“All the elements”: Jack White on the album that was everything rock should be
Rock ‘n’ roll is one of the hardest styles of music to wholeheartedly define, as depending on what era of the movement you’re looking at, the artists who pioneered it continuously change. For instance, some could consider Jack White‘s music as the pinnacle of rock, and that’s true, so long as you’re looking at his era. If you were to ask White himself, he would give you a range of different answers about various decades and moments in time.
“I mean, it’s hard when you get into rock ‘n’ roll because it’s so, I mean, there’s Little Richard songs and Jerry Lewis songs, Gene Vincent songs that are so important and that people don’t realise how important they are and how they just changed the world,” he said when discussing some of his favourite rock artists. “They changed the world in a kind of, a flashy way, but also in an underground way where they’re being played in people’s bedrooms and in garages.”
It begs the question, can you ever establish who the pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll is? A lot of people would say that it’s Elvis Presley, given he is often dubbed the king of the genre, but then others would argue that his songs were covered and his style was taken from other artists; Elvis just made a name for himself as he was more palatable for a mainstream audience with backwards prejudices.
As such, is the defining person in rock ‘n’ roll someone who came before Elvis? Potentially, but then you’re also left with the problem that those artists set the foundation, but rock music is now considered so much more than that; it’s made up of guitar solos, flamboyancy, anger, satanism and attitude.
The fact is, there is no answer to who the pinnacle of rock ‘n’ roll is because rock ‘n’ roll within itself is constantly shifting and, therefore, impossible to define. Jack White offered what he thinks a rock ‘n’ roll icon should be, but his answer is up for debate. “I really like The Stooges album Funhouse,” he said. “There’s no hits on this record at all, but it contains to me all the elements of what rock ‘n’ roll is really about.”
Iggy Pop, the lead singer of The Stooges, certainly embodies a style of rock music that many people believe defines the genre. He had a good singing voice, not technically proficient, but packed with energy and emotion. Equally, his stage performance was laced with elements of not giving a fuck which are now considered absolute musts within the genre. He got this style from Jim Morrison after seeing him drunk on stage one day and becoming infatuated with the audience’s anger.
“I loved the performance. Part of me was like, ‘Wow, this is great. He’s really pissing people off, and he’s lurching around, making these guys angry.’ People were rushing the stage, and Morrison’s going, ‘Fuck you. You blank, blank, blank.’ You can fill in your sexual comments yourself,” Pop concluded. “The other half of it was that I thought, ‘If they’ve got a hit record out and they can get away with this, then I have no fucking excuse not to get out on stage with my band.’ It was sort of the case of, ‘Hey, I can do that.’ There really was some of that in there.”
