Jack White never wanted to be like all the other guitar players he knew or saw on the TV, players who gravitated to Fender or Gibson. Maybe it was a sense of teenaged orneriness, a non-conformist zeal that took hold in adolescence, but in the here and now it looks very much like vision.

His circumspection might have denied him the player-friendly features of the Stratocaster but it gave him something more important, a very particular sound – and a very particular look. Imagine the White Stripes but with White playing a Les Paul instead of a red bizarro red Airline with a white pickguard.

One of his most famous guitars, his early-'60s Kay K6533 archtop hollowbody – with that super-cool “cheese grater” single-coil pickup at the neck position – gave him his Seven Nation Army tone.

Speaking to Reverb, White explains how he arrived at his decision, and how he never looked back.

“Maybe late teens, I just had decidedly hated anything to do with Stratocasters, Les Pauls, any of the common instruments that you see everybody use,” he says.

[I] just thought it was just so overused and so indicative of – I don’t know – like, white-boy blues, if you had a Stratocaster, or heavy metal, if you use this kind of guitar, or whatever. I would rather try to find something that didn’t have any connotations already thrown on it, and so I was attracted to the Silvertones and Airlines, and things that you just didn’t see on TV, or on videos.”

Once upon a time, Silvertone guitars were very popular. That’s because they were cheap. They were produced for Sears, and were one of the original catalog guitars. Airline had a similar origin story, and were made by the retail giant Montgomery Ward. Neither had much cultural cachet to speak of. White says an older generation of players couldn’t believe that he would ever want to play one.

“You start talking to older people, it’s like, ‘Oh well, when I was a kid, that’s all anybody had, Silvertones. Nobody had enough money to pay for a real guitar,’” he says.

Thanks to White, Silvertones and Airline guitars are popular again. Indeed, Silvertone guitars are officially back as a brand, and at NAMM 2026 debuted the Silvertone 1446, a semi-hollowbodied electric guitar popularized by the likes of Hubert Sumlin’ and Elvis Costello, but is probably most famous for being the guitar Chris Isaak played in the early days. That Wicked Game tone? That was a Silvertone 1446.

In the 2000s, as the White Stripes got big, Eastwood Guitars bought the Airline name and revived the brand, and they have since been bought by a Chicago-based owner. They’re officially cool. When White started playing Silvertones in the ‘90s he was in a minority of one.

“In Detroit, I never saw anybody use that guitar,” he says. “I never saw anybody on TV, and definitely nobody I saw playing shows or anybody I knew that owned one. So when I was using it, it felt very unique.”

White says it was the making of him. And, now that he’s all grown up, has collaborated with Fender with his signature Triplecaster and Triplesonic signature guitars – not to mention his Pano Verb tube amp and accessories – he can see the appeal of the ubiquitous models. And when he picks one up he finds something different in them.

“It’s just trying to find a uniqueness, a new voice for yourself. I didn’t want to use the same tool that everyone else was using, he says.

“So I’m glad I did that. I’m glad I had that kind of desire to try to carve something out, because then, once you do that, then you can rewind, and you can take one of those more common guitars and get something out of it that I think I wouldn’t have got if I had just come up using that.”

White is not the only one to harbor such sentiments. St. Vincent admitted that she felt ill-disposed to using Stratocasters because there was too much cultural “baggage” around them – though she ultimately changed her mind when Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready lent her his Strat when recording 2024 studio album All Born Screaming.

Chris Buck expressed similar sentiments regarding the Strat – which is what first pushed him towards a fresh canvas in the form of Yamaha's Revstar models.

Unless you've lived in a cave for the last 22 years, odds are pretty damn good that you've heard the call-to-arms riff that opens the White Stripes' Seven Nation Army at least once.

A study last year revealed that it's the single most Googled guitar riff on the planet, and it ranks 30th on our own list of the greatest guitar riffs of all time.

Written at a soundcheck in Australia by riffmaster Jack White, one-half of the now-defunct band (who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last weekend, November 8), it's a sporting event standard – an earworm so ubiquitous it's almost become a (distorted 'n' loud) folk standard of sorts.

Though not a massive hit at the time of its release in 2003, per se, Seven Nation Army still cracked Billboard's Hot 100, and helped take the duo – Jack, with his ex-wife, Meg, on drums – up a step, from garage-rock critical darlings to true-blue rock A-listers.

It also earned them a Grammy nomination, for Best Rock Song.

What's interesting about that early 2000s era of rock is that, for all of their unique visual styles – the Strokes with their leather jackets, the Hives in their cocktail waiter get-ups, Interpol's suits, and, of course, the White Stripes' distinct red-and-white color scheme – the chic groups of the era were, usually, rock classicists when it came to gear.

White was a proud exception, though – wrestling with an obscure (color-matched, of course) Airline guitar for the overwhelming majority of the band's catalog. One notable exception was Seven Nation Army, for which he employed a Kay hollowbody, tuned to open A, which was then run through the low-octave setting on his DigiTech Whammy pedal.

Of course, the story of how White got the vintage Kay tracks with someone who has appeared not once, but twice, on a popular reality TV show about sifting through yard sales and antique shops.

“My brother's wife owned a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store,” White told Guitar World in a 2004 interview. “I moved a refrigerator for them and they said, ‘Here, take this guitar for gas money or whatever.’”

When the White Stripes took the stage for the biggest performance of their lives up to that point at the 2004 Grammys, it was that very guitar – not some made-for-the-occasion, two-months-of-pay custom job – that sat in White's hands.

Seven Nation Army would go on to win that Best Rock Song award at the ceremony, with the seminal album it led off, Elephant, also receiving a nod for Best Alternative Music Album.

Though the White Stripes officially disbanded in 2011, Elephant helped set White on a path to guitar-hero-for-life status, with all the reverence and magazine covers that come with it.

Neither time, status, nor partnerships with legacy brands have tamed the man's taste for the weird and wild, though – his Fender TripleCaster Telecaster is one of the most admirably wild signature guitars on the market.

Commenting earlier this year on a Thinline version of the Triplecaster that he made specifically for Metallica's Kirk Hammett, White neatly summarized his tastes in guitars. “I hope this pisses off some more Tele purists! We have enough ‘regular’ boring guitars out there, right folks?”

Was there ever an electric guitar that you sold and later felt like it was the one that got away? Jack White knows that feeling all too well, as his biggest gear regret is selling a Gibson ES-120T “as a teenager” – a decision that he still deeply regrets to this very day.

“I sold this model guitar as a teenager and have regretted it for many years now,” White writes alongside an Instagram video where he's holding the exact same model that he had sold back in the day.

“It was given to me by my cousin Paul Ossy (or maybe I bought it from him? I can't remember) who is a multi instrumentalist (who also played electric violin on the Stripes album De Stijl).

“I sold it at Gordy's guitar show in Detroit in the early 90's so I could buy a 2 pickup Silvertone amp in case model,” he details. “And it's not a red burst version, it's the black burst version like this one I'm holding over at Carter Vintage, Nashville.”

White goes on to say that, on his original guitar, there was something he etched under the truss rod cover, which he didn't reveal in the video, to make it distinct from other Gibson ES-120s.

“One day, I'm going to find it and turn this plate over [and] it's going to have what I etched on and I'll know it's the guitar.” As one fan aptly put it in the comment section, “I hope the internet works its magic and you can find your guitar.”

In more Jack White news, the legendary guitarist has recently gifted one of his signature guitars to his “new favorite guitar player” – after swapping signature models with Vernon Reid during a chance encounter at Memphis Airport back in December.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has revealed this year's inductees in an announcement delivered by Ryan Seacrest on the latest episode of American Idol – with a list that included some overdue names and omitted others who had an almost surefire shot at this year's class of inductees.

The guitar world is represented by The White Stripes, Soundgarden, and Bad Company in the Performer category. They are joined by Girls Just Wanna Have Fun icon Cyndi Lauper, gravel-voiced English singer Joe Cocker, Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast, and Chubby Checker, who gets the nod nearly 40 years after he was first eligible for Hall of Fame recognition.

Bass legend Carol Kaye – who has played on more than 10,000 recordings over her six decade-plus career – is honored in the Musical Excellence Award category, alongside prolific R&B record producer, arranger, and songwriter Thom Bell, and English pianist and organist Nicky Hopkins.

Salt-N-Pepa, the first female rap act to achieve gold and platinum status from the Recording Industry Association of America, will also receive the Musical Influence Award, alongside Werewolves of London singer-songwriter Warren Zevon.

Meanwhile, record producer, former president of Warner Bros. Records, and co-founder and co-chair of DreamWorks Records, Lenny Waronker, is the recipient of this year's Ahmet Ertegun Award – reserved for non-performing industry professionals who have had a major influence on music and culture.

“Each of these inductees created their own sound and attitude that had a profound impact on culture and helped to change the course of Rock & Roll forever,” said John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “Their music gave a voice to generations and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”

As is the case every year, there are a few high-profile snubs. Mariah Carey's omission, in particular, is a notable oversight, considering this is the second time she has been overlooked by the Rock Hall's voters. Britpop leaders Oasis were also given the cold shoulder, while jam band Phish – who topped the fan vote – didn't make the final cut.

This isn't the first time the winner of the fan ballot lost out on that year's induction. Dave Matthews Band, who won the 2020 fan vote, was ultimately not included in that year's final list – and had to wait four years before finally receiving their flowers.

The Class of 2025 will be inducted live on November 8 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California, with the ceremony streaming live on Disney+, a special airing on ABC at a later date, and available on Hulu the next day.

A new study has identified The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army as the world’s most Googled guitar riff.

For Wood and Fire Studio’s statistics, the studio analyzed a total of 271 songs and 2,314,336 Google searches to discover the world’s most-played riffs, and Jack White’s iconic 2003 foot-stomper has claimed the crown. The rest of the list is rather predictable, too.

“This is where the famous ‘forbidden riff’ joke on the guitar comes from,” the studio observes. “The first 4 songs are played so often that the staff in the guitar departments of music stores can no longer hear them.”

The White Stripes song, which sees a Kay K6533 archtop put through an octave-down DigiTech Whammy pedal, racks up 39,750 Google searches every month, scoring higher than guitar store staples Stairway to Heaven (30,375), which comes in second, and Smoke on the Water (15,750), which sits in 10th.  

Interestingly, Nirvana claims the third spot, with Come As You Are (28,750) out-Googling Heart Shaped Box (14,000) and Smells Like Teen Spirit (13,625), which come in 11th and 12th, respectively.

Metallica prove to be the most popular riffmeisters collectively, with four tracks – Nothing Else Matters (4th), Enter Sandman (7th), Master of Puppets (9th), and Fade to Black (20th) – ranking in the top 20, more than any other artist. 

When it comes to players wanting to strum along to their favorite chord progressions, Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah outranks the rest. 

The cut, covered by everyone from Buckley to Michael Bolton, tops the Google search charts for songs in the USA, Australia, France, and Sweden with 163,453 searches per month. The fact it's been covered so often no doubt had a big impact here. 

Ed Sheeran's Perfect (147,479) ironically has to settle for second best, while Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here makes it onto the podium with 135,979 searches.

The study has highlighted that nearly all the songs share a similarly romantic theme, arguing that love songs are the most universally appealing.

The Beatles’ classic Let It Be tops the UK (21,877) and German (24,026) listings, but has to settle for 4th place on the global scoreboard with 131,336 searches per month.

