The Raconteurs’ Jack White and Brendan Benson: ‘Shockingly, it’s still seen as a novelty when a woman plays an instrument’

Exclusive: Back with their first album together in over a decade, White and Benson talk to Alexandra Pollard about returning to the studio, ignoring Donald Trump, and the sorry state of rock

Brendan Benson: ‘It's strange to be an accomplished musician in this world where it's not valued’ (Press)

Let it be known that Jack White has absolutely no interest in being relatable. The former White Stripe, current Raconteur, and proud owner of 12 Grammy Awards would never be caught dead, for example, taking a selfie in a supermarket. “To show everybody, ‘I’m just like you, here’s me at the grocery store buying eggs’? I don’t admire that. I think it’s false. It’s sort of like the phrase, ‘So and so doesn’t take themselves too seriously.’ I’ve always hated that. I 100 per cent want Michelangelo to take himself incredibly seriously.”

The 43-year-old – sipping sweetened coffee in the closed-off quarters of a Shoreditch hotel, his Raconteurs bandmate Brendan Benson alongside him – is intriguing company. Laid back, loquacious and with something of a schoolboy sense of humour, he says a lot of things that sound at least twice as haughty written down than they do leaving his mouth. Meanwhile, 48-year-old Benson – who is also a solo artist, writer and producer in his own right – is friendly and unpretentious, though he has a jaded side that creeps out as the conversation unfolds. The two get on well, bouncing off each other just as they do in their music, where Benson’s bright, indie-pop sensibility rubs up against White’s rocky brashness.

It’s been over a decade, though, since they played together. The Raconteurs formed in 2005, with The Greenhornes’ Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler making up the rest of the four-piece. They released their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers, a psych-laced garage-rock roar with a thumpingly catchy lead single in the form of “Steady as She Goes”, in 2006. Less than two years later, they released a follow-up, Consolers of the Lonely. And then a decade passed.

“The band never broke up,” insists Benson. “No one ever said that, ever thought that, ever felt that way.” “The only time I ever said that was with The White Stripes,” says White, “because it felt like that question was gonna keep coming up.” It probably would have done. The White Stripes, for a while, were one of the biggest bands around – a coolly enigmatic husband-and-wife duo (though they liked to masquerade as brother and sister) who eschewed modern technology to make lo-fi, guitar’n’drums anthems such as “Seven Nation Army”. The pair divorced in 2000, but kept making music until 2007.

In the years that followed, White formed The Dead Weather with The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, recorded a Bond theme song with Alicia Keys, contributed to Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade, released three solo albums, and put out “600 records” with the label he founded, Third Man Records. Still, there was no word from The Raconteurs. Benson spent the decade “producing and writing with other bands and kind of not doing my own thing very much at all”, but he wasn’t chomping at the bit to get the band back together either. “We didn’t wanna put out a record that was gratuitous I guess. If we were gonna make a record, we needed it to be a really great record.”

The band put out their debut album ‘Broken Boy Soldiers’ in 2006 (Press)

Help Us Stranger, a playful, barbed collection of bluesy rock, is worth the wait. Packed with itchy riffs and virulent melodies, it is almost defiantly old school, a no-frills rock’n’roll record with none of the edges smoothed out. It’s also them at their most political. “Thoughts and Prayers” is part existential meditation, part protest song – “I used to look up at the sky/ Up at the beautiful blue sky/ But now the earth has turned to grey/ There’s got to be a better way”. It’s hard not to read the title as a political dig.

“That phrase has become meaningless,” says White. “It’s a thoughtless phrase. Basically an insult. Somebody asked me the other day if the song is a reflection on Donald Trump’s administration, and in a way it is, but I think nobody should do him the service of even mentioning his name anymore. That should be the new thing everyone does.” “He’s like the guy that runs out on the baseball field during the game,” adds Benson, “and the camera cuts away, because you don’t want to encourage that. That’s how it should be.”

“The more you make a noise, the more you’re solidifying people who support that,” says White. “Giving him something to rebel against or whatever…” But then again, I say, if you’re silent in the face of these things… “Exactly. So you cannot win.” Benson huffs. “You see how f**ked we are, right?”

