Unplanned magic: A no setlist policy that makes Jack White one of the greatest live acts in history
There was something different about The White Stripes in the 2000s. There’d be something different about them no matter the era. They had a vibrancy that was hard to define—a pop and fizz that made them entirely unique. Forcibly pursuing originality is like reinventing the wheel by making it square; you might stand out, but your active contrivance will never quite roll. In an age where it seemed to be dawning that there was nothing new under the sun, a lot of square wheels rose up, searching for a point of difference.
The White Stripes defied that. They were a well-rounded force, naturalistic to an nth. That became all the more apparent with their live shows. As Hamish Hawk recently told Far Out, they were the best live band of the era. They purred with a sense of poise and purpose on stage. They harnessed the energy of the crowd and delivered thunderous performances that no other act could match. White has continued that sentiment no matter which group he plays with.
And there’s a simple and obviously causational trick behind it all: he doesn’t play with a setlist. “If you say things too far ahead of time, I think you can ruin an idea,” he said in 2012, a time when he was on tour with The Buzzards, an all-male band, and The Peacocks, an all-female band, and he would decide over breakfast who to play with. His aim was to keep things as fresh and frenetic as he could. After all, nothing about rock ‘n’ roll was ever meant to be formulaic.
“If you give people time to prepare,” he opines, “you lose that energy”. So, whether it’s the band he’s playing with or the songs he’s delivering, everything comes down to the night. “It’s the same reason it’s not good to have a setlist on stage,” he told Michael Schuler, “because if you see a list of songs, as a musician, you’re playing drums, and you’re going, ‘Okay, so we’ve got that one next, then we’ve got that one next’, and start psyching yourself into that.”
In other words, when you shun the whims of magic in favour of order, rock loses its roll and becomes a march not a dance. Granted, it is a very tricky feat to fulfil, but White certainly reckons it’s worth it. So, he just calls the songs out on stage. “None of us know. I don’t even know what we’re going to play next,” he says. “So, the energy is fresh.”
This is a method he has lived by since his early days in music. When White was 15, he engaged in an upholstery apprenticeship, but his passion for music was already coming to the fore. He even formed a band with his employer called the Upholsterers and began frequenting the bars, record shops, and music venues in the bluesy Royal Oaks area.
It was in the heart of this neighbourhood that he stumbled into a now sadly defunct restaurant called Memphis Smoke and was fatefully served by Meg White. Thereafter, the Royal Oaks became his permanent haunt and with the Royal Oak Music Theatre literally a few blocks from Memphis Smoke the duo took in every show they could, and destiny seemed to usher them towards The White Stripes. And a sense of spontaneity was in their blood. Passion had brought them together, now passion would propel their shows. Setlists were a thing of the past for White, who, ironically, figured that they were a product of capitalist modernity.
“It was the first thing I wanted to get rid of. I wanted to have that energy to be fresh,” he says. And anyone who thinks that’s a gimmick ought to go to a Jack White show—you’ll be bludgeoned by your own cynical ignorance faster than an anti-vaxer strung up with a bout of brutal flu.
