A Quote by Jack White

If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.
Basically, the Internet is just the way now. It's the end-all, be-all of self-promotion. It's not like you got to burn CDs and pass them out or sell them. The Internet is a tool that reaches billions and billions of people. It's like a no-brainer to tie it in with self-promotion, or even label promotion.
...Cops just surrounding me with pistols everywhere. They put me in the backseat of their car handcuffed, Pushed out them chests like they're big rough and tough. A cop come and said 'You'll never sell your guns now.' I said 'It doesn't matter, you'll sell them anyhow. You take the guns from me, you sell them for a fee; Anyway you put it, they'll get in the city!'
If you have a counterculture band, you put a name on it, you call them beatniks, and you can sell something - books or bebop. Or you label them as hippies and you can sell tie-dyed T-shirts.
The Americans only like things they can label, even if it kills them. Think of those poor Latin American writers. Some of them are very good. But the "magical realism" label has absolutely ruined them. The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out.
I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play them and play them with some kind of empathy.
I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them to just go and live. It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life, and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments.
I don't really think much of any songs I put out like I know... I think they're good, that's why I'm putting them out. But like I don't ever try to expect anything, so even with 'Caroline' or 'Red Mercedes,' I just put them out and hope for the best and people kind of gravitate towards them and I guess that's pretty cool and that's a blessing.
If a new artist wants to put out some sort of off-the-wall, crazy deep ballad about the sun or whatever, it might be hard to get traction. It's so much easier for someone established to put out a really heartfelt, deep song and get it played in radio.
Not only after two or three centuries, but in a million years, life will still be as it was; life does not change, it remains for ever, following its own laws which do not concern us, or which, at any rate, you will never find out. Migrant birds, cranes for example, fly and fly, and whatever thoughts, high or low, enter their heads, they will still fly and not know why or where. They fly and will continue to fly, whatever philosophers come to life among them; they may philosophize as much as they like, only they will fly.
We're looking at dozens, sometimes hundreds of things every day in articles, videos, and we never look at them again. Even if we do like them, even if we tweet them out to all of our followers on Twitter, we don't return to it.
I think ultimately what you really want is a few people within any label that are into the band enough to really work on it every day for a long time and to actually try a little bit. But obviously, the major labels have more money to spend, so if they feel like spending it, they have bigger resources there when you need them. It doesn't always necessarily translate into them doing a better job for a band, but I think especially if you're playing the game of commercial radio and making videos and stuff like that, that's sort of an expensive proposition.
I have 60-plus videos on YouTube and over 30 million views. Of those 60, only three or four are branded videos. I built that audience by telling stories the way I like to tell them.
My music already has this oldish kind of quality to it, like you don't necessarily know what era it was recorded in, so it all kind of felt surreal and weird. Night after night when I played live, I was really trying to figure it out in real time, and I still don't know what effect I'm going for or what effect I actually achieve. Looking back, I feel like it would be arrogant of me not to appreciate the fact that I've been able to do whatever I want and still have an audience come see me.
For artists of my caliber, we're not played on the radio, so we don't really get a chance to get involved in that debate at all. We don't get a chance, because this weird kind of ageism exists in pop music. If you're past a certain age, you're not relevant. That's the kind of cliched term.
Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down.
I've never done a kissing scene with someone even when you're friends. I mean that sort of even makes it weirder. If you don't know them or like them at all, you can kind of put some weird like ... I don't know. It's the strangest thing. Look at the person next to you and imagine making out with them now, while I film it.
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