Jack White: How He Built an Empire from the Blues - Hardcover

Hasted, Nick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1468313770 ISBN 13: 9781468313772

Publisher: Omnibus Pr & Schirmer Trade Books, 2016

Synopsis

Jack White is the "coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time" (The New York Times Magazine). White is best known as the frontman for The White Stripes, where his guitar virtuosity and shrieking rock vocals outstripped speculation about his relationship with his drummer and ex-wife Meg White, who he often insisted was his sister.

Not content with launching a blues-rock revival in the early 2000s, White went on to collaborate with famous artists, including Loretta Lynn, Tom Jones, and Bob Dylan. In 2006, White founded The Raconteurs with Brendan Benson, and in 2009 founded The Dead Weather with Alison Mosshart. He starred in the Academy Award-winning film Cold Mountain, married (and split up with) supermodel Karen Elson, and rejuvenated a flagging Detroit art scene by making his hometown the headquarters of his record label, Third Man Records. But White is also a master of reinvention, trying on personas as they fit his changing tastes and priorities. The real Jack White--born John Anthony Gillis in 1975--can be difficult to pin down.

Citizen Jack is the only book yet to tell the full story of the 21st century's most influential rock star, based on interviews from people close to White, including former bandmate Brendan Benson and Third Man artists such as Neil Young and Seasick Steve. Not only that, it is the definitive history of the Detroit scene in which The White Stripes first flourished. No other book goes as deep into the lore of Jack White and The White Stripes.

About this title

Review:

Considering The White Stripes were one of the world s biggest bands when they split in 2008 and Jack White s long been one of music s most intriguing enigmas, it s barely believable that this is the first in-depth book about him. British journalist Nick Hasted does a thorough job charting White s life through his Detroit childhood and adolescence in the city s roughhouse rock underground, the rise of the duo he started with ex-wife Meg White, parallel projects such as The Raconteurs and several hairy scrapes, concluding with the successful solo career which enables his Third Man operation to thrive in his Nashville compound as an ultimate fantasy playground.

Although White s presence relies on cut-and-pasted press interviews, Hasted crucially visited Detroit to soak up the city s surreal ruins and track down friends and former band-mates. He excels on describing the mysterious blues legends who sent White on the path which led to being able to release the whole mythical Paramount catalogue in ornate cabinets.

White emerges as a complex, private figure, battling demons but relentlessly fixated with the lost blues world which, according to his friend Dylan, ruled before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces . A fascinating tale, told with insight, detail and evocative eloquence

--Kris Needs, Record Collector

...a probing and insightful account of this modern blues experimentalist s public face, and an engrossing study of how one man s success can tear a tight-knit rock scene apart. ... Part road trip diary as Hasted colourfully tours run-down Detroit and new-money Nashville in White s footsteps, and part deadly drinking game if you neck a finger every time he mentions an old blues act of no-mark Detroit scene band, the book recruits an extensive cast of White s associates to prise at the mask, exposing intriguing details... A craftsman tracing an enigma. --Mark Beaumont, Classic Rock

Jack White is a carefully cultivated mystery except when Jack White is an earnestly unscripted jackass. ... Bless Nick Hasted for trying to and pretty much in the middle distance succeeding at writing the first ever comprehensive biography of the many-headed and controversial hydra that is Jack White.

Did White have any input on it or involvement with it, or did he give approval of it? No, no, and I bet he s got it tacked to a dartboard somewhere. ... Hasted rather expertly stacks all the interview quotations on top of each other [he] wants to let the heavy quotation structure flesh out a portrait of White on its own ... [He] spends a worthwhile number of pages on digressions about the musical contribution of Son House or the philosophy expounded by Dutch neoplasticism.

Perhaps the clearest value of this biography is that it helps a new generation work backward toward some great roots. Young people may be deeply familiar and still following along with White s myriad creative projects, but their appreciation of old Detroit may dead end back at Eminem, or they may not know why bold symmetrical coloration is such an appealingly structured pattern. ... What factoids it is possible to gather about the man are in some ways the least interesting aspect of this book. Hasted is working in a territory that is both more free and more constrained than the usual biographical fodder. You can t get at any type of realism when the subject himself will barely permit impressionism. Jack White may open the floodgates, but it s unlikely to deliver any results better than this treatment of Citizen Jack

--Megan Volpert, Pop Matters

About the Author:

Nick Hasted writes on music, movies, books, and comics for The Independent, The Guardian and Uncut magazine. He is the author of The Dark Story of Eminem and You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks.

About this edition

• Publisher: Omnibus Pr & Schirmer Trade Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1468313770
• ISBN 13: 9781468313772
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296