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  • 2 days ago
We talk to Jack White, Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence about writing tunes, forgetting who does what, and how they're only in the music business for financial gain (we think they're joking).
Transcript
00:05I'm Allison's friend, Jack White, I'm LJ's friend, Dean, and I'm Allison's enemy, Jack.
00:15I know these guys. I'm Allison.
00:19Almost immediately after the first album came out, we were playing shows and writing new songs, sort of accidentally and
00:27very quickly as we went out on the road.
00:30So we started accumulating things pretty fast, not thinking we'll make another record in seven months or something.
00:36We started recording when we got home on breaks from the first album tour, which was only a few months
00:42back.
00:43But by the end, we'd had enough for an album. So we talked to the lawyers and they said that
00:48no band had put out two albums in ten months since 1967.
00:54So we immediately became more interested.
00:57Yeah, it felt very much like we couldn't remember who wrote the song.
01:03At the end, we were sort of writing the credits for the album and nobody could remember who wrote what,
01:06which shows how intertwined we all were.
01:09And I mean, when I say intertwined, it's basically me taking credit for stuff LJ wrote.
01:14So that's the way I look at it on a publishing side of things, which is sort of a financial
01:18way, which is the main reason I'm in the band. Financial gain.
01:24Still pretty collaborative. You know, like Jack was saying, we did a lot of it on the road, so writing
01:30at soundchecks or backstage.
01:33All four of us write in this band, too. I mean, not music. We write great letters, but when we
01:39get together, we try to incorporate that into the music. We call it lyrics.
01:44Starts the Scrabble.
01:46Starts the Scrabble game and pretty soon we have an album. No, but we, this is the first band I've
01:50been in where all four members write.
01:51I gotta go get a nice hand today.
01:52Because all four members couldn't write, say, in the Weishites because there's only two of us.
01:58That shows where we were coming from, to not even be able to really tell who wrote what at the
02:03end when you're looking back.
02:06And it's also, nobody brought songs to the band, to the studio, to the sessions. We wrote in the room
02:12together.
02:13And, you know, my studio is set up where, you know, there's no computers and there's no, you know, laptop
02:17internet surfing while we're all there to work.
02:20You know, everyone's working on music, so it's not like one person's doing an overdub and the rest are out
02:25having a cappuccino or something like that.
02:27Although that does sound pretty delicious. But most of the time, we try not to do that.
02:33If you sit down and say, like, this is our second album, we have to make it sound like this.
02:37I've never done that. I'm actually kind of really interested in that idea.
02:41I've never said, well, this has got to be a departure from where we were.
02:46I don't know. I've always let just the songs come out and you work on them and you decide later
02:51if it makes sense.
02:52If you purposely say, I'm willing to make a soul record or a country record.
02:57I don't know if they actually could succeed at that. Maybe some bands do, I don't know.
03:01But this was just, the songs kept coming out and then we just kept nurturing them and working on them.
03:06making them into something that made sense. We also had no intention of making an album,
03:11which is a great place to be when you're working on songs. You're sort of working on each song by
03:15itself,
03:15like it's a single or an ace out of a single or something.
03:20They're good because we kind of wrote them on stage, you know, a lot of them.
03:23I guess we sort of wrote them when we wanted more stuff to play on our set during the first
03:27record.
03:28So, I don't know.
03:29The sound of the studio, the construction of the studio actually made this band exist.
03:34I don't think we would have this band if that had not been built.
03:38Because we came home from a tour together, the Rackin' Tours and the Kills,
03:40and we just kind of stumbled into the studio ready to collapse from this last tour.
03:46It was so grueling and we ended up recording all these songs.
03:48If we had booked a time in some professional studio in Nashville,
03:52we probably would have said, ah, let's do that later in a couple months,
03:55almost next time I see you or something.
03:57And then we wouldn't have the problems that we have now.
04:03Maybe it would have even been better. Maybe I shouldn't have built this studio.
04:07The three of us will be having a great time and then Allison will show up and is like,
04:11here we go, here's the dead weather. Put your ties on, boys. Let's get our act together.
04:16Here comes mom. And...
04:20Here comes mom?
04:21Yeah, that's what we say.
04:22And you always say, what are you guys talking about?
04:24Oh, nothing, nothing.
04:25What are you guys looking at?
04:26That's what we were saying.
04:27What are you laughing about?
04:28What's going on?
04:29Yeah, that's what you say.
04:31We explained it to her.
04:41What's going on?
04:42What's going on?
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