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June 22, 2006
Detroit is not nice to Raconteurs , especially Brendan Benson | GQ Article
The June 06 issue of GQ has a wide ranging interview with the Raconteurs. A compelling read for anyone mulling relocation to the comforts of Detroit, or wondering how broken these boy soldiers really are. [Hint: Brendan Benson got the shit beat out of him for real.]. The GQ website has excerpts of the article online, but Merry Swankster sweatshop army I have transcribed the good parts below.
Benson on the White Stripes early success and the motor city:
“You know, they’d shone the spotlight a little bit on Detroit and I think people were kind of like, ‘Wow, if we can pull together, we maybe can make that happen.’”
Jack White continues and provides a good narrative on the trouble with good intentions:
“The funny thing is, we assumed, a lot of us at that time, that everyone was knowledgeable about other scenes in other towns in rock ‘n’ roll history. I always assumed that everyone was kind of smarter than that, that we all knew the deal and it wasn’t going to go down in any stupid way like it has in other places. But it did exactly that.”
So the scene went sour, but was there a defining last straw?
“Oooh, man,” White says, “I really don’t know. Not really. Not a final one. Just an overall kind of-“Patrick Keller steps in. “Probably more a bale of hay.”
“Yeah,” says Jack. “Bales of hay from the sky.”
“I had a final straw,” says Benson. “I just felt like, You know what, I can’t champion this city anymore-“
“-that leaves you for dead,” says Keeler.
Keeler’s choice of words are meant literally. Benson was jumped and stabbed, in two separate incidents. You can’t make this stuff up.
Benson was at a gas station on a beautiful, sunny Detroit afternoon. He doesn’t know what hit the back of his head, but he figures it was something like a tire iron. While he was still semiconscious, he could hear the guy who had attacked him pretending to offer help…” You okay, man? You okay?...somebody call EMS” – while he rifled through Benson’s pockets, taking his wallet and his phone.Benson was out for a while, and no one came to help. When he came to, all he could think of was driving the couple of miles to his girlfriend’s place of work, though he was in no state to do so. He kept passing out as he was driving, and weaving into oncoming traffic, bleeding down his neck. Though he had driven to his girlfriends’ workplace hundreds of times, he couldn’t figure out how to get there. He kept telling himself to sty awake, to concentrate. Fuck. Got to concentrate.
“It was terrifying,” he says.
He needed eleven staples in his head. He’s sort of okay now, but he’s been having headaches, and his concentration is not so great. And that wasn’t his only recent Detroit wound. A couple of weeks earlier, he had to chase someone out of his house, and when the two of them ended up wrestling, Benson was stabbed in his right shoulder.
“That’s two straws, Brendan,” notes Keeler. “That sounds like two straws to me.”
After the jump, White explains the motivation behind the Coca-Cola advertisement. His awareness of the hypocritical smugness is almost forgivable by claiming a naïve enthusiasm that served for inspiration on the Coke spot. While alluding to the payout, White is careful to point out he is not a billionaire.
Tags: Raconteurs, Brendan Benson, Jack White, Detroit, GQ, Coca-Cola
GQ: Is the Coke ad still happening?Jack White: Yeah, very much so. The problem is, it got leaked before I wanted to present it.
GQ: Do you understand why some people, just hearing that you…
White: Well, that’s why. It’s a bummer that it didn’t get presented in the right light.
GQ: So is there anything you’d like to contextualize about it?
White: No, I just want it to come on television, so they can see it and know what it’s about. People think, ‘Oh, Jack White…Coca-Cola… That means they must have given him a billion dollars, and he’s totally put aside all his morals and virtues to give his soul to this corporation.’ I mean, come on. I’ve got better things to do.
GQ: I presume that there was something about it you thought could be special… The one description you’ve given used the phrase a “along the lines of love.”
White: Yeah-the visual aspect of what this Japanese director put together really touched me. I’ve never seen such a strange interpretation of brotherhood and brotherly love that I saw with this. And it inspired me.
GQ: And you don’t see anything evil per se about helping to sell a soft drink?
White: Nyeee…[makes a kind of equivocal noise] Well, I don’t really know. I never really thought about the product very much. I only thought about the visual aspect of this and the message it sent, and I thought about the worldwide forum that it would be in. It was one of those things that someone else will push out there-an idea and a song. And yeah, they’re getting something out of it, of course. But I got a lot of enjoyment out of that Coca-cola song ‘I’d Love to Teach the World to Sing’ when I was a kid, and I loved it.
The piece ends with an A-list enriched after-show anecdote that name drops actors, supermodels, and Beatle kin. GQ wets itself.
[At a nearby bar to a London show that has just wrapped up] a man stands at the entrance counting arrivals, and not long after the band shows up he declares that the room is full. As far as he is concerned, the two women at the head of the line simply cannot come in, despite the patient and calm persuasion from the two men who climb back up the stairs from the party to beg them entry. It is to the credit of everyone involved that the arguments for why there might perhaps just be a little more room downstairs seem to hinge neither on the identity of the men (White and Jude Law) nor of the women (Kate Moss and Stella McCartney). Eventually, the number counter relents, and everyone descends, separates, and mingles.A while later, a voice comes over and address system:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the bar is now closed for the next twenty minutes.”
It turns out that the management wants to serve the bar’s usual members, who are being corded out by this strange influx, but at the time it seems mystifying. There is a silence, and then White, in the middle of the hubbub, speaks.
“Ladies and gentlemen the bar is now open.”
Previously: Jack White's Coca Cola commercial, Open letter to Jack White
Posted by Merry Swankster at June 22, 2006 12:50 PM
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