Raconteurs - Steady As They Go

Well if this was ever a coup for the Skinny: a bone fide Super Hero Rock Star, and his, ahem, trusty sidekick, talking to little (1 year) old us.

The phone lines crackle and hiss (no doubt charged by the electricity of the occasion) as terminally cool troubadour Jack White and 'Boy Wonder' Brendan Benson offer their greetings to The Skinny, but the crackling won't stop and we ask Super Jack if there's anything he can do to help. Then, Jack is gone, presumably (if his reputation's anything to go by) to save all the kids from the burning orphanage somewhere in downtown New York.

Brendan, stoically assures us he'll be back, and attempts to quantify the maniacal fuss that has encircled them ever since this intrepid pair got together to form The Raconteurs. "Yes it's going exceedingly well. It surprised all of us, considering it was something we did on a whim, no real talk or discussion about it. We were halfway through the record without any names for the songs, or a name for the band. It was kinda spontaneous that way."

But what did you really think of Jack when you met him? I mean, the relationship with his 'sister'? The Coke problem? "I just thought he was peculiar. He didn't quite look you in the eye. His thoughts were going, you could tell, a million miles an hour. Your typical artist type."

Suddenly, Jack's back, laughing heartily, if a little uncomfortably, but magnanimous to the last - finally intervening with "I really liked him [Brendan], he seemed great first time we met. Unusually nice for a Detroit scenester (laughs). There's a lot of coolness going on in that scene all the time so you never know where people are going, you're kind of on guard a lot."

On guard? So the weight of celebrity causes you to be suspicious of your fellow man. That's unfortunate, no? "Well, there are aspects of celebrity you should never get comfortable with. I mean if you feel ok parading up and down a red carpet all the time there's probably something wrong with you."

Indeed! And Brendan, what do you make of the furore that follows Mr White everywhere? "It's interesting to me, that whole celebrity world, that level of fanaticism that people have. Whilst it's strange, I think Jack and I respect each other too much to let it become an issue."

Oh go on Brendan, isn't there just a teeny bit of a rivalry there? "I think it is very much a healthy rivalry. That's what propels the band. It's a great way to write. When you're by yourself it's all up to you to stay interested. For us, it was just friends getting together to jam, and it turned into a record. All the good press and success we've had has been such a bonus." So there was no masterplan then? "Well, nobody said anything out loud, it was just whatever was at the top of our heads. There were no statements made about what the sound should be, or what the songs would be about, it was just a brief taste of what the four of us could come up with when we sat in a room together for the first time."

And what of the cynical hacks who think that this is maybe a project too far, a mere exercise in extending Brand Jack? Jack: "Well, I think there are totally justifiable preconceptions going on about the Raconteurs. I understand them and they don't upset me in that way because we're all from bands other people have heard of. We had people's ideas on what it would sound like before they heard it, now they've got ideas of what they want it to be now they have. There's other factors, like you mentioned the celebrity thing, and that's a part of it. But I think the more we go out and play the more people hear the music and that problem disappears, it just becomes another band. When the new Raconteurs album comes out there won't be as much talk about all that stuff; it'll be a simply a Rac (sic) record."

So there've been no ego clashes along the way? Jack: "I don't think so at all, ego clash is like 'I want this part to be like that' and the other person disagrees. We've never really had that before. So we've only been happy that 'Wow, someone else wrote the bridge instead of me'. We're content to share the load. Nobody's fighting, everyone's got their own band and projects; Jack [Lawrence] and Patrick [Keeler] have the Greenhornes, I've got the White Stripes, so we don't have to do something like this, and why would we do it for just our own individual sake? I think that's the psychology of the situation right there. Me and Brendan wanted to write songs with another person, we'd never been part of a songwriting team, that's the appeal for us."

Is this true Brendan, I mean, you're the only one not really 'playing away from home' as such? "Well, I work solo anyway, so it's good to have that kind of sounding board, people to bounce ideas off." Would you have done it any differently in hindsight? Jack: "No because I think the first album from a band should be like that. It should be immediate, shouldn't be well thought out. I think a lot of bands nowadays are given too much opportunity and too much money for their first album - to explore the studio and all this bullshit. These bands should maybe learn to play their musical instruments first, and go and cut it live rather than try and make Sgt Pepper first time out." Naming names? "No, I just think the industry as a whole is allowing too much leeway. In the older days it used to be 'get in there and record your album then get the hell out'."

Ah, the sepia-tinged old days. Much better than now of course? Jack: "Well, sometimes you can pop on a record which is so digitally up the wazoo that you can't bear it. I'm not personally telling people what to listen to. If it's so pro-tooled and computerised it's just a turn off. Newer stuff is harder for me 'cos of the computer tones, they bug me. Just like when watching a movie; I don't like computer generated special effects. Like 'King Kong'. I'd rather see the stop-action animation of the old movie, even as fake as that is it still looks a lot more interesting and beautiful to me. I think the same thing with musical tones."

Both are happy to agree this is definitely a long-term project. Jack: "We're writing a lot of songs and we're anxious to record another album. I don't know what we're going to do first, our other bands' albums next or the Racs. We haven't really made up our minds about that. It's too far ahead of time. But we've got momentum and there's a lot cooking right now."

As the Dynamic Duo prepare to head off into the sunset, the last word goes to Brendan, who is perhaps never going to be given enough credit for his role in orchestrating the project, "It's a tough decision to decide what to do next. I think the best thing is to let the music happen the way it wants to happen. After that, we'll see."