Elvis Presley, meanwhile, has proven to be a force to be reckoned with in South America. Can’t Help Falling In Love is the most-played song in 12 countries, including Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia. 

Head to Wood and Fire Studio to dissect the full survey results.

Jack White’s Third Man Records has announced a new online auction, which will see the organization sell-off numerous curios from the guitarist’s haul. 

The most eye-catching items for guitar players include a Framus 5/59 Sorella Archtop that featured on the White Stripes’s White Blood Cells promo shots and the Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent signature guitar that was played extensively on his 2018 Boarding House Reach tour. 

Unlike a lot of ‘celebrity’ auctions, the Third Man sale benefits from the direct provenance of White’s ownership and the fact that the organization has an in-house archivist, Ben Blackwell, who is tasked with keeping tabs on all of the weird and wonderful gear (guitar-based or not) that enters its Nashville premises. 

Indeed, Blackwell himself features in the Framus’ history, as he notes it was him that put it out of action for a while around 2001, after catching it on a door jamb. 

“I put a decent crack into the thing,” writes Blackwell. “I’d goofed, big time. Jack looked at me and said, ‘Well, guess who’s not getting paid for this weekend?’”

The guitar was repaired and just as well, as it held some meaning for White. The songwriter reportedly picked it up on The White Stripes’ first international tour dates in 2000 from a shop in Auckland, New Zealand. 

“Jack had his eyes on the guitar, but with the asking price of eight-hundred New Zealand dollars, he left the store without pulling the trigger,” says Blackwell. 

“John Baker, promoter of the tour (and soon-to-become long-time White Stripes tour manager) said ‘The New Zealand dollar is really weak right now. You should go and offer him $600 for that guitar.’ 

“With nothing to lose, Jack did just that and walked out the happy owner of this beautiful, redburst Framus Sorella model guitar with removable pickguard outfitted with pickups for electrification.”

The hollow-body German-built electric guitar is thought to date to the ’60s and featured most notably in the We’re Going To Be Friends video, as well as on the iconic red and white promo shots in the White Stripes’ White Blood Cells era.

Also in the sale is White’s Ernie Ball Music Man St Vincent signature model, which he used throughout his 2018 Boarding House Reach tour and was refinished in a custom blue, with a stripped neck, in keeping with the tour’s blue-obsessed aesthetic. White used the instrument in his Saturday Night Live appearance on April 14, 2018 to perform Connected By Love.

“The St. Vincent guitar looks great and sounds great,” White told Guitar World in 2018. “She gave me that guitar. She sent it to me as a present. That was really kind of her. I put these blue aluminum Lace sensor pickups on it, and an interrupter switch so I can turn the whole guitar on and off and get the kind of effects that I try to accomplish. And I put a black neck on it.”

The final notable guitar-y lot is a Sears Silvertone guitar amp that formerly belonged to Mick Collins of the Gories – a Detroit garage rock group that White much admired.

It’s a lovely-looking solid-state head with a built-in reverb and tremolo circuits, two channels (with dual inputs) and independent two-band EQs – though, it must be noted it comes with a warning. 

“[It’s] a quintessential piece of important Detroit rock and roll history,” notes Blackwell. “Sold as-is, we honestly can’t remember if it works or not. IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!!”

Elsewhere, the extensive and varied sale includes an iconic swirl-headed Ludwig drum kit from the White Stripes’ Hardest Button To Button video, an 1970s electric car, arcade machines, White’s 2013 Tesla vehicle, furniture and, perhaps most weirdly, a cast iron autopsy table from the mid-20th Century. 

“I remember when this one showed up at Third Man about a decade ago,” comments Blackwell. “We’d heard murmurs that it came from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That’s where a bunch of top secret US government shit went down, specifically enriching the uranium used in the Little Boy atomic bomb. You know, lighthearted stuff. 

“As the rumor went, a lot of people autopsied on this table showed signs of radiation exposure. I think it’s probably like 99% bullshit, but I don’t even know how we’d fact check that… [But there’s a] super-small chance that it’s irradiated and possibly haunted by the ghosts of long-deceased Manhattan Project scientists. No big deal.”

Jack White has always had very unique tastes, but we’ll, er, probably stick to the guitars on this one, thanks very much…

Head to auction site, Everything But The House for the full Third Man Garage Sale collection.

The 2023 nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were revealed today (February 1).

Iron Maiden, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden and The White Stripes lead a nomination class that also includes seminal post-punk acts Joy Division and New Order, country-pop superstar Sheryl Crow, hip-hop legends Missy Elliott and A Tribe Called Quest, and pop auteurs Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper and George Michael.

R&B legends The Spinners, country icon Willie Nelson and the beloved singer/songwriter Warren Zevon round out the 2023 nominee class.

Crow, Elliott, Joy Division/New Order, Lauper, Michael, Nelson, The White Stripes, and Zevon are all on the ballot for the first time.

“This remarkable list of nominees reflects the diverse artists and music that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors and celebrates,” John Sykes, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation's chairman, said in a statement. “These artists have created their own sounds that have impacted generations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps.”

Nominations will be voted on by a body of more than 1,000 artists, historians and members of the music industry, but fans can also participate in the Hall of Fame selection via a process called the Fan Vote.

Through April 28, fans can vote online at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's websiteor in person at the Museum itself in Cleveland, Ohio. The top five artists in the Fan Vote will then comprise a “fans’ ballot” that will be tallied along with the other ballots to determine the 2023 inductees. 

The 2023 inductees will be announced in May, with the induction ceremony set to take place this fall, though the date and venue have yet to be announced as of press time. 

The 2022 ceremony saw the long-awaited (and overdue) induction of Judas Priest, along with that of Eminem, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon and influential blues guitar player Elizabeth Cotten, among others.

For more info on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame museum and this year's inductees, visit the organization's website.

On Wednesday (January 11), Jeff Beck – one of the greatest and most influential electric guitar players of all time – passed away at the age of 78.

Beck's death prompted an outpouring of tributes from across the guitar world, including one from Jack White, who cited him as a "guitar innovator extraordinaire."

As part of his salute to Beck, White also shared a clip of him jamming with the Strat-toting legend, White Stripes drummer Meg White and future Raconteurs bass guitar player Jack Lawrence at the Royal Festival Hall in London on September 13, 2002. 

Beck was the headlining act on this particular evening, and chose The White Stripes to act, as White put it, as "The Yardbirds" for a rollicking set of Yardbirds tunes. You can see fan-filmed footage of all seven songs the supergroup-of-sorts played together below.

Though Beck's tenure with The Yardbirds was brief – less than two years in total – its impact on the development of rock guitar playing was incalculable. 

The snarl and bite of Beck's tone on the band's cover of Train Kept a Rollin’, in particular, was hugely formative in the development of the aggressive, distorted garage- and blues-rock guitar sounds that would dominate rock in the years to come, and – decades later – shape the driving sound of the White Stripes.

Indeed, Train Kept a Rollin’ was the first song the trio played together that September 2002 evening. Beck looks right at home on the stage, matching the young duo's intensity beat-for-beat – a testament to both his restless creative spirit and the timelessness of his sharp-edged and lyrical guitar sound.

“Jeff Beck, guitar innovator extraordinaire has moved to the next realm," White wrote on Instagram. "I wrote to him a couple of years ago to show him that I was standing where he once stood inside Sam Phillips studio in Memphis some 50 odd years before. He was amazingly kind and instructional to me over the years. 

"Many shows that I’ve played began moments after listening to his song Led Boots backstage. This bootleg clip that I’m posting is when I had one of the greatest thrills of my life – along with Meg White and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes, we were 'The Yardbirds' for one night backing up Jeff at the Royal Festival Hall in London. 

"In our rehearsals he plugged straight into an amp, no effects pedals," White continued. "He was changing the sound of the guitar and doing things people didn’t know were possible from his earliest days on stage. God bless you Jeff, you must already be chatting with Cliff Gallup somewhere.”

Play like Jack White... That’s easy, right? Well, in some respects perhaps, yes. The open chords and basic strumming in The White Stripes’ Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground, for example, are achievable for all but absolute beginners. 

Jack spread his guitar-playing wings with Brendan Benson in The Raconteurs, and his epic Jimmy Page-inspired solos in live shows are something to behold. But it’s since 2012’s solo debut, Blunderbuss, that his musical eccentricity and broad range of influences have truly shone through. 

Still, there are consistent threads in his playing throughout his entire career – and his tone is at the heart of it. Get a ballpark White-esque tone and you’ll find it easier to get a feel for his playing. Fuzz-driven, octave- and powerchord-based riffs figure highly, alongside ear-catching pentatonic and Whammy pedal-infused solos. 

Check out our ‘Play Like Jack’ tab examples complete with playing tips and tonal advice below. 

Essential gear tips for Jack White tone 

Jack has experimented with various pedals over the years, but these three pedals should form the core of any tribute rig. 

1. Electro-Harmonix Big Muff PI 
Wind up the distortion on this classic fuzz pedal. You’re aiming for maximum compression. 

2. Electro-Harmonix POG
Used for both octave-up and octave-down sounds, it’s an essential effect to have in your arsenal. 

3. Digitech Whammy 
Don’t own one? Any expression pedal-equipped digital multi-effects floorboard will have a similar option. 

Fig 1. Medium fuzz and octaver

This riff is based in the E minor pentatonic scale in open position – though it’s the kind of riff you can transpose to any octave and fret position. Inspired by The White Stripes’ Icky Thump we’re using a medium fuzz distortion and an octaver to round out the bottom end. 

Fig. 2 Powerchord arpeggios 

Taking our inspiration from The Hardest Button To Button, here we’re looking at a simple idea: turning powerchords into arpeggios. If you have a looper and Whammy-style pitch shifter pedal you could experiment by laying down a bassline underneath these shapes. 

Fig. 3 Whammy pedal solo

Soloing with DigiTech’s Whammy pedal is Jack’s stock in trade. And, though the resultant lead breaks can sound whacky, Jack’s note choice is often simple bluesy pentatonics. We’ve indicated in the tab where to employ your Whammy. Just remember to set it to an octave above your guitar signal.

Fig. 4 Bluesy staccato phrasing

2014’s Lazaretto is our inspiration here, where you’ll find a mix of rapid-fire phrases and short, quick notes in a bluesy G minor solo. We’ve employed an octaver here. Unlike a Whammy effect, this is an always on pitch shifter used primarily to thicken the sound.

Fig. 5 Powerchord bends

Play the D5 powerchord with first and third fingers here, and pull down a quarter of a tone evenly on the strings as you strum with a downstroke. It’s a technique Jack applied in The White Stripes’ Black Math.

Fig. 6 Stutter picked/killswitched lick

Traditionally, Jack created killswitch-style riffs using rapid-fire up-picking and fret-hand muting, known by some as stutter picking. Typically he’ll use loads of fuzz.

In the heyday of the guitar hero, the 1960s and 70s, you could hardly move for them. Guitars were the dominant instrument in popular culture and those who could conjure riffs were gods among mortals. 

But while great new electric guitar players turn up daily, guitar heroes – names bordering on the mythical, who take over the mainstream and whose names become synonymous with awesome licks – come along less often. In the 21st Century, the one who stands tallest is Jack White. 

One man who graduated from guitar hero to guitar god is Jeff Beck. When Beck invited The White Stripes to join him on stage at his 2002 Royal Festival Hall residency, it suggested a passing of the torch. Beck, who many call the greatest living guitarist, spotted White’s genius.

