The world wouldn’t be the same without the occasional bitchy interview from Jack White. Did you see his recent sad baseball face at a Chicago Cubs game? That made my day. “Grumpy Jack” doesn’t dislike baseball. He simply had a bad day. I follow a blogger on Twitter who snapped a photo of Jack smiling at a Bay area game a few weeks later. There was talk of him getting hit with a ball in Chicago. I don’t know.

Back to Jack White bitching to the media. I’m so entertained when he does this. This year alone, Jack’s publicly continued his Black Keys feud and shaded Meg White for not applauding his every move. Jack’s a sensitive curmudgeon. Behind his genius lies a little boy who wants everyone’s approval. Don’t worry, Jack. Your fans approve.

Jack’s tour to support the Lazarettto album is getting rave reviews. He took some time out to visit Dan Rather for The Big Interview. Jack is still upset about auto-tune. He believes Detroit doesn’t like him anymore. He thinks that musicians of the 1960s had it a lot easier than those of the digital age. That comment is open for interpretation:

The state of songwriting: “I was talking to Bob Dylan and I said, ‘In a way, you guys had it so lucky in the Sixties.’ All these recording techniques that had never been tried before, the Civil Rights movement was coming to a head, the Vietnam War. The whole world was changing … There was so much to sing about. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

He finds no inspiration in today’s youth: “I don’t see beauty in teenagers sitting next to each other texting and not talking face to face. I don’t see that beauty in the way that pop music is all recorded on computers and Auto-Tune and presented in that really plastic way. And I guess I just do my best in whatever I do to try to defeat those ideas and present it in something I think is at least an attempt at getting at truth and getting at beauty.”

More ranting: “It is a lot harder now, and I am a little bit jealous of the artists from the other decades because it seemed like you could just do your job and not worry about this periphery of stuff. The idea that I just have to be a hustler now just to be a musician, you sort of have to sell yourself all the time now. I think you could have just been a songwriter and everyone else would do that around you. I doubt Frank Sinatra cared what was on his album cover.”

Leaving Detroit: “It was very hard for me to move. Detroit, I always imagined I was going to be there my whole life. It always felt like my home — even as hard as it is to live there, it always felt that way to me.”

Detroit fans didn’t like his mainstream success: “When you’re in that kind of cynical environment, it’s hard for people to understand how to relate to it. It was hard for me to understand … When you win the lottery, what do you do? You give your brothers and sisters a million dollars if you win the lottery, they’re going to end up hating you a couple of years later.”

He loves living in Nashville: “They look at music and the business of music so differently than I do that I thought, ‘Well, maybe this is the perfect place.’ I can just kind of be comfortable here, and I won’t be in competition with anybody else.”

[From Dan Rather – The Big Interview]

Jack has several good points. He became a successful rock god when the internet was full of framed HTML designs. There was no Facebook or Instagram. People didn’t take his photo at baseball games and post it on Twitter. He didn’t have to worry about saying whiny things in interviews and having those statements go viral in a matter of hours. Back in the day, Jack could say something bitchy in the print edition of Spin, and everyone would forget it by the next issue. Online journalism makes it harder for artists to self-edit their opinions.

Jack’s correct about the 1960s too. That was a period of great social upheaval, and it provided inspiration for some righteous music. Jack’s doing just fine at creating in 2014. He loves to complain, and texting makes a good target too. If I could turn off phone texts, there’d be a few less bitch sessions per month in my house.

Here’s video of Jack’s long interview with Dan Rather. They toured Jack’s Third Man Records studio. Then Jack covered Hank Williams’ “Tennessee Border.”

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN