You’ve got to wonder what goes through Jack White’s head when he wakes in the morning. Picture the scene: he stumbles out of bed, contemplating the surreal dream landscape that he had just woken from. A cursory glance in the mirror tells him that his hair is, quite simply, far too neat this morning. After a little bit of teasing and a lot of backcombing, he decides on a hat. Parting his Worzel Gummidge haircut on either side of his head, he ensures that his ears are poking out from under his jet black locks.
Following this, he moves on to his morning coffee, all the while pondering the meanings of truth, beauty, authenticity and all that stuff. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? But when Jack White arrives in the GMG Debating Chamber for an audience with The Phil, it is thoughts such as these that start running through my mind. He’s always been so deliciously weird. But this subtle, yet prevailing, quality of strangeness is all the more amplified when you experience White in person, without the diluting effect of TV or Youtube. I find myself desperate to know about the mundane details of Jack’s life, simply because he’s bound to delight me with his perspectives on everyday experiences that I take for granted. I’m itching to know what he wears to bed. Pyjamas Jack? Naturally, they must be silk. Does he watch television and if so, what does he like to kick back to in the evening time? Do you like chicken, Jack?
At the Phil interview on the afternoon of the 18th of October, however, the interviewer decides on a different approach. He first asks him about his childhood inspirations, the posters he had on his bedroom walls as a teenager. “Oscar Wilde”, Jack answers sardonically. Pointed white leather boots and an antique ring on his wedding finger are his two concessions to embellishment in an otherwise all-black outfit. His skin is unnervingly pale – is this real? Fake? Make-up? Like everything else that surrounds Jack White, it’s so hard to tell where the line between realily and illusion lies. His style of speech is rambling and poetic, leaping gracefully from one subject to another. He speaks on such lofty abstract themes as ‘truth’ authenticity’ and ‘beauty’, assuming that the listening audience, in this instance captivated students, will understand unproblematically the nature of these ‘truths’ that he holds so highly in his own life.
For this reason, the interview begins to feel more like a lecture on what White calls “the philosophy of authenticism.” “I always feel I’m looking for truth, for something beautiful”, he tells us. Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, he proposes, are perhaps not as authentic as we would assume. “We could be witnessing the art of their authenticity”, White proposes. All this naturally begs the question of whether White himself is authentic in his music, in his life. “I try to be authentic but a lot of people either don’t know the difference or don’t care.” But couldn’t we, similarly, be witnessing the art of Jack White’s “authenticity”? The image he presents to the world is, after all, highly constructed. The red and white ‘White Stripes’ colour scheme is a case in point. Or perhaps this image is meant to act as an ironic counterpoint to the authenticity of his music: a comment on the inescapable fact that public images are always created and authenticity in this realm is impossible. He certainly seemed to be hinting at this stance when asked what advice he would give to those trying to get into the music industry. “Stay away from the t-shirts and the myspce”, he warns, calling them “things that distract you from being true.” Instead he advises musicians to simply make something they love. “If you don’t love it, how can other people love it.” Perhaps this sense of uncomplicated passion is what he means when he talks about authenticity: it is an emotion he alludes to repeatedly throughout the interview. When asked which of his songs is his favourite, for example, he answers that they are all favourites, “like children”, but refers in particular to the “intention” of a song. For Jack White, if the intention feels good, then that makes the song even better.
The interviewer decides to take questions from the floor and I know exactly what I’m going to ask. As a young White Stripes enthusiast, probably flicking through a copy of ‘Q’ in between homework assignments, I once read that White used to work as an upholsterer in his home town of Detroit. While he worked, he would occasionally sew poems deep into the stuffing of chairs he was working on. This romanticised image so impressed my teenage self (perhaps because I too saw it as something truly “authentic”) that it stayed with me. Now, as an older and more cynical college student, I had the opportunity to ask him about it. Learn from my experience. Don’t ask Jack White about upholstery; You will never get away.
White proceeds on a fascinating, cartoonish romp into the earlier days of a global music icon. White’s Detroit upholstery firm had a colour scheme of yellow, black and white. He had business cards made that featured a blood-covered furniture tack and the phrase ‘Your furnitures not dead.’ He gave out receipts that were written in crayon. He loved this world that he had created for himself: “For me I was living in Japan or somewhere like that, living in a cartoon”, but added that not a lot of people “got it”. He turned to writing messeges and sewing them under the fabric of chairs he was working on. They started off as jokes that other upholsterers would get, such as”This customer is a real jerk.” Then they slowly evolved into poetry. Eventually, he was hiding actual records underneath the covers, including an EP he made with his former band ‘The Upholsterers.’ Many of these records were never found. I’m impressed with these lovingly retold memories of days spent upholstering in old Detroit town and my teenage incarnation is satisfied. Jack White is a man in love with ideas of truth and beauty so that listening to him speak becomes a dreamy, almost ethereal experience. Of course, these lofty ideas are problematic because they are just that: ideas. However that doesn’t take away from the admirability of a world famous musician who’s just trying to create something real, something he can love and be proud of. “I feel like I’m a bad storyteller in real life but I have a better chance in songs”, he tells us. Judging by his interview in the GMB, White is a little hard on himself here. Rather, Jack White is luminous, fascinating, puzzling, both real and unreal all at once: a genuinely original personality in an industry that is becoming increasingly defined by its mediocrity.