The White Stripes were then known only as one of the ‘The’ bands, disparate garage rock revivalists who all happened to hit success in 2001. Other leading figures in the moment were The Hives, The Strokes and The Vines. 

‘The’ bands represented a punk rock reaction against nu metal, much as grunge was to hair metal ten years earlier. At a time when metal albums were overproduced into oblivion, every element digitally shifted to be metronomically in time, garage rock was a refreshing celebration of the lo-fi, the loose, and the lairy. 

Strange as it seems now, it was initially unclear which of the ‘The’ bands would be the movement’s Beatles and which its Herman’s Hermits. Unclear to all except perhaps Jeff Beck, who saw the spark.

Jack White is a genuine polymath - guitarist, writer, arranger, producer, gear aficionado and creator of a mini-empire in Third Man Records. Here, TG profiles an extraordinary career: The Many Faces Of Jack White...

The Trailblazer

When The White Stripes’ self-titled debut album was released in 1999, back when Jack was still married to drummer Meg White, some critics dismissed the duo format as a gimmick. But the lack of a bassist served Jack and Meg’s vision. 

Being a duo made them agile. They could deliver tempo changes and cue hits with eye contact that is hard to orchestrate with bigger ensembles.

It also gave Jack unlimited sonic space. His note choices when soloing were unconstrained by the need to harmonise with anyone else, and his guitar tone could be anything he wanted without worrying about blending with the bass.

You might expect that meant a huge, bass-heavy tone, but White opted for a snotty, obnoxious sound, especially on the early records. Detroit garage rock forebears The MC5 and The Stooges were an obvious point of comparison, but the rough production on White Stripes albums also recalled early blues. 

The ratty sound quality recalled tapes by Alan Lomax, the musicologist who made field recordings of pioneers like Lead Belly and Muddy Waters. Those unaccompanied blues performances often changed tempo and rhythm unexpectedly, a quality the bassless White duo could easily imitate.  

Now, thanks in large part to The White Stripes’ success, rock duos no longer seem unlikely. Royal Blood are the most obvious beneficiaries of the Stripes’ blazed trail, but MGMT, The Kills, and a host of less famous pairings also followed in their wake.

The Guitar Hero

Guitar heroes are not only great guitarists. You can tell this by thinking about who qualifies as one. Keith Richards, Slash, and Jimi Hendrix are guitar heroes; YouTube shredders, your guitar teacher, and Andrés Segovia are not. White is effortlessly believable as a rock star. 

Admittedly he’d never trash a hotel room – he’s expressed too much sympathy for the workers who clean them – but that just makes him seem more in tune with the people. Joe Bonamassa has become famous playing the guitar, but he remains, by his own admission, unabashedly nerdy. 

White, like Prince or David Bowie, is enigmatic enough that if you learned he’d been born in another solar system, you’d only be briefly surprised.

The White Stripes’ position as just one ‘The’ band among many changed with their major label debut Elephant. Its unstoppable first single Seven Nation Army is undoubtedly the biggest riff of the 21st Century. 

And as recognisable as even Smoke On The Water thanks to its adoption on football terraces, Seven Nation Army gave The White Stripes a hit that everybody’s parents know. If Jack White was his generation’s Kurt Cobain, Seven Nation Army was his Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Elephant included a ton of solos, marking the arrival of Jack White the guitar hero. Guitar magazines were slow to hail White’s lead playing because it wasn’t technical, but it was the kind of playing that made people excited about the guitar. That year Rolling Stone magazine ranked him the 17th greatest guitarist of all time, which looked premature at the time and prescient now. 

As Kurt had on Teen Spirit, White made an epic track even bigger by sticking close to the melody for the solo in Seven Nation Army. The lead break in There’s No Home For You Here opened with a Hendrix-worthy burst of sustained feedback, before Jack’s chaotic DigiTech Whammy abuse began. The notes were almost all pentatonic, but the frenzied pitch shifting made it sound totally unconventional. 

While specialist blues magazines lamented declining audiences and a lack of new mainstream stars, The White Stripes dedicated albums to blues pioneers Son House and Blind Willie McTell. Elephant had Ball And Biscuit, a pure blues song hiding in plain sight on a number one album. 

That song and Black Math made prominent use of Jack’s ‘stutter’ technique, perhaps his biggest playing innovation. It sounded like a rapidly executed killswitch, but there was no killswitch on his Airline guitar, and live performances saw him creating the effect standing away from his pedalboard. 

It stumped many guitarists, and YouTube still features several incorrect explanations of how it’s done. White was bouncing his picking hand off the string. 

The flesh of his index finger caught the string as the pick came down, choking it, and then the pick brushed the string as he bounced off, sounding the note. His fuzz pedal exaggerated the staccato effect by acting like a noise gate.

The Stripes’ burgeoning popularity gave global audiences the chance to see White live, where he truly excelled. His spontaneous freakouts, powered by the same nervous energy that drives his frenetic vibrato, were at their best when feeding off an audience. 

His habit of kicking the Whammy pedal in and out mid-lick could make even blues clichés sound like nothing anyone had heard. Elephant had seen White begin to embrace octave effects to fill out the bass frequencies, and his Whammy-equipped tone sounded monstrous at festivals across the world. 

Live, the Seven Nation Army solo could become a wild affair, riotously over-sliding for the high notes while keeping the general shape of the melody. This reckless abandon would have sounded disastrous with a bassist, but unaccompanied it just worked. 

Their showmanship made The White Stripes memorable TV guests, too. On their Later... With Jools Holland debut, Jack snapped his fifth string. Where other acts would have gone for another take, Jack coolly retuned mid solo and finished the song. 

While performing Let’s Build A Home on Tonight With Conan O’Brien, White left the stage to slam his Crestwood Astral onto O’Brien’s desk, using it as a lap steel and pummeling the guitar with stuttering pyrotechnics.

After a detour for the more piano-driven Get Behind Me Satan, in 2007 The White Stripes rocked hard on their final album Icky Thump, a celebration of guitar. While the title track wasn’t as eminently chantable as Seven Nation Army, for our money it’s an even better riff. 

His mixture of palm muting and slide for the riffs on Catch Hell Blues again showed his knack for making well-worn ideas sound new with his unique approach. Touring, however, became increasingly unmanageable due to Meg’s anxiety, and by 2011 the duo would confirm they were calling it quits.

The Team Player

Even as The White Stripes exploded, White found time to start another band. The Raconteurs debuted in 2006 showing that White could fit discretely into a five-piece band (if you count touring keyboardist Dean Fertita) just as well as he could dominate proceedings. 

The psychedelic and power-pop stylings of The Raconteurs were far more conventionally radio-friendly than The White Stripes, but White’s experience as an improviser was still key to proceedings. 

As co-frontman Brendan Benson would later put it, “With the Raconteurs it’s like, ‘how far can we go with not playing the song?’” Live, album closer Blue Veins became a titanic blues epic, with the band dropping out for parts of White’s extended solo. 

But guitar extravaganzas were not The Raconteurs’ principal game. Their tightly crafted pop tunes showed that White could serve the song just as well as explode it. 

This was further confirmed when White formed The Dead Weather with The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, and Raconteurs bandmate Jack Lawrence on bass. 

White played drums, giving Mosshart and Fertita the intimidating job of playing guitar in front of their generation’s biggest guitar hero. Fertita, though, insisted it was “an easy relationship”, adding, “I might want to go on and on doing takes, but having another guitar player there to say ‘that was a cool one’ makes my job a lot easier... He never suggests what I play or insists on anything.”

As The White Stripes ended, White spread his talents into multiple genres. He produced and played on Loretta Lynn’s 2004 release Van Lear Rose, helping make the country legend’s first album in over a decade the most successful of her career. Jack’s understated slide licks showed he could deliver pure roots music without pedalboard gimmicks. 

Later, Jack duetted with Alicia Keys on Another Way To Die from Quantum Of Solace, supplying the filthiest guitar ever heard in James Bond theme. Panned at the time as a poor choice for Bond, it remains terminally underrated in its own right. Its existence, though, was a reminder that you call White for big riffs just as surely as you know who to call when there’s something strange in ya neighbourhood.

When Beyoncé wanted a rock song in 2016, she summoned White to co-write and co-produce. This collaboration might have been a 21st century Beat It, but disappointingly White elected to put barely any guitar on it. 

It was nevertheless nominated for a Grammy for Best Rock Performance, although apart from the drums sampled from Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks, there’s not much rock about it. 

But this again showed White as a musician, not merely a guitarist. Piling on his guitar might have boosted his ego, but in the current musical climate, it wouldn’t have been what the song needed. It did, however, have a hook that could have been a monster guitar riff, as his solo performances of the song have shown.

The Gearhead

While the enigmatic White would never write “Welcome to Nerdville” above the entrance to his studio, his gear choices betray a geekiness that is every inch the equal of Joe Bonamassa’s. But where Bonamassa’s collection is all the most elite boutique gear, White has a love of junk shop finds. 

In a review of Icky Thump, Rolling Stone critic Robert Christgau quipped that Jack had “hauled new detritus into his theoretical garage.” But the garage was anything but theoretical, and Jack’s new sounds have often come from unloved old gear, which he would, as he put it, fight to get them to sound good. 

Jack’s love of stuttering sounds has found him discovering numerous ways to produce them. For the Raconteurs’ first tour he kept a killswitch pedal on top of his amp which he operated with his picking hand at crucial moments. On recordings, he experimented with adding tremolo effects or even splicing in silences to finished takes to create the desired effect.

He was ahead of the curve in adopting phase-locked loop (PLL) synth-fuzz pedals. Already popular with synth users, phase-locked loops are oscillators that maintain a relationship between the input and the output, so although the noises are chaotic and glitchy, they are harmonious. 

White’s adoption of the Mantic Flex monophonic PLL for his solo on Why Walk A Dog? brought them to the attention of guitarists as a bold new sound. While many listeners assumed the diving pitch sounds were produced by a Whammy, they actually came from the Flex.

There were signs, however, that White has become less interested in fighting his gear over time. In 2018 he picked up an EVH Wolfgang after reading that Eddie had designed a guitar that would not fight him at all. 

And he named his favourite guitar amp as the 15” speaker version of the Fender Vibroverb, noting that players with great tone like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Duane Eddy had used them. His Raconteurs guitar rig expanded to include custom shop Gibsons and Fenders, a sign perhaps that White was ready for guitars that co-operate with his efforts at making music. 

The recording of the Raconteurs’ 2019 album Help Us Stranger gives a few clues to White’s continuing greatness. He continued to innovate, constructing (with help from Fender’s custom shop) the Three-Wheel-Motion Low Rider Telecaster.

This hot-rod inspired affair had a strap-operated B-bender, plus lever-operated Hipshot G- and E-benders, plus a switch for Drop D inspired by the EVH D-tuna. For pickups, it included a single coil bridge, P90 middle, and a neck wide-range humbucker pinched from an old Tele Thinline.

A momentary killswitch, also inspired by EVH, made his stuttering effects more accessible. He continued to champion PLL sounds, most obviously on Sunday Driver. This was White the inventor, always in search of new sounds. 

On the other hand, the album also saw him recording for the first time with a classic setup he had long avoided: a Gibson Les Paul into a Fender Champ. This was White the realist, choosing the sound that worked for the songs, even if it killed his contrarian impulses to use such a conventional rig.

