The Dead Weather Speak To Clash

Oooh, we do like to tease you…

The new issue of Clash Magazine is out now, featuring a pretty in-depth interview with Jack White’s current musical concern, The Dead Weather. The Nashville-based band also features The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, of course, alongside Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence.

The band’s debut album ‘Horehound’ – nice – is out on July 13 via Third Man, and you can read our review of it HERE.

Here, we’ve got just a snippet of the interview for you, to whet the appetite and entice you into your nearest newsagent of repute to part with your pennies for our far-glossier-than-the-‘net magazine. Questions were posed by Clash ed’ Simon Harper, who braved some pretty extreme weather in Nashville to bring us our cover feature…

How exactly did this band come together? I know The Kills toured with The Raconteurs - was there a moment this thought popped into your heads like, ‘This could work’?
Alison: I just had so much fun on that tour. I just got on the bus with them and came back to Nashville because he [Jack White] said he had a recording studio, like, ‘Why don’t we do something?’ That’s kinda how it happened really.

When you start new projects like this, is there pressure on you to see it through and make it a marketable group, rather than just doing something for fun?
Jack: I think the pressure is to not see it through, really. I mean, of all the things I do and all the things I’m involved in, I think probably the one thing that most people want - label-wise or fan-wise - is for me to go back and be in The White Stripes and just keep doing that. So what happens is I end up pressuring everyone else to let me see it through: ‘Let me do this band right now. I have to. It’s what we need to do.’

How do you balance being prolific, being able to go into the studio and put songs out, without feeling like you’re just giving too much away?
Jack: It’s tough at times. Sometimes you’ll see people who’ll put out way too much music or too many films or something like that and you kinda want them to slow down, but at the same time, you know, the artist isn’t at the service of the people one hundred percent, so you have to do what you have to do. If you’re just doing things to stay afloat, or to make vehicles to propel celebrity or money or all those reasons, then I think it’s really bad. But if everything’s about music... I mean, like these records here [points to Third Man 7”s] that I’ve been working on the last couple of months. I mean, obviously they’re not going to be big sellers - they’re on vinyl, for God’s sake. They won’t get worked at radio, they won’t have videos for them, so they’ll exist in their own realm. I hope those kinds of things come off to people like it’s not a vehicle for anything other than the music itself. I mean, look how simple they are: ‘What can you do? You’ve all got the same background (cover art), you have the same recording equipment, let’s see what you can do.’ In one sense, I almost don’t need to have anything to do with them. I like this; it’s a good spot to be in.
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Read our exclusive interview in the new issue of Clash Magazine – click HERE for details.