Walking back to the car after last night’s incredible Jack White show, I asked my son, Levi, what makes White so special. “He is the last great rock star,” he replied.
The Merriweather Post Pavilion show certainly drove home that point. From the opening chords of “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” and the instrumental “High Ball Stepper” to a generous eight-song encore that concluded with a spirited sing-a-long of “Seven Nation Army,” White exuded a rarified rock star cool infused with a healthy dose of punk attitude. He wed Sun-era rockabilly and blues to Zeppelin-esque riffs with a bit of P.T. Barnum in the mix.
It made me think of It Might Get Loud, the documentary featuring White with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and The Edge from U2. Page stole the film, but White more than held his own and even came across as Page’s rightful heir. The Edge seemed like a nice guy, but that’s about it. I found his commentary tedious and largely unwanted.
And that made me think of U2, arguably the biggest rock stars on the planet, and how they compare to White, who’s making some of the best music of his career and finding interesting and engaging ways to release it (see the tricked-out Lazaretto “ultra” LP). He also formed his own record label to put out his music, as well as records he loves. U2, meanwhile, is shilling for Apple and dropping its new album, Songs of Innocence, into 500 million iTunes libraries, completely unsolicited. After giving it a listen, it’s hard to imagine even devoted fans getting excited by either the music or the delivery system, which does nothing more than cheapen the experience. The move, to me, made U2 even more irrelevant.
But I figured maybe I was just being a cranky traditionalist, so I asked 14-year-old Levi how he felt about receiving the new U2. “It felt like spam to me,” he said. “I deleted it.”