Jack White
Jack White (born John Anthony Gillis on July 9, 1975 in Detroit) is an American rock musician, producer, and actor, best known as leader of the rock duo The White Stripes.
==Career==
White's initial professional music experience came in the early 1990s as a drummer in the Detroit country-punk band Goober and the Peas (now Blanche), and later in The Go, 'The Upholsterers', and 'Jack White and The Bricks'. Upon forming the White Stripes with his then wife Meg White, Jack White switched to guitar and vocal duties while getting Meg started on drums. Jack and Meg White were for a time rumoured to be brother and sister, and did little to set the record straight finding the mystery to be good publicity. More recently they have publicly acknowledged the true nature of their relationship.
The critical and popular success of the White Stripes opened up new opportunities for White; in 2003 he was well-received in a featured role in the film Cold Mountain and performed several songs in traditional acoustic style for the soundtrack of that film. He appeared, with Meg, in one of the shorts comprising the Jim Jarmusch directed 2003 film, Coffee and Cigarettes. Following this, White produced Loretta Lynn's highly acclaimed 2004 album Van Lear Rose, singing with her on the duet "Portland, Oregon". He also produced Whirlwind Heat's debut album, Do Rabbits Wonder?
Currently, White is touring the fifth White Stripes album, Get Behind Me Satan, as well as working with local singer Brendan Benson to create a new collaboration album, under the name of Raconteurs.
Personality
White is known for his eccentric behaviour, hobbies, and passions. He is, for instance, interested in taxidermy and collects stuffed animal heads, claiming they make him think about life and judging things. The band dresses only in red-white-black, the three basic and most important colours according to White's conception of simple beauty, and he no longer prepares set lists for his band's shows, for they believe it would ruin the whole natural feeling of their performance by planning it too accurately. White also has an obsession with the number three and all that it represents.
On December 13, 2003, White was involved in an altercation at The Magic Stick, a Detroit club, with Jason Stollsteimer, lead singer of the Von Bondies. He was arrested and charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault. He pleaded guilty, was fined $500 in court costs, and was sentenced to take anger management courses.
To much surprise, Jack White unexpectedly married Karen Elson (who appeared in the video for the White Stripes song "Blue Orchid") on June 1 2005 in Manuas, Brazil, with manager Ian Montone as best man and Meg White as the maid of honor. He used to date his Cold Mountain co-star actress Renée Zellweger, who had married country singer Kenny Chesney in an equally surprise wedding several weeks earlier.
Jack White has frequently referred to The Stooges' 1970 release Fun House as the greatest album ever; He got to put his money where his mouth is when he was invited by Rhino Records to contribute liner notes to the 2005 deluxe reissue of the album.
Producer
Jack produced an album for Loretta Lynn who he discribes as his idol and the best female artist of all time.
The sessions took place last June in Nashville to very little fanfare. "After my manager gave me The White Stripes album that they dedicated to me, we became fast friends" Lynn says at her website. "I love both Jack and Meg. They came out to the ranch for a visit and I cooked homemade bread and chicken n' dumplings. We did a show together in New York City and soon after, me and Jack got in the studio. We recorded it last June and September in Nashville and had such a great time making it. I tell you that Jack White is quite a producer".
The album is called Van Lear Rose. "It's called Van Lear Rose, which is named after a song about my Mommy that's on the album. There's 13 songs and I wrote 'em all" she says.
So will this be a rock album for Loretta or a country album for White? "This album sounds a little different from my other ones" she says. "You've got to have an open mind 'cause some of these songs have a rock 'n roll sound and the rest are just pure country. I've always thought that a song can bring people together".
The album will be released by Universal on May 3.
MTV says...
Leave it to a garage-rocker from the Motor City to show living legend Loretta Lynn what a real country album should sound like.
When White Stripes frontman Jack White came to Nashville to produce Lynn's latest album, Van Lear Rose, he
dispensed with the kind of fancy studios most country artists from the last 20 years are used to. Instead, he set up an antiquated eight-track recorder in the living room of a house and knocked out the album in 12 days. The resulting down-home sound suited White and Lynn — who's released nearly 50 albums since 1963 — just fine.
"I didn't know it was going to be this country," Lynn said, "but it's as country as I am."
White, who dedicated his band's 2001 album, White Blood Cells, to Lynn, invited the country singer to perform with the White Stripes at a show in New York last year (see "White Stripes Meet The Coal Miner's Daughter At New York Show"). It was around that time that he volunteered to produce her new album.
"Why not? What could it do?" Lynn remembered thinking. "Either make it or break it, it don't make no difference to me."
"Just to meet Loretta Lynn is an honor, let alone work with her," gushed White, who produced, arranged and played on the album. "I'd play tambourine on this record if that was [all I was asked to do], I don't care. I just wanted to be in the same room as her."
For a 70-year-old mother of six, Lynn rocks like all get-out on Van Lear Rose, released April 27. While staying country with lazy waltzes and lap-steel guitars, the album incorporates loud, distorted, spacey atmospheres, confrontational percussion-driven melodies, and even a captivating spoken-word soliloquy that plays out like a campfire tale. The amalgam makes for a progressive country album that's rooted in tradition.
And as she's done in the past with tunes like the feminist anthems "The Pill" and "Don't Come A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)," Lynn doesn't mince words. On "Family Tree," she opts not to kick the ass of her husband's mistress because "I wouldn't want to dirty my hands on trash like you."
"I wanted to present each song in the best way possible and bring out the character of each song," White said. "If it was subtle, it needed to be subtle. If she was belting it out, we needed to be intense with it."
"Jack didn't want a polished sound, and he didn't get it either," Lynn added. "He's a great little producer. I see a lot of [legendary country producer] Owen Bradley in this kid. And for him to be so great now, what will he be later on? I think he'll be a greater producer than an artist, and he's already a great artist."
"Portland, Oregon," a duet with White about getting drunk on pitchers of sloe gin fizz and doing things you might regret in the morning, serves as the first single from Van Lear Rose, and it's getting some play at rock radio. White is also expected to join Lynn and her band the Do Whaters (so named by Lynn because they did whatever was asked of them) on tour, and future collaborations are reportedly on the way.
"It's interesting to see how this album will be taken by [rock] fans," White said. "I think a lot of White Stripes fans are already into it. Even if it's just because I'm involved that they check it out, that's all it takes. I wish somebody would've put a Loretta Lynn album in front of me when I was 10 years old."
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