In a New York Times Magazine profile out this week, Jack White is declared “the coolest, weirdest, savviest rock star of our time.” I can’t say that I disagree with that assessment. For instance, here’s how writer Josh Eells describes White’s studio/record store/performance space in Nashville…
White is obsessive about color and meticulous in his attention to detail. Inside, the walls that face west are all painted red, and the ones that face east are all painted blue. The exterior, meanwhile, is yellow and black (with a touch of red). Before he made his living as a musician, White had an upholstery shop in Detroit, and everything related to it was yellow and black — power tools, sewing table, uniform, van. He also had yellow-and-black business cards bearing the slogan “Your Furniture’s Not Dead” as well as his company name, Third Man Upholstery. When he started the record label, he simply carried everything over. “Those colors sort of just mean work to me now.”
Roaming the hallways were several young employees, all color-coordinated, like comic-book henchmen. The boys wore black ties and yellow shirts; the girls wore black tights and yellow Anna Sui dresses. (There were also a statistically improbable number of redheads.) White stopped in front of one cute girl in bluejeans and Vans. “Can you guess which Third Man employee is getting fined $50 today?” he asked, smiling.
Yes, indeed, Jack White is, among other things, a colorful human being, as is his video for “Sixteen Saltines,” which he performed on SNL recently. (Watch out for the paint-covered children, Jack!)
Enjoy…
(HT: COS)