There’s a slight whiff of defeatism about the pair, though it is cheerily expressed. Ask Benson about the state of rock, for instance, and he’ll be particularly pessimistic. Usually, he says, a re-birth happens every 10 years or so: after punk came grunge, and after grunge came garage rock. But it’s been 18 years since that scene emerged, and as it has fizzled out, nothing has come around to replace it. “There’s no good rock,” he says. “I mean, well, there’s very few good rock bands. I hear a lot of music that I think, ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that this person’s really sold on it, and I don’t think they’ve studied, and I don’t think they can compose the simplest thing. I think this is all very computer-based. You can plug in, you can piece it all together. Anybody can do that.”

White agrees. Back in the Seventies, he says, it was difficult to get to the point where you could even make an album, and most musicians could only dream of recording in a state-of-the-art studio like Abbey Road. “Now, a state-of-the-art studio is your living room.” But is that not democratising? “It’s good, but it’s almost like saying, ‘You don’t have to go to church, you can just pray in your home.’ That’s a good thing, but at the same time, there should also be some sort of temple that people revere. It’s hard to explain. Maybe people who listen to music wouldn’t understand as much as someone who records it and produces it. There’s just something about the sacredness of it that has to be held onto, I guess.”

White insists he’s not trying to be didactic. “I think that’s something people have always misunderstood about me over the years, [they think] that I’m trying to preach to someone: ‘You shouldn’t record on Pro Tools, you shouldn’t record in your living room.’ That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that for a young artist, if no one else is putting restrictions on you, you should put those restrictions on yourself. You have to make your own guidelines.”

Benson also sees limitations as a good thing. “I grew up where there was structure and confines, and you worked within that and that was how you really expressed your individuality,” he says. “Now, you go and throw a piece of cheese on someone’s head and it’s like, ‘Hilarious! Genius! It’s f**king brilliant!’ No, it’s not brilliant. It’s not genius that it’s viral. There’s no high art. Not that there’s none, I shouldn’t say none.”

Benson’s a little worried about his son, who’s nine years old and spends most of his time watching YouTube videos of people playing video games. “These gamers that play, and people watch them play, no one’s achieving anything, there’s no time or stopping cues, it’s so weird, it’s just this freeform… bleurgh. It’s weird. It’s scary. Where are my son’s heroes? Are my son’s heroes gonna be these go-nowhere, do-nothing gamer losers?”

“Influencers are a great example too,” says White. “Who the hell are you? To influence other people? Wait now, what? How old are you?” “It’s scary,” nods Benson. “It’s strange to be a performer, a musician, an accomplished player, in this world now where it’s not valued. I can play an instrument, so what? No-one f**king cares. My son wouldn’t say, ‘So what?’ but he doesn’t necessarily know that that’s really f**king cool. It is really cool.”

It is a relief to hear that they do hold out some hope. This year’s Grammy Awards ceremony made sure of that. “There were three women playing guitar – St Vincent, Kacey Musgraves, Brandi Carlile,” says White. “St Vincent is an incredible guitar player. We were watching, a group of us, and a girl, a female musician in the room, said, ‘Awesome, show young girls this is cool.’ I’ve worked with more women than men in my life. I love the dynamic. I don’t know what it is. Shockingly, it’s still seen as a novelty when a woman plays an instrument. It shouldn’t be that way. Everyone has been doing this since the dawn of instruments. You see hieroglyphs of women playing lyres. It shouldn’t be a novelty.”

“It’s mainly rock’n’roll, right?” says Benson. “Rock’n’roll is mainly masculine, male-dominated. Maybe men just gravitated to guitars more than women?” I can’t see why that would be. “Yeah I know, I can’t either.” “It could be all kinds of subconscious things,” suggests White, “about… it being a phallic symbol thing.”

But St Vincent, Carlile and Musgraves didn’t just stand out to White for their gender. “It was great to see that, not just for women, and not just for guitars, but for playing an instrument and doing it really well.”

“I love that s**t,” agrees Benson. “Super talented people, they’re otherworldly, they’re like aliens, I love it. I want my son to feel that way. With the gamers, I’m not sure he’s getting goose bumps.”

Help Us Stranger is out now