, pointing out that the majority of the food and drinks aren’t for him at all: “people WANT a rider to be a list of demands that a diva insists occur lest he or she refuse to play a note of music,” he says. “but in reality, it’s just some food and drinks backstage for the hundred workers and guests who have to live in a concrete bunker for 15 hours…what you’r looking for is someone throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get their brown m and m’s, sorry to dissappoint.” (What White doesn’t address here is that the clichéd “no brown M&Ms” demand, according to rock lore, is a test of local crews’ attention to detail, lest they be as sloppy with heavy, expensive, and dangerous lights and equipment as they are with the food.) Also, apparently someone on his crew is allergic to bananas.
Anyway, White says that he has nothing against the students at the University of Oklahoma, and he fully intends to play there again. And if his management or university employees were rude to members of The Oklahoma Daily’s staff, threatening to stop booking shows at the university or asking them to delete pictures taken at the event, well, hopefully that’ll teach them a lesson. “am i dissappointed in young journalists at their school paper? absolutely,” he says. “but i forgive them, they’re young and have learned thier lesson about truth and ethics hopefully…look for real problems instead next time. look for the truth, not fake drama.”