With CopperSound pedals, White has recently developed the Triplegraph polyphonic octave pedal. This beast of a pedal can produce upper and lower octaves via either momentary or latching modes, and boasts (what else?) a momentary killswitch mode for effortless stuttering. 

But by distributing these pedals, as well as the Mantic Flex, through his own Third Man company, White has shown a commitment to making unique sounds accessible, rather than keeping them all to himself. 

The Record Man

Jack registered the Third Man name back in 2001, but he didn’t do anything with the label until 2008, when The White Stripes stopped recording and he acquired the rights to their back catalogue. With Third Man Records, White is a self-appointed keeper of the flame of American roots music.

 He’s reissued classics by Blind Willie McTell and The Supremes, and released the entire recorded works of 1930s guitar-and-fiddle group The Mississippi Sheiks. 

He’s also financed new music by legends: as well as the aforementioned Loretta Lynn, White produced and released rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson’s comeback. He’s also nurtured young artists careers, making him the curator of a collection of great music.

Third Man has one of only three vinyl pressing plants in the US, and its rolling record store, a converted bus, made its debut at SXSW in 2011. There are now Third Man venues in London, Nashville, and Detroit, making the beginnings of an analogue empire.

The Torch Holder

White’s reputation as a guitarist was cemented for many by his selection as the new kid, alongside legends Jimmy Page and The Edge, for 2009 documentary It Might Get Loud. That selection of players reflected differences between musicians and non-musicians about what makes a great guitarist. 

While Page was an obvious choice, guitar magazine readers would probably have voted for Eddie Van Halen to represent the 80s, and perhaps Matt Bellamy or Mark Tremonti for the present day. White, however, instantly won over audiences by playing slide on a one-string diddly bow he hastily built from a plank! 

Later in the film, his solo rendition of I Fought Piranhas showed a guitarist as steeped in the history of the instrument as he was invested in moving it forward. He clearly worshipped the blues, but he was interested in performing it as he felt it should be today, not being a historic re-enactor. In that sense, he was the natural heir to Page – a view cemented in the public imagination by Page’s endorsement.

The Page similarities don’t end there. While both are most famous as guitarists, they are arguably even more talented as producers, arrangers, songwriters, and band leaders. 

Both have a vision of how they want music to be, and a mastery of every aspect of the process to bring that vision into reality. Both are crafters of earth-shattering riffs. And both have technical limitations as guitarists, but their histrionic delivery has a power more refined players can’t touch.

It Might Get Loud also hinted at White’s solo future. Fly Farm Blues, knocked out in 10 minutes during the making of the documentary, became his first solo single. Sounding like a John Lee Hooker song played back through a fuzz pedal, it was a moment of garage-blues inspiration.

In October 2020, the producers of Saturday Night Live found themselves with an unexpected vacancy for a musical guest. Coincidentally, Eddie Van Halen had died the same week, and SNL wanted a guitar hero. 

Jack White got the call, appearing with his blue EVH Wolfgang and throwing in a tapping lick at the end of Lazaretto. Jack, for his part, modestly wrote on Instagram: “I won’t even insult the man’s talent by trying to play one of his songs.” 

• Fear of the Dawn is out now via Third Man Records.

Jack White has added a fretless bass guitar to his ever-growing arsenal of custom gear. White checked in from tour to show off a new Fender Custom Shop design that he has developed with the Big F’s doyens of design, pickup guru Tim Shaw and master builder Chip Ellis.

The custom Telecaster Bass is finished in Blue Sparkle and augmented with white hardware – including an arm-rest – to match the aesthetic of the custom Jazzmaster with onboard pitch-shifting and triple-pickup Fender Telecaster that he has debuted in recent months.

We are used to White showcasing electric guitars with tricksy electronics, or with gizmos that extend the six-string’s potential. His Three-Wheel-Motion Low Rider Telecaster is a classic of the genre – a guitar that is like a love-letter to G and B-Bender technology, and also features a Drop D switch for good measure. But fretless bass is a new one on us.

As it turns out, it’s a new one for White as well, but the idea for his fretless Telecaster Bass arose from him playing a Jaco Pastorius model (presumably Fender's Artist Series Jaco Pastorius Jazz Bass) on his forthcoming solo album, Entering Heaven Alive, which hits stores July 22 through Third Man Records. 

A call was duly placed with his friends down in California, with Ellis and Shaw spec’ing up the design. “I really love it,” White said. “It is a challenge to play, to know where to put your fingers exactly to be in tune.”

White says they are presently testing the Telecaster Bass live, and it will be interesting to see which songs he will be using it on. 

On the last couple of dates on the Supply Chain Issues tour he has only been playing two songs off of Entering Heaven Alive – If I Die Tomorrow and Love Is Selfish, neither being obvious candidates for a fretless bass intervention. 

White did reveal that it did have a custom control circuit that allowed him to bypass the pots.

“Right now, while we are testing this, it has pop-up pots, and the ability to switch between pickups as a selector and the ability to bypass the pots and go straight to the output jack, without going through any of the pots,” he said.

White’s tour picks up in the UK, where he will play the Eventim Apollo, London, on June 27. See Jack White for full dates. Entering Heaven Alive is out July 22 and is available to pre-order.

Jack White has announced his plans to release not one, but two new solo albums next year, titled Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive, which will arrive on April 8 and July 22, respectively.

They will be the White Stripes powerhouse’s first new material in four years – following the release of Boarding House Reach in 2018 – with each effort promising to deliver “entirely distinctive” listening experiences.

Both albums have been years in the making, and are set to tap into vastly different inspirations and explore unique themes.

And, as it turns out, White already preempted a prolific 2022 with the release of Taking Me Back and Taking Me Back (Gently) – the first singles to be lifted from Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive – which arrived mid-October.

What is new, however, is the official music video for Taking Me Back, which was co-directed by White and Lauren Dunn. Dunn’s credits include Kali Uchis and Megan Thee Stallion.

Both albums are available to preorder now on a variety of physical and digital formats, including standard black vinyls and five limited-edition vinyl variants for Fear Of The Dawn that sport unique colorways – including moon glow white, astronomical blue and midnight blue – that are available from a handful of different retailers.

The tracklists for both albums can be found below. 

Fear Of The Dawn

1. Taking Me Back
2. Fear Of The Dawn
3. The White Raven
4. Hi-De-Ho (W/ Q-Tip)
5. Eosophobia
6. Into The Twilight
7. Dusk
8. What's The Trick
9. That Was Then (This Is Now)
10. Eosophobia (Reprise)
11. Morning, Noon and Night
12. Shedding My Velvet

Entering Heaven Alive

1. A Tip From You To Me
2. All Along The Way
3. Help Me Along
4. Love Is Selfish
5. I've Got You Surrounded (With My Love)
6. Queen Of The Bees
7. A Tree On Fire From Within
8. If I Die Tomorrow
9. Please God, Don't Tell Anyone
10. A Madman From Manhattan
11. Taking Me Back (Gently)

Despite it being a relatively quiet year on the music release front for White – save the two previously mentioned singles – the White Stripes legend has been far from inactive. 

After partnering with Holeyboard for a custom pedalboard, he made a surprise appearance atop Damien Hirst’s balcony to promote the opening of his Third Man Records store in London.

White also established his Art & Design website, which shows off his craziest and coolest custom guitars.

• Fear Of The Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive are available to preorder now.

Jack White performed a surprise two-pronged set to celebrate the grand opening of a new Third Man Records store in London, England, which saw him serenade attendees from Damien Hirst’s balcony on Saturday (25 September).

The White Stripes frontman – who established Third Man in 2001 – was marking the opening of the label’s third physical outlet, located at 1 Marshall Street, Soho, which joins up with existing stores in Nashville and Detroit.

And, to celebrate the occasion in style, the blue hair-dyed White performed not one, but two sets – one in the store’s Blue Basement and one out in the open on top of Hirst’s personal balcony.

Bassist Dominic Davis and drummer Daru Jones completed the lineup, who hundreds of people flocked to the streets – or their windows, depending on where they were – to see in action.

The five-track rooftop session included White Stripes classics Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground, We’re Going To Be Friends and Seven Nation Army, as well as Lazaretto – a track taken from his 2014 solo album of the same name.

White also performed a live rendition of The Raconteurs’ Steady As She Goes as part of the balcony set, with Hello Operator, Why Can’t You Be Nicer To Me?, Icky Thump and Love Interruption featuring on the Blue Basement running order.

Aside from serving to open the store and flex his formidable rock ‘n’ roll repertoire, the event also allowed White to showcase his enviable, seemingly mile-long pedalboard, a shot of which has cropped up via TheGearPage – and it's absolutely filled to the brim with a wide range of weird, wacky and custom-finished effects pedals.

As would be expected, a collection of White’s Third Man pedals take centre stage. Two Third Man Bumble Fuzz fuzz pedals – a signature unit handbuilt by Chris Young of Union Tube & Transistor, who designed the pedal White used on Sixteen Saltines – feature, as does a Third Man/Mantic Effects Flex synth fuzz.

Mantic Effects crops up elsewhere, with White’s feature packed ‘board boasting a chrome-finished Vitriol distortion pedal and an Isaiah digital/analog hybrid delay pedal – the latter of which was designed in collaboration with the late Isaiah Ikey Owens, who played keys with Jack White’s The Buzzards.

The usual suspects are also present – a Boss Octave OC-2, MXR Bass Octave and Electro-Harmonix POG2 ensures the octave department is fully stacked, while a trio of Boss TU-3s – including two custom-finished silver ones – are also included, either for separate signal paths or for maintaining impeccable tuning.

Other honorable mentions from the G.A.S.-inducing ‘board include a sleek silver-finished DigiTech Whammy DT, a duo of White’s CopperSounds Triplegraph digital octave pedals, a Gamechanger Audio Plasma Coil and a handful of unlabeled units.

White was also well-catered for in the six-string department too, switching between a battered, Bigsby-equipped Fender Telecaster and a Fender American Acoustasonic Telecaster.

Visit Third Man Records to keep an eye out for any future last-minute balcony sets from the man himself.

The White Stripes have shared the full version of their 2005 From The Basement performance for the very first time.

Recorded at Maida Vale Studios in London in November 2005, the show saw the band perform hits including Blue Orchid, Forever For Her (Is Over For Me) and As Ugly As I Seem, as well as a cover version of Captain Beefheart's Party of Special Things to Do.

Conceptualized by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, From The Basement was a web TV series that ran between 2007 and 2009, with The White Stripes and Radiohead's Thom Yorke performing during its pilot episode.

This is the first time The White Stripes' entire performance from the series – as well as previously unseen B-roll footage from the show – has been available to watch in full. 

In a statement, Godrich said, “The dream of From the Basement is to capture great performances with the most direct and beautiful coverage possible, both sonically and visually. 

“We were so fortunate early on to have the support of Jack and Meg who instinctively understood the concept of the show and so came to be part of it.

“As a result, we have this amazing snapshot of their fantastic energy and style. It’s an intimate and direct performance, something magic, powerful and special. A day I will not forget.”

• The secrets behind Jack White's guitar tone on The White Stripes' Seven Nation Army

“Everything fell into place very quickly, and because of Meg and Jack’s ease and natural chemistry with each other I could just shoot what I saw,” said the show's director Sophie Muller.

“Whatever it was between them made it very simple, but so, so special and it was an honor to be there. I just love this electrifying performance.”

“It was beautifully filmed and the sound quality makes a performance on a regular TV show sound like a wax cylinder recording,” Jack White added. “No host. Thank God.”

