In an interview available now at NPR Music, Jack White talks about his upcoming solo album, Blunderbuss, with All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. The acclaimed and prolific musician sat down with Boilen at the historic Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin, TX, during SXSW (check out Bob’s wristband collection) for an extensive, wide-ranging and candid conversation.
The half-hour video of White and Boilen’s chat, along with photos and interview highlights, can be seen now at NPR Music:
www.npr.org/2012/04/13/150593292/jack-white-how-i-made-blunderbuss
Excerpts follow:
On hearing feedback about his new albums, White says: "When you put something out there into the world there's all these words you kind of don't want to hear, that you hope people don't say. I don't like anything that starts with "re" – like retro, reinvent, recreate – I hate that. It's always like living in the past – copying, emulating. Collaboration. I hate the word collaboration. It's like, if I produce a record with Tom Jones I'm not collaborating with Tom Jones. It makes you think you're up in a cabin writing together. Anyways, I love when you hear different things from different people, then you know you're getting somewhere."
On being in charge of the project, White says: "I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years, where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me. Where I always felt like I'm not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don't want to come off egotistical or like a control freak to tell that piano player to change the rhythm to waltz time now because it will make this thing happen. But now I'm in a position where I own the studio and the people are coming in to work on music. They want to make something beautiful happen and somebody needs to direct it, and I feel like forget all that guilt."
Discussing why he’s releasing the album on a major label, White says: "[Columbia's] history is amazing. They're the first record label. The very first. They invented the album. They have an incredible history. So I always thought if I did a solo record it'd probably be a great idea to do it with them and I just hadn't done one 'til now. Some of my friends say 'why didn't you just put it out on Third Man? You have your own record label, just do it.' And I think the thing is about Third Man is that, yeah, we can put this thing out on iTunes and we can put things out on vinyl. We got those things fine. We can produce tons of them like that, but if you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia. And I really didn't want to do this album a disservice. I ain't got nothing to prove about being indie or anything like that."
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