Deadlines Force Creativity

Inspiration and work ethic, they ride right next to each other. When I was an upholsterer, sometimes you’re not inspired to reupholster and old chair. Sometimes it’s just work and you just do it because you’re supposed to. And maybe by the end when you finish you look and say “eh, that looks good… that’s pretty good,” and that’s it, and you just move on.

Not every day of your life are you going to wake up and the clouds are going to part and rays from heaven are going to come down and you’re going to write a song from it. Sometimes you just get in there and just force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out of it.

That was our thing: whether we like it or not, write some songs and record them. Force yourself to work. Book only 4 or 5 days in a studio and force yourself to record an album in that time.

Deadlines make you creative. Opportunity, and telling yourself “you’ve got all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want,” that just kills creativity.

On stage, I’m using the same guitars on stage that I was using 10 years ago. I like to do things that make it really hard on myself. If I drop a pick, I have to go all the way to the back of the stage to get another one. I don’t have picks all taped to the mic stand. I put the organ just far away enough that I have to leap to get to it to play different parts of a song. It’s not handy to jump from one to the next. I always try to push it a little bit farther away so I have to work harder and get somewhere. All those little things, and there’s hundreds of those things like that: those guitars I use don’t stay in tune very well, and they’re not conducive, they’re not what regular bands go out and play. So I’m constantly fighting all these tiny little things because all of those little things build tension.

There’s no set list when we play: that’s the biggest one. Each show has its own life to it. It’s important to do that kind of stuff. When you go out and everything is all preplanned and everyone sets everything out for you and the table’s all set nice and perfect, nothing’s going to happen. You’re going to go out and do a boring arena set or something. All those things have always been a big component of the White Stripes: constriction, to force ourselves to create.

Only having red white and black colors on any of our artwork and our presentation, as the aesthetic of the band. Guitar, drums and vocals. Storytelling, melody and rhythm, revolving all these things around the number 3. All these components force us to create.

– Jack White, of the White Stripes, (transcribed from) Under the Great White Northern Lights