This new free performance video isn't the only display of generosity from Jack White in recent memory. Last year, the frontman bought a Scottish busker a brand-new $3,000 Fender Custom Shop Strat, after the performer's guitar was smashed on the street.

And for more live clips of Jack White, check out his dazzling two-hand-tapped tribute to Eddie Van Halen during a recent edition of Saturday Night Live.

The White Stripes single Seven Nation Army is proof that if you write a great riff, the world will beat a path to your door.

Simple and infectious, the descending 'bass' line (actually recorded and performed on a Kay hollowbody electric guitar through a Whammy pedal set to the octave-down setting) still lives on today, long after the White Stripes disbanded, as a supporters’ chant at soccer matches and other sporting events.

Seven Nation Army was also the White Stripes’ biggest hit, with frontman Jack White earning status as a bona fide modern electric guitar hero for his cool riff, slick slide playing and rough-in-all-the-right-places tone.

White’s performance of the song is characterized by three distinct tones that add variety and interest to the otherwise simple song structure. In addition to the 'bass' line, White plays the same riff with his Kay hollowbody using a slide to play jangly, mildly overdriven chords, and he performs a raucous overdubbed slide solo with ripping distortion courtesy of an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal (White places the Big Muff after the Whammy).

Aspiring slide players, take note: using a distortion or fuzz pedal can give single-note slide lines added body, sustain and cut that boosts the guitar tone to the front of the mix. White says that he uses whatever strings his guitar techs put on his instruments and has no idea what gauge or brand they are. For the best tone, use the heaviest gauge you can tolerate.

Original gear

GUITAR: Early-'60s Kay K6533 archtop hollowbody with single Kay “cheese grater” single-coil pickup (neck pickup only)
AMP: Mid-'60s Sears Silvertone 1485 (Channel 2, Volume: 6, Bass: 5, Treble: 7, Reverb and Tremolo off )
CABINET: Sears Silvertone 1485 6x10 with Jensen C10Q ceramic speakers
EFFECTS: Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi (Volume: 6, Tone: 7, Sustain: 9); DigiTech Whammy 4 (Whammy 1-octave down setting)
STRINGS/TUNING: String gauge/brand unspecified (use at least a set of .010–.046 strings); Open A (E A E A C# E)
PICK/SLIDE: Dunlop Heavy 1.0mm Tortex, chrome-plated steel slide

Get the sound, cheap!

• Godin 5th Avenue Kingpin
• Fender Pro Junior III
• DigiTech Drop
• Electro-Harmonix Nano Big Muff Pi

TONE TIP: Turn up the Pro Junior’s volume control until the tone just starts to break up. This provides tone that’s clean enough for a convincing bass line with the octave-down effect and jangly enough for the main rhythm guitar part. Kick on the Big Muff for the slide solo only.

Jack White has announced a new solo album. The new album—titled Boarding House Reach—is his third solo effort. It will be released on Third Man via Columbia, although it has no release date as of yet.

With the announcement came the release of two new songs, "Connected by Love" and "Respect Commander." The former—which White teased in a Facebook post yesterday—has arrived with an elaborate music video. You can watch the video, which was directed by Pasqual Gutierrez (and starring a sizable cast that includes White himself), below.

The latter song did not arrive with a video, but you can still give it a listen below.

To buy the "Connected by Love" 7-inch single, stop by thirdmanrecords.com.

Jack White has long been working on a new solo album, his first since Lazaretto, one of our favorite albums of 2014.

Last month—at a Making Vinyl conference in his hometown of Detroit—he said the album was "practically done" and that it was "a bizarre one." Now, it seems, we have been given our first taste of it, with his release of a new video called "Servings and Portions from My Boarding House Reach."

It's unclear whether the audio—a wildly experimental sound collage—is a mish-mash of new songs, or itself a new song. Regardless, you can experience it for yourself above.

The Lego guitar shown in the top video below was made by Italian luthier Nicola Pavan.

And apart from the neck, electronics and hardware, it is made of nothing but Lego blocks, with only their own interlocking parts to hold them together.

“You might be thinking that under that layer of Lego there is some type of wood that forms the support, but you are wrong,” Pavan writes on his website. “The body is made entirely of Lego and without any kind of glue between the various blocks.

“Before arriving at the final model it was built a first prototype that allowed us to test the stability of Lego.”

Pavan notes that the guitar is fully functional, although, he writes, the tuning starts to give out “after a couple of songs.”

Pavan doesn’t say what inspired him to build a guitar out of Lego, but we suspect it came from the White Stripes’ video for “Fell in Love with a Girl” (bottom video). On September 4, Pavan posted a link to the video on his Facebook page with the message, “Because with the Lego, imagination has no limits!”

When Labor Day came and went earlier this month, it reminded us of the American labor movement and the contributions American workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of the good ol' U.S. of A.

However, since we're Guitar World people, we couldn't help but apply those sentiments to music and the American people who made and make it—bands!

This, in turn, led to thoughts and theories about the greatest American band of all time, which led us to our latest readers' poll—the Best American Rock Band Ever! Yes, the gangs from Guitar World and Sweetwater want to get GW readers—you people!—involved as we attempt to crown the Best American Rock Band Ever!

Although we had thousands of bands to choose from, we decided to narrow things down to 32, which is perfect for a month's worth of intense—and fun (it's supposed to be fun, people!) matchups. All the bands were carefully selected by Guitar World's editorial staff.

Note that this poll includes current bands and bands that disappeared into the woodwork years ago. Also, if you're wondering why the Jimi Hendrix Experience aren't on this list, they weren't an American band. Hendrix was American, but he's not a band. Band of Gypsys were American, but they simply didn't make the cut based on the music released under the "Band of Gypsys" moniker. It's one of many tough sacrifices we had to make along the way. Speaking of which, be sure to read "How the Bracket Was Compiled" at the bottom of this story.

Anyway, here are our 32 American bands, which are presented in alphabetical order. You also can check out the entire 32-band bracket below.

Aerosmith, Alice In Chains, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Doors, Eagles, Foo Fighters, Grateful Dead, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Heart, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Steely Dan, Steve Miller Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Styx, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Van Halen, the White Stripes and ZZ Top.

Enjoy our Best American Rock Band Ever Poll, which is sponsored by Sweetwater!

Today's Matchup

The White Stripes

The fact that we’ll likely never see Jack White engage in more punk-infused, maniacal blues shredding with Meg White’s perfectly simple drumming behind him still hurts. While they were around, the White Stripes were simply one of the best bands on the planet. Jack White’s searing, octave-traversing explorations always found their perfect foil in Meg’s rhythms. And while Meg caught incredible amounts of cruel, unnecessary criticism for her rhythmic style, she brought the simplicity and feeling to a band that did so much to take rock back to its primal roots after an extended drought.

• Grateful Dead

The definitive jam band. There’s a reason these guys had the most fiercely devoted fan base in rock’s history. Though they weren’t the most aggressive or ground-breaking band on the planet, the Grateful Dead were more than a band. They were a much larger community, and by extension, a way of life. They never played the same set, or even the same song, the exact same way twice. Unpredictable, and gifted with unparalleled musical chemistry, the Grateful Dead were truly a unique entity in American music.

Vote Now!

Sorry, the polls are closed. The Grateful Dead will advance to the next round. Be sure to catch the latest matchup at GuitarWorld.com.

Behold the Latest Bracket!

32 Bracket No Numbers

How the Bracket Was Compiled

Here's how the bracket was—very unscientifically—compiled.

We drew the artists' names out of a hat (It was, in fact, a smelly Quebec Nordiques baseball cap) to help us create our bracket, which is available for your viewing pleasure below. Obviously, none of these of bands are ranked or come from a previously compiled list, so we chose purely random matchups to have as little impact as possible on the final outcome. We're actually pretty pleased with the way the bracket turned out.

Remember that, as with any poll, genre might occasionally clash against genre, so you'll just need to decide which artist has (or has had) the most to offer within his/their genre, perhaps which one has or had more natural talent or technical skill, which one had the biggest influence on other live acts, etc.

As always, you can vote only once per matchup (once per device, that is), and we'll be posting match-ups pretty much every day of the month, sometimes more than once per day, just to give you an early warning.

Outside of Saturday Night Live, no other current TV show can boast as many impressive musical guests as The Simpsons.

And The Simpsons has the edge because its many musical appearances are actually meant to be funny.

Scores of rock icons—including three Beatles, two Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica—have appeared on the show as eight-fingered, yellow-tinted versions of themselves, and often in bizarre situations: the Ramones performing for Mr. Burns' birthday party (Who the hell booked that gig?) ... former Beatle George Harrison pointing Homer toward a platter full of brownies ... Ted Nugent running for president ... Aerosmith agreeing to perform at Moe's Tavern when free pickled eggs are offered. Even the Moody Blues have been on the show!

And so, in honor of the show's 25 seasons and 500-plus episodes, here are 10 of our favorite rock-star cameo appearances on The Simpsons.

We apologize for the poor quality of some of the videos below; we think they're good enough to get the point across.

10. The Ramones
"Rosebud," Episode 85

New York City's original punk rockers perform at a special event in honor of Mr. Burns' umpteenth birthday. They start the set by screaming "I'd just like to say this gig sucks!" and end it with a warm and tender "Happy birthday, ya old bastard!"

09. The White Stripes
"Jazzy and the Pussycats," Episode 380

In an episode called "Jazzy & The Pussycats," Bart is moved—literally—by the beat of the White Stripes' "The Hardest Button to Button" from the Elephant album.

When Bart and his drum kit ram into Jack and Meg White on a Springfield street corner, we expect the garage-rocking duo to be kind, friendly and forgiving toward the well-intentioned, pointy-haired youngster.

Instead, Meg screams, "Let's kick his ass!"

08. The Who
"A Tale of Two Springfields," Episode 250

Alas, there is no available video from this often-shown-as-a-rerun-around-7 p.m. episode.

It features the Who—Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and a rarely seen (and never heard) drummer who looks like a young Keith Moon. Come to think of it, they all look like the mid-Seventies versions of themselves in this episode from 2000.

The episode, "A Tale of Two Springfields," finds Homer trying to sabotage a Who concert in Olde Springfield. It features most of "Won't Get Fooled Again"; in fact, an A chord from the song destroys the wall between the two Springfields.

07. Spinal Tap
"The Otto Show," Episode 57

From a third-season episode called “The Otto Show." After Otto kills Spinal Tap in a bus crash, we find out he doesn't even have a driver's license. He winds up losing his beloved job and reevaluating his life.

How does Spinal Tap fit in? Well, they don't, really—except that, before Otto kills them, they perform in Springfield, mispronouncing the town's name during the show and watching their gigantic Satan balloon deflate.

“We salute you, our half-inflated Dark Lord,” chant the Tap, trying to make it look intentional.

The role of Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls is, of course, played by Simpsons regular Harry Shearer, who voices Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, Waylon Smithers and a million other people, regulars and transients alike.

If you really need to see some poor-quality video from this episode, you can do that right here.

06. R.E.M.
"Homer the Moe," Episode 272

After Moe's Tavern is turned into a swanky, upscale nightclub by the Formico, the self-proclaimed "Dean of Design," Homer turns his basement into a bar with the help of Lenny, Carl and Barney.

When Moe finally ventures over to see what all the fuss is about, he finds R.E.M. playing in Homer's basement.

