I bet you are wondering who this is with the blue hair and boating jacket. In fact he’s a well known rock musician called Jack White, a man famous and loved for his quirky creativity with bands such as The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. He doesn’t usually look like this.
Jack, like David Bowie, seems to morph now and then. He started out as a lover of early blues and country, playing a lot of acoustic, wearing denim and looking scruffy, became quite punk, did some suave crooning for a while and then… went to sleep after his last album came out in 2018.
I had quite forgotten about him when suddenly I stumbled upon this amazing new video while researching material on You Tube. I didn’t recognise Jack in it to begin with, the dominant color being blue rather than Jack’s traditional red (and white).
But this is far more than a change of image and color scheme. While guitar is still his weapon of choice, Jack is going more techno musically and it is wonderful to see. We had a glimpse of what was to come perhaps with his song Sunday Driver, released in 2018. And Jack hasn’t been idle the last four years. He has two new albums out soon, Fear of the Dawn on April 8th and Entering Heaven Alive on July 22nd, and he is soon on tour again. I can’t wait!
Thank God…if there is one. You see, people are always saying that Rock is dead or at least dying as a musical genre. They say it’s all been done before. The contemporary band Airborne sounds just like AC/DC and Greta Van Fleet just like Led Zeppelin. Here in Phuket we keep hearing the same old tired songs from 40 years ago. I cringe now every time I hear the opening chords of Smoke on the Water or Zombie. Jack does things not done before.
The fact is, Rock will die without bold, imaginative and perhaps quirky songwriters like Jack White who will take a risk and try something different, saying “Damn the crowd!”.
Love him or hate him, laugh at him or take him seriously, Rock needs people like him to survive.
And if you love Rock and are concerned for its future, you do too.