Jack White Thinks Rock Is ‘About to Explode Again’
The lack of traditional guitar-based rock bands on this summer's upcoming festival circuit has been one of the season's main talking points. But Jack White isn't too worried about it. In a new interview, he sees it as part of the cyclical nature of the music business.
"Rock ‘n’ roll needs an injection of some new young blood to really just knock everybody dead right now," he told KROQ's Kevin and the Bean (via Stereogum). "It think it’s brewing and brewing and it’s about to happen. And I think that it’s good. Since rock ‘n’ roll’s inception, every 10, 12 years, there’s a breath of fresh air and a new injection of some sort of what you could I guess call 'punk attitude' or something like that, a wildness. Things get crazy and then they get crazy for a couple years, and then they kind of get subtle, and then you’ve gotta wait for the next wave to come through and get people really excited and screaming about it again."
One of the reasons White won't declare rock dead, as Gene Simmons famously did four years ago, is because as the head of his own record label, he's exposed to what's coming down the pike. "We see it at Third Man all the time, a lot of young rock ’n’ roll acts," he noted. "And I can tell in the last couple years it’s definitely different than it was five years ago. So I can tell something’s about to explode again."
White will be doing his best to keep rock alive when his new album, Boarding House Reach, is released on March 23. He's already released a pair of singles, "Connected by Love" and "Corporation," and he'll begin a tour that kicks off in his native Detroit on April 19.