The highlight of the episode is Homer trying and failing to sing along to "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)":

• "Leonardo What's-His-Name, Herman Munster, motorcade /
• birthday parties, Cheetos, pogo sticks and lemonade /
• You symbiotic, stupid jerk /
• That's right, Flanders, I am talking about you."

05. Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr
"Lisa the Vegetarian," Episode 133 (McCartney)
"Homer's Barbershop Quartet," Episode 82 (Harrison)
"Brush with Greatness," Episode 31

We're going to cheat and count separate appearances by three Beatles as one entry.

First there's Paul McCartney (and his wife Linda), who, of course, met Apu in India when The Beatles were hanging out with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in '68. "I read about you in history class," Lisa tells him. Then Lisa, Paul and Linda bond over the decision to go vegetarian.

Then there's George Harrison. Homer is ecstatic to meet the former Beatle—but only because George is holding a brownie and is able to tell Homer where he can find many more brownies. This also happens to be the episode about The B-Sharps, Homer's vocal group, which features a parody of the Beatles' 1969 rooftop performance from Let It Be.

And then there's Ringo Starr, the first Beatle to appear on The Simpsons. Unfortunately, there is no video available of his appearance. It turns out he's catching up on responding to his Beatles-era fan mail, including a portrait sent to him in 1966 by a young Marge. "We have French fries in England," Ringo writes to Marge. "But we call them chips." He goes on to tell her that her portrait of him is "gear."

04. Metallica
"The Mook, the Chef, the Wife and Her Homer," Episode 379

Poor Otto.

When Springfield's hapless bus driver happened upon his favorite band's broken-down tour bus, all he wanted to do was help out and give them a ride to their show. But when he gets out to lend a hand, Bart takes advantage of the driverless school bus, stealing it while yelling, "Look at me, I'm Otto! I'm a hundred years old and I'm driving a school bus!"

If that wasn't embarrassing enough, the band get a ride from a "real" fan, the elderly Hans Moleman, who we find out slept with Lars' grandmother. Bassist Robert Trujillo tells Otto, "Never listen to our music again!" before the band drive away in Hans' pickup truck playing "Master of Puppets."

03. Cypress Hill, Peter Frampton, Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth
"Homerpalooza," Episode 152

After the kids' school bus is destroyed, Homer is stuck driving Bart, Lisa and their friends to school in the morning. When Grand Funk Railroad's "Shinin' On" comes on the radio and the kids react in disgust, Homer takes it upon himself to take his children to Hullabalooza, Springfield's answer to Lollapalooza.

Hoping to convince Bart and Lisa that he's hip, Homer gets mistaken for an undercover cop when trying to hang out with a group of Generation Xers and is tossed out of the show.

Like any frustrated person would do, Homer takes his anger out on a nearby cannon, which in turn destroys one of Peter Frampton's inflatable pigs. The stunt lands him a spot taking cannon shots to the gut as as part of the festival's freak show, and Homer goes on tour with a group of guest stars that include the Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill.

02. Aerosmith
Flaming Moe's," Episode 45

"Hello, St. Louis!" screams Steven Tyler to the Springfield audience. "Are you ready to rock?"

The Moe's Tavern crowd is indeed ready to rock, and the band kicks into "Walk This Way" (as Joe Perry plays what looks like a five-string guitar, perhaps to go with the four fingers on his fretting hand).

Due to the success of a hot new drink invented by Homer (and allegedly stolen by Moe), Moe's Tavern has become such a happening place that the guys from Aerosmith are regulars.

Should the drink be called the Flaming Moe or the Flaming Homer? That battle is still raging.

01. Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Brian Setzer, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and Lenny Kravitz
"How I Spent My Strummer Vacation," Episode 293

In a 2002 episode called "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation,” Homer—and several other Springfield regulars including Chief Wiggum, Otto and Apu—attend a rock 'n' roll fantasy camp hosted by the heart and soul of The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (who plays the opening riff to "Start Me Up" on a Telecaster that's not plugged in).

When the one-week-long camp is over, Homer—understandably—doesn't want to leave. So Jagger offers him a chance to perform at a benefit gig, the Concert for Planet Hollywood.

Among the camp instructors are Brian Setzer, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and Lenny Kravitz, who deliver some great lessons and one-liners and add to the already-impressive star power of this episode.

Classic: Keith Richards announcing that he has to put up the storm windows. "Winter's coming," he adds.

A host of old-school roots rockers have gotten together to record a Jack White tribute album. Yes, you read that correctly.

The album, Rockin’ Legends Pay Tribute to Jack White, will be released November 18 and features contributions from rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson, who covers the White Stripes' "In The Cold, Cold Night," with Shooter Jennings, and Gary U.S. Bonds, who tackles "Salute Your Solution."

"When I heard 'Cold, Cold Night' for the first time, I knew it was a song that I wanted to record someday," Jackson told Rolling Stone.

"When the opportunity came around to pay tribute to Jack on this album, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to lay it down in the studio. I’m very pleased with how it turned out and I hope Jack approves of the job we did."

White worked on Jackson's 2011 album, The Party Ain’t Over.

The album also features a cover by modern-day instrumental rockers Los Straitjackets, who supplied a cover of the White Stripes' "Icky Thump" to the project. Guitarist Chris Spedding also is featured on the album; he and Robert Gordon take a stab at "Another Way to Die."

You can check out the complete track listing below.

01. Shooter Jennings and Wanda Jackson - "In The Cold, Cold Night"
02. Big Jay McNeely and Nik Turner – 'I’m Shakin''
03. Gary U.S. Bonds – "Salute Your Solution"
04. Sonny Burgess and the Legendary Pacers – 'Steady As She Goes'
05. Joe Clay and Cranston Clements – 'Trash Tongue Talker'
06. Robert Gordon and Chris Spedding – 'Another Way to Die'
07. Knox, Walter Lure and W.S. "Fluke" Holland – 'Seven Nation Army'
08. Johnny Powers – 'Fly Farm Blues'
09. Bobby Vee – 'We're Going to Be Friends'
10. Rosie Flores – 'Blunderbuss'
11. The Dirt Daubers – 'Fell in Love With a Girl'
12. Rejected Youth Nation feat. Cyril Neville – 'You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)'
13. The Denver Broncos U.K. – 'Top Yourself'
14. Los Straitjackets – 'Icky Thump"

After debuting on PBS over the weekend, Jack White's entire episode of Austin City Limits is now streaming in full online.

You can watch a 20-minute clip from his set below, and check out the full episode here.

White had both of his backing bands, the Buzzards (all-male) and the Peacocks (all-female), on-hand for the evening, which featured the singer/guitarist running through tracks from his debut solo effort, Blunderbuss, as well as classics from the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather.

Blunderbuss was recently named the best-selling vinyl of 2012, supplanting The Beatles' Abbey Road at the top of the list. It landed at No. 8 on Guitar World's list of the 50 best albums of 2012.

Watch Jack White on PBS. See more from Austin City Limits.

Jack White is set to appear on the latest episode of the PBS music series Austin City Limits tomorrow, January 5. You can watch a preview clip of White performing "Love Interruption" from the show below.

Yesterday, we reported that White's debut solo album, Blunderbuss, had been named as the top-selling vinyl LP of 2012, selling just over 33,000 copies to oust The Beatles' Abbey Road from its perennial place atop the list.

Blunderbuss was ranked as No. 8 on Guitar World's list of the top 50 albums of 2012.

Last night, Jack White hit the stage on TBS's Conan to perform the latest single off his debut solo album, Blunderbuss. Check out the footage of White performing his cover of Rudy Toombs' "I'm Shakin'" below.

Released earlier this year, Blunderbuss marked Jack White's first U.S. No. 1, a feat he never accomplished as part of the White Stripes. Blunderbuss ranks at No. 8 on Guitar World's list of the 50 best albums of 2012.

Jack White faces off with himself in the third music video from his debut solo effort, Blunderbuss. Check out the Dori Oskowitz-directed clip for "I'm Shakin'" below.

"I'm Shakin''" is also the album's latest single and will be released by Third Man Records as a 7-inch October 30 along with the non-album B-side "Blues on Two Trees." The single will feature two different covers, one of which can only be purchased at White's upcoming live shows.

Blunderbuss debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts upon its release in April, marking White's first-ever No. 1 record in the U.S.

While no audio samples have surfaced just yet, producer Jerry Bruckheimer has confirmed that White will be providing the score for an upcoming Disney film, The Long Ranger, which is slated for a 2013 release.

"Jack's an amazing songwriter with a unique style," Bruckheimer told Variety earlier this year. "We're thrilled to hear his fresh take on the 'William Tell Overture.'"

Jack White has just unleashed his latest video, a Hype Williams-directed affair that sees Jack in a bit of trouble with the law. Check it out below.

"Freedom at 21" is off White's debut album, Blunderbuss (buy on iTunes), which landed at No. 1 on the Billboard charts upon its release, marking the multi-instrumentalist's first No. 1 album in the U.S.

Jack White is on tour throughout the rest of 2012, and you can find his full tour itinerary here.

It's pretty well-documented that Jack White is in no mood for a White Stripes reunion — and who can blame him when he just scored his first-ever No. 1 album in the U.S. as a solo artist?

White was asked once again by Dutch news station Newsuur if he would ever consider reuniting the band that launched his career. He responded, to the surprise of no one, "No. I don't think that could ever happen; it's all done. But the lord works in mysterious ways so there'll probably be something better to come out of me one day. I hope so, I've got nothing better to do."

White is on the road in support of his first solo album, Blunderbuss (buy on iTunes).

Here's a photo gallery of Jack White, Gary Clark Jr. and Alabama Shakes performing at the 2012 Sasquatch! Music Festival, which took place this past Memorial Day weekend -- May 25 to 28 -- at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Gorge, Washington.

Click here to see a photo gallery of Beck performing at Sasquatch! -- and stay tuned for a photo gallery of Tenacious D performing at the festival.

For more about Sasquatch!, visit the festival's official website.

All photos by Robert Delahanty.

Fresh off the release of his debut solo album, Blunderbuss, Jack White is set to release the album's third track, "Freedom at 21," as a 7-inch single next month.

Making the single a must-have for Jack White completionists is the presence of a non-album B-side titled "Inaccessible Mystery."

The single is available for pre-order now at this location, and is due out June 11 via Third Man Records.

In other Jack White news, SiriusXM subsribers will be able to tune into Sirius XMU (channel 35) tomorrow night at 9 p.m. EST to catch a live stream of White's show at New York City's Roseland Ballroom.

After being denied the official world record for shortest concert of all time by the people at the Guinness Book of World Records, Jack White, undeterred, has announced plans to try for yet another world record.

For the remainder of his current tour, White will devote each show to attempting to break the world record for most metaphors in a single concert.

An official press release reads: "The attempt may prove very exhausting and at times even dangerous, but the results could prove to be glorious and possibly even vainglorious. White and Third Man Records are certain that the extremely scientific and intricate analysis of the metaphors that occur will be examined in accordance with Guinness' usually very thorough methods probably, or at the very least if somebody answers the phone at the pub.

Third Man Records encourages all attendees of said concerts to please not interfere or interject with any metaphors that they witness occur during the show as to not disqualify or worse yet, trivialize the metaphor in question. In addition all concert attendees are encouraged to entice as many metaphors to occur during the show that they possibly can as long as they don't endanger themselves or Mr. White."

Jack White's debut solo album, Blunderbuss, is out now on Third Man Records.

