I watched the documentary It Might Get Loud recently, which made me certain of something I’ve long suspected: Jack White is the most interesting musician around today. Now, for many years I struggled to reconcile my enjoyment of The White Stripes with my skepticism about Jack White’s attempts to strictly control their image. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I was skeptical of White as that I’m skeptical of anyone who works to affect a highly counter-culture, highly artistic image. (That’s why I don’t like hipsters, especially hipsters I see at the MoMA.)
So, as White insisted, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Meg White was his sister and not his ex-wife, and as he performed on stage with a plastic guitar from Montgomery Ward as though he were still a penniless bluesman, and as he advertised the fact that the White Stripes avoided computers and recorded all of their music on analog equipment, and as he appeared in Cold Mountain, and as the story came out that he had to have surgery on his hand after wrecking a Porsche he was driving around in with Renee Zellweger, and as he went on to marry a model, it became difficult for Black Beard, who is a member of the generation that grew up with—what would today be called—the unquestionable “realness” of rock stars like Kurt Cobain, to view White’s machinations as anything more than a shoddy attempt to forge the unforgable: authenticity.
Then at some point my perception shifted, and I’ll defer to friend-of-the-blog McKenzie Davis for an articulation of the direction my sensibilities moved:
“While I acknowledge the feasibility of your interpretation,” he wrote in response to an email from me containing the above paragraph, “it is, as you suggest, naïve to conclude that Jack’s inconsistencies reveal a deep flaw in his character. To me Jack’s perhaps futile attempt to control his image is not indicative of a lack of ‘authenticity’, but, rather, proof that he’s a self-aware artist seeking complete control over his art. We should think of the work Jack does projecting his persona as a continuation of his performances. Unlike other musicians, his pursuit of perfection in his art does not end in the recording studio, or even on stage; he has invented a character for himself—the humble, old school bluesman who has nothing beyond the songs he sings. This commitment adds a different layer to the complexity of the music he’s creating; one that I find immensely fascinating and much more of an artistic expression than, to use your example, Kurt Cobain, whose indifference to the concept of presentation has been labeled authenticity, and whose drug addiction and lack of intellect (i.e. big corporations and people with money are evil, etc.) have always caused me to believe that he created interesting music despite himself…”
Okay, I basically agree with McKenzie’s assessment of Jack White being a character that is created and maintained. In It Might Get Loud there does seem to be a difference between the White shown on an abandoned farm in Tennessee and the White in the film studio with Jimmy Page and The Edge. And the truth is that I preferred watching the Jack White on the farm. I preferred the character. In fact, the scene in which White builds an electric guitar out of a piece of wood, two nails, a wire, and a glass bottle was more interesting than any of the scenes in which the three guitarists play together.
But, I disagree with McKenzie’s disparagement of Cobain. The interest I have in White’s image manipulation is not a universal predilection. It’s rare to find an artist who is concerned with projecting a specific persona, but who is also so talented that their persona doesn’t matter. White belongs in this category, but there are few others. Cobain wasn’t concerned with controlling his image, and it didn’t matter; his talent was overwhelming. And that’s really what matters.
See, for all of this talk of White’s persona and image control, it’s his music that compels me to write. I still remember listening to the White Blood Cells album for the first time in 2001 (a friend who was onto the White Stripes early bought the CD, and we drove around listening to the album on the expensive sound system in his car). And I remember walking around Boston on the day Icky Thump was released, happy because it was such a nice day and because the album caused me to feel what I can best describe by borrowing Eudora Welty’s phrase ‘inevitable surprise’. Welty said the best ending to a story is one that is unexpected but which is also so perfect that once revealed the reader is sure that the story couldn’t have ended any other way, and indeed, the first time I listened to Icky Thump I was completely surprised by the distinctions pursued in each song, but the album was done so well that I couldn’t imagine any of the choices White made in his writing or performance being any different. And, for me, that’s the highest praise one can give to an artist.