Jack White 2012 Tour Dates

• 05/18-20/12 - Gulf Shores, AL - The Hangout Music Fest
• 05/19/12 - Asheville, NC - The Orange Peel +
• 05/21/12- NY, NY - Roseland Ballroom +
• 05/22/12 - NY, NY - Roseland Ballroom +
• 05/24/12 - Detroit, MI - Scottish Rite Theater +
• 05/24/12 - Detroit, MI - Scottish Rite Theater (all ages matinee show) +
• 05/26/12 - George, WA - Sasquatch Music Festival
• 05/27/12 - Vancouver, BC - Queen Elizabeth Theatre +
• 05/28/12 - Eugene, OR - Hult Center for the Performing Arts (Silva Concert Hall) +
• 05/30/12 - Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern +
• 05/31/12 - Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern +
• 06/21/12 - London, UK - O2 Academy Broxton +
• 06/22/12 - London, UK - Hammersmith Apollo +
• 06/23/12 - Hackney Marshes, London, UK - Radio 1's Hackney Weekend
• 06/25/12 - Amsterdam, NL - Heineken Music Hall
• 06/26/12 - Berlin, Germany - Tempodrom
• 06/27/12 - Cologne, Germany - E-Werk +
• 06/29/12 -Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter
• 07/01/12 - Belfort, France - Les Eurockeennes
• 07/02/12 - Paris, France - L'Olympia +
• 07/03/12 - Paris, France - L'Olympia +
• 07/05/12 - Hamburg, Germany - Docks +
• 07/05-08/12 - Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
• 07/20-22/12 - Dover, Delaware - Firefly Music Festival +
• 07/25/12 - Melbourne, Australia - Festival Hallm +
• 07/26/12 - Sydney, Australia - Hordern Pavillion +
• 07/27/12 - Byron Bay, Australia - Splendour In The Grass Festival +
• 07/27-29/12 - Niigata, Japan - Fuji Rock Festival +
• 08/03-05/12 - Chicago, IL - Lollapalooza
• 08/08/12 - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheater
• 08/10-12/12 - San Francisco, CA - Outside Lands

Maybe it's because they're called rock stars, but it seems like a lot of big-time rockers have an inexplicable obsession with outer space.

First, Foo Fighters and Muse both expressed a desire to record in space, and now — far more realistically — Jack White has told Interview magazine that he'd like to have the first vinyl played in space.

For the feature, White was interviewed — at his request — by former NASA astronaut and second human to step foot on the moon, Buzz Aldrin.

It was during the exchange that White revealed his desire to "launch a balloon that carries a vinyl record player. And figure out a way to drop the needle with all that turbulence up there and ensure that it will still play."

You can read more here.

Born and raised in Denmark, pedal steel guitarist Maggie Björklund wasn’t content to settle in with just any instrument.

Now appearing live with Jack White, Björklund is thrilled to bring the pedal steel guitar to stages and TV studios worldwide!

Early in her career, Björklund was best known in Europe as a guitarist for the all-girl country band, The Darleens, and experimental pop group, Miss B Haven. After the breakup of Miss B Haven, she discovered the pedal steel and simply fell in love.

Björklund released her debut solo recording, Coming Home, last year and proved her songwriting chops could stand up to her substantial steel guitar prowess. This melancholy collection of folksy stringed delights features contributions from Calexico, Mark Lanegan and Jon Auer of the Posies.

Here Björklund shares her path from playing guitar in Europe to pedal steel in the American Northwest, and now onto the stage with Jack White.

GUITAR WORLD: Tell us about your early experience with guitar. What made you pick one up?

I have three older sisters who all played music while growing up. They mostly played piano, but one of them played guitar as well. I was always very curious about the instruments and how they sounded. When I was allowed to attend the local music school program, all I could take was piano lessons, but as soon as I was old enough I wanted to learn the guitar. I had a natural flair for the instrument and loved playing it.

There weren't any rock and roll musicians anywhere near where I lived, so I had to take lessons in classical guitar. I loved it, but outgrew the music school teachers fast. Later I found a professional teacher in a nearby town. My mom would have to drive me there every Thursday to get lessons. She did a great job at supporting my musical adventures. Rock and Roll came into my life way later, and I didn't play electric guitar until out of high school.

When did you start playing the pedal lap steel guitar? Why did you choose to play it?

When I started down the path of being a professional musician in Denmark, I was always trying out new instruments, and one day a friend offered me his pedal steel at a really cheap price. In Denmark pedal steel guitars don't exactly flood the market, so I was really happy to get my hands on this guitar. My friend could play some and he showed me the basics of how to put it up and how to operate the pedals, but other than that I was left on my own. He also gave me a learning book on the pedal steel, but he had lost the vinyl that came with it with all the sound examples.

Once I had brought this treasure home – it was a simple Fender student model with only one knee lever and three pedals – I put it up and tried to play it. It was so hard, and I quickly gave up again. I put the steel guitar away, and didn't play it again for some years. This is quite common, that people set out with really good intentions wanting to learn it, but are faced with the difficulty and complexity of the instrument, and then give up.

Some years later I put up the guitar again, on some random thought of wanting to have a go at it again. And then, for some reason I was able to understand so much more of how it works. That made my day big time! I instantly fell in love with this weird instrument that had challenged me so much, but now was allowing me to play music with it. After that I was obsessed with it and quickly turned from being a guitar player to being a steel guitar player.

You studied the pedal lap steel guitar with Jeff Newman in Nashville. Describe your learning experience with him.

After trying for a while to learn this instrument, and I played shows on it and everything, I kind of knew that I had to get a real pro to show me some of the secrets of it. I found Jeff Newman in a magazine I think, and signed up for a week of one-on-one teaching at his house in Nashville. I was so excited to go there and really nervous too.

He was such a great person and I quickly felt very at ease with him. His way of teaching was truly remarkable. He pulled everything I thought I knew to pieces, but when I was left without anything he then helped me lay out a foundation on playing techniques and how to think with the steel guitar. His teaching was so great that a lot of how I play today comes from that foundation. He was truly a unique teacher that inspired me for life. It was such an exotic adventure to go to the lush hills of the Nashville area and play steel guitar all day long, and turning in at night to the sound of the crickets outside the cabin.

Before you played the pedal lap steel, you played guitar for The Darleens and Miss B Haven. Do you see yourself playing the guitar again in the future?

I do still play guitar live at certain shows, but I played almost all the guitars on my own record. You can kind of hear my classical background on the way I play the gut string guitar on there. I love playing the guitar, and I can easily see a time in the future where I bring it out more.

What model of guitars do you use? Describe other gear you use including amps, pedals, etc.

I have an old Fender Telecaster that I use a lot, and I swear by my Gretsch Chet Atkins model as well as my Fender Jazzmaster. I have a beautiful classical guitar hand made from Spain, that I use on all my recordings. It is a unique guitar and I don't know what I should do if I ever lost it. It has such a deep warm sound to it. Melancholy lies in the wood of that guitar I think.

My steel guitars are all Sho-Buds. I have several since I need them for touring and rehearsing on different continents. Some of them are all original but others have gotten new mechanics. But I always make sure to have the old Sho-Bud pick up in there. That is what makes the sound and I love them. I know they are noisy and have a buzz, but they also have the cool sound of the old times that I haven't found anywhere else.

I use Fender Twin amps, as well as Fender Super Reverb and Pro Reverb. I also like to use my old Vox AC30. I play my steel through the AC30 and have a reverb pedal to add the juice. I recently found a Xotic BB preamp pedal that works fantastic with my steel guitar. It is not easy finding the right kind of drive for that instrument; it can quickly be too heavy sounding or take out the body of the tone. But this little pedal is fantastic at adding the crunch. I use delay, and have a Fulltone Tape Echo that I work with a lot. I am also very fond of my Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe pedal. It has the coolest kinds of tremolo and vibrato.

Congratulations on the release of your debut solo album, Coming Home. Did you do a lot of touring after its release in March 2011? Are you trying out new material as you tour as well?

I was very happy to release Coming Home, and I have done some touring with my band, mostly in the northwest of America. We did play SXSW both last year and this year, and that is always a great experience. I love that crazy festival. We do play new material when touring. It is a great way of shaping the songs, trying them out live. You quickly know if they work or if they need some more work to the structure etc.

Do you have a favorite song to play from the album?

I don't really have a favorite song from the album. To me the songs are quite different each of them, and show different sides of my composing and playing, as well as the collaboration with the great singers and musicians that took part of this album. Sometimes my favorite is "Intertwined" that I sing with Mark Lanegan, sometimes it is "The Anchor Song" that Rachel Flotard sings and wrote the lyrics for. Other times, I like the weirdness of “Vildspor,” with Jon Auer, or “Insekt.” But mostly I never listen to the recordings after I am done and it has been released. I move on, and don't need to hear it again. Until years later. Then it is fun to take out your old record and listen to it with the fresh ears that time and lived life will give to your perception of music.

Jack White asked you to join him in his upcoming tour. What was your initial reaction?

I was quite surprised but honored and thrilled that he needed a musician like me!

What is your process for writing music?

I write music in bulk. I can go with out writing anything for a very long time. I often get to think that, "This is it, I am never going to write another song in my life, because nothing is happening." But then suddenly something happens, and I write a lot of music all at once.

Who are your musical influences? What music do you find the most inspiring?

I get inspired by everything from Bach, Beethoven, Debussy to Beatles, Black Keys and yes, Jack White. All music I hear passes through the subconscious of my mind and will end up in the melting pot of inspiration that I drink out of to make music and play.

What’s next for you?

I am currently working on new material for my next album. I love that process. There is nothing better than slowly seeing your vision come to life. I often look back at what I write and think, "Where did that come from?" I didn't know I had that music inside me, but there it is.

Find out what’s next for Björklund at her official website.

Here's Björklund and a bevy of fabulous string players performing her song “Insekt”:

Laura B. Whitmore is a singer/songwriter based in the San Francisco bay area. A veteran music industry marketer, she has spent over two decades doing marketing, PR and artist relations for several guitar-related brands including Marshall and VOX. Her company, Mad Sun Marketing, represents 65amps, Acoustic Bass Amps, Agile Partners, Guitar World and many more. Laura was instrumental in the launch of the Guitar World Lick of the Day app. She is the co-producer of the Women's Music Summit and the lead singer for the rock band, Summer Music Project. More at mad-sun.com.

As predicted last week, Jack White's debut solo album, Blunderbuss (buy it on iTunes), has landed in the No. 1 spot on the charts in the U.K., toppling Adele by a margin of nearly two to one.

While competition is a bit steeper on this side of the pond, White also is expected to score his first-ever No. 1 album in the United States later this week, with the official chart positions being revealed Wednesday.

White had previously topped the UK charts twice as a member of the White Stripes, with 2003's Elephant and 2007's Icky Thump landing at No. 1.

Blunderbuss is out now on Third Man Records.

It seems fitting that my first review to be featured in my Oil Slick blog -- a blog about garage rock -- addresses a solo album by one of the genre's most prolific artists, Jack White -- even though he has already removed himself from the landscape his guitar helped carve.

Many White Stripes fans waited for White's new solo album, Blunderbuss, with hesitant anticipation. The enigmatic frontman tested the pop-rock circuit with The Raconteurs, sated his blues lust with the swampy fun of The Dead Weather, then produced an Insane Clown Posse song and got a divorce.

All of these signs point to what could be perceived as an incredibly artistic mid-life crisis. That a solo album was supposedly in the works only seemed to strengthen this perception.

Of course, after listening to the album six or seven times, we were fools to doubt. Blunderbuss is good — damn good. The shift of tones between the meandering, sweet folk of “Love Interruption” to the haunting abuse featured in “Freedom at 21” leave the listener off-balance and eagerly following through to the very end.

However, anyone hoping for anything more than traces of White's past will be sorely disappointed. He gets the only all-out fret-burner out of the way early, as the second track, “16 Saltines,” sounds like something cooked up when the White Stripes were in a jam session and Jack grabbed the sick organ he fell in love with while in The Dead Weather.

After that, things get much more introspective, with White singing about the traps of love — “I want love to turn my friends into enemies, and show me how it's all my fault," he sings in “Love Interruption” — while adding his ex-wife Karen Elston as a back-up signer.

Blunderbuss feels like Jack's way of putting all those garage rock hell-raiser expectations to a close, letting them go gently but firmly. He's no longer the screeching howl heard on “Ball and a Biscuit” and he's definitely a lot more jaded than the artist innocently crooning “I can tell that we are gonna be friends” way back in '02.

The album is a fantastic, if bittersweet, return for one of the greatest musicians doing their thing today, and although it lacks the all-out fury of a White Stripes gem, Blunderbuss is an album that demands multiple listens — probably in the same day.

John Grimley writes The Oil Slick blog on GuitarWorld.com.

Just days after releasing his debut solo album, Blunderbuss, Jack White made an appearance on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report last night to talk about his new album and perform the track "Freedom at 21." You can watch video of the performance and interview below.

White is predicted by many chart experts to top charts on both sides of the Atlantic next week, with some estimates putting sales of Blunderbuss at 100 to 120K in the first week.

While they had two No. 1 hits in England, The White Stripes never had a No. 1 album in the U.S.

Blunderbuss is out now on Third Man Records.

On his new album, Blunderbuss, Jack White sings, "But I can't sit still/ Because I know that I will."

Being true to his words and his reputation as a work horse, White has reportedly signed on to write, produce and perform the soundtrack to Disney's upcoming adaptation of The Lone Ranger.

"Jack's an amazing songwriter with a unique style," Jerry Bruckheimer recently told Variety. "We're thrilled to hear his fresh take on the 'William Tell Overture.'"

The film will star Armie Hammer — who has perhaps the coolest Hollywood name since Rip Torn — as the Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto.

White released his first-ever solo album, Blunderbuss, yesterday via his own Third Man Records.

This Friday, April 27, Jack White will be playing New York City's Webster Hall, an intimate show that will be live streamed and directed by actor Gary Oldman.

Jack White's eclectic, deeply personal new album, Blunderbuss, is officially out today via Third Man Records.

The iconic rocker recently sat down with NPR to discuss the journey that led him to record and release his first solo album. You can check out the full chat in the video below.

"I came up from growing up with a lot of Catholic guilt, a lot of punk rock, hipster guilt in the later years where I think people have thrown a lot of things on me," White told NPR. "Where I always felt like I'm not supposed to tell the horn section what to play or I don't want to come off egotistical or like a control freak to tell a piano player to change the rhythm to waltz time now because it will make this thing happen."

He continued, "But now I'm in a position where I own the studio and the people who come in to work on music. They want to make something beautiful happen and somebody needs to direct it, and I feel like ... forget all that guilt."

Jack White is heading back to the States next week, but for the time being, he's still tearing it up in Europe.

In fact, White performed "Sixteen Saltines" and "Freedom at 21" -- both off his upcoming solo album, Blunderbuss -- last night on a German TV show called Die Harald Schmidt Show.

He performed "Sixteen Saltines" with his all-female band and "Freedom at 21" with his all-dude band.

Check out the video below, which features both songs.

Blunderbuss will be out April 24 via Third Man/Columbia.

Just a week ahead of the official release of his debut solo album, Jack White is now streaming Blunderbuss in its entirety via iTunes. Listen to the full thing here, then come back and tell us what you think in the comments.

To celebrate the release of his first-ever solo album, White also will be streaming his April 27 concert at New York City's Webster Hall online for free. Making it even more special, the stream will be directed by actor Gary Oldman.

Blunderbuss (pre-order on iTunes) is out April 24 on Third Man Records. You can still watch the eerie video for "Sixteen Saltines" here.

As part of the Third Man Records Vault subscription series, the White Stripes will be releasing a "new" live DVD, Under New Zealand Lights.

While the release itself is new, the footage is taken from two of the band's New Zealand concerts in the early half of the last decade: one from the King's Arms in Auckland in 2000, and the other from a more intimate performance at Freeman's Bay Primary School in the fall of 2003.

The 12th installment of the Third Man Vault series will also include a 7" single featuring two previously unreleased tracks from The Raconteurs, as well as a live album from Karen Elson.

As for a full-on White Stripes reunion, Jack White — who will release his first solo album, Blunderbuss, on April 24 — made clear in a recent interview that there was "absolutely no chance" of that ever happening.

"I couldn't see any reason to ever do that," he said, "I'm not the kind of person that would retire from baseball and come out of retirement the next year. I mean, if we went to all the trouble of telling people we're done, we meant it, you know?"

Jack White's new album, Blunderbuss, will be released April 24, and we've posted previews and videos of two singles, "Sixteen Saltines" and "Love Interruption."

But for those of you who wonder what inspires White these days -- let alone what a blunderbuss is -- The New York Times has the answer: death.

White told The Times that death is one of the central themes and motifs of the new album.

"I was writing the liner notes the other day, and it seemed like it had a lot to do with that [death]," White said. "For some reason, that was overwhelming throughout the lyric writing."

Last week, White mentioned that he missed being in The White Stripes, adding that their split wasn't up to him alone and that if he had the chance, he'd "make a White Stripes record right now."

But, speaking to NME.com last month, White said there is "absolutely no chance" he'd ever reform the band, saying he'd only consider it if he "went bankrupt."

By the way, a blunderbuss is a short musket with large bore and flared muzzle, used to scatter shot at short range. Old-timey pirates used to love these things.

Jack White has just debuted a bizarre new music video for his song "Sixteen Saltines." (Who knew a song called "Sixteen Saltines" would have a weird video?) You can watch the clip below.

"Sixteen Saltines" is from White's upcoming solo debut, Blunderbuss, which will be released April 24 through his own Third Man Records.

Over the weekend, White released 1,000 copies of his latest single, "Freedom," via a virtually untapped distribution system: helium balloons. You can check out video and photos from the April Fools' Day release of "Freedom" here.

This past Sunday was April Fools' Day, and while many of us were busy falling for Google's Really Advanced Search feature, Jack White was busy releasing 1,000 copies of his new single, "Freedom at 21," as flexidiscs.

Oh, and they were attached to giant helium balloons. We should probably mention that too.

Never one to embrace traditional methods for — well, anything — White had 1,000 biodegradable latex balloons filled with helium and a copy of his new single before launching them all skyward, hoping they'd land in the hands of people who don't typically visit record stores.

The balloons also contained postcards instructing finders of the records to submit photos and information about where/when it was found. The results will be collected here.

White's debut solo album, Blunderbuss, is out April 24 on Third Man Records.

Musicians are just like normal people, and, like us, they run into people in their lives who just annoy the hell out of them.

However, musicians don't need to resort to passive-aggressive Facebook posts to voice their frustrations.

Here are three of the harshest character critiques via song:

"Shoot Your Gun" -- The 22-20s

Sample Lyric:

Could you be a mother? Could you ever find a love that you would not place yourself above?

What happens when a moody rock band thinks you might be less than a caring, loving person? The 22-20s' excellent song “Shoot Your Gun," that's what. The band is in full-fledged attack mode on this song, as the singer breaks down the character with pointed rhetorical questions like the one above.

"Pretty Princess Day" -- The Dirtbombs

Sample Lyric:

You want to eat your cake and have it too, you don't really know how this works, do you?

Although this song is coated in a pretty upbeat and poppy tune, the title basically says it all. Lambasting someone who hasn't figured out the world isn't revolving around them in under three minutes, the band wastes no time. Like a roast without a hug at the end.

"You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" -- The White Stripes

Sample Lyric:

You don't know what love is, you just do as you're told. Just as a child of ten might act, but you're far too old.

Jack White has never been known to hold back on a topic, and this song shows him so incensed at a relationship that he has to turn it into a boot-stomping guitar frenzy. An ode to subservience, the song acidly demonstrates that pissing off a man with a microphone is never a good idea.

John Grimley writes The Oil Slick blog on GuitarWorld.com.

Jack White may have been a bit reluctant to launch a solo career, but it seems he's perfectly content with the White Stripes being done for good.

Speaking to NME recently, White put the chances of a reunion with Meg at approximately zero.

"I would probably say absolutely not," he said. "Absolutely no chance. I couldn't see any reason to ever do that. I'm not the kind of person that would retire from baseball and come out of retirement the next year. I mean, if we went to all the trouble of telling people we're done, we meant it, you know?"

White did relent that certain circumstances might force him into it, adding, "If we were forced to change our mind about that, I can only imagine the reason being if we went bankrupt or really needed the cash, which would be a really sad thing. I would probably be issuing an apology along with the announcement of the show dates."

White will release his debut solo album, Blunderbuss, April 22 through his own Third Man Records.

Jack White is streaming a new song, "Sixteen Saltines," right now, and you can hear it below.

"Sixteen Saltines" is the second single from White's forthcoming debut solo album, Blunderbuss, out April 24 on Third Man Records/Columbia.

You might remember the song from White's March 3 appearance on Saturday Night Live, when he also performed "Love Interruption."

White is playing select headline and festival dates leading up to Blunderbuss' release, including a headlining set at the Third Man Records Texas Stand-Off, the label's first official South By Southwest (SXSW) showcase, on Friday, March 16 at The Stage on Sixth in Austin, Texas. See below for a full list of dates.

JACK WHITE ON TOUR

03/13 - Memphis, TN - New Daisy Theatre +
03/15 - Tulsa, OK - Cain's Ballroom +
03/16 - Austin, TX - The Stage on Sixth (Third Man Records Texas Stand-Off with Karen Elson, John Reilly & Friends, White Rabbits, Reggie Watts, Pujol, Lanie Lane, The Black Belles, Electric Guest, Natural Child, Purling Hiss)
05/18-20 - Gulf Shores, AL - The Hangout Music Fest
05/26 - Quincy, WA - The Gorge Amphitheater - Sasquatch!
06/23-24 - Hackney Marshes, London, UK - Radio 1's Hackney Weekend
06/29 - Werchter, Belgium - Rock Werchter
07/01 - Belfort, France - Les Eurockeennes
07/27-29 - Niigata, Japan - Fuji Rock Festival

Over the weekend, Jack White made his first appearance on television as a solo musician, hitting the Saturday Night Live stage to perform two tracks from his upcoming studio album, Blunderbuss.

White first performed "Love Interruption," the album's first single, which was released last month on Third Man Records. For his second performance, he broke out a previously unheard track, a more rocking affair that seemed to be about crackers titled "Sixteen Saltines."

If you haven't already scene the hilariously awkward promo video for the episode featuring White, host Lindsay Lohan and SNL cast member Andy Samberg, you can watch it here.

White will release Blunderbuss on April 24.

To revisit our list of the 10 most rockin' moments in Saturday Night Live history, head here.