Jack White, photo by Joshua Mellin

The Who’s Roger Daltrey declared “rock music dead” some two years ago, and just last October, U2’s own Bono described today’s releases as “very girly.” Now, Jack White has weighed in on the great rock & roll debate.

In an interview on KROQ’s The Kevin & Bean Show on Monday, White responded to a question about the lack of rock-oriented artists on the bills of some upcoming festivals. According to the Detroit-born musician, the genre is currently missing that special X factor, or what he calls “a wildness.”



(Read: Losing My Religion: The Demise of Rock & Roll)

“Rock & roll needs an injection of some new, young blood to really just knock everybody dead right now,” White comments. “I think it’s brewing. It’s brewing and brewing and it’s about to happen. I think that it’s good.”

“Since rock & roll’s inception, every 10 or 12 years there’s a breath of fresh air and a new injection of some sort of what you could I guess call punk attitude or something like that,” he continues. “A wildness. Things get crazy and then they get crazy for a couple years, then they kind of get subtle, and then you gotta wait for the next wave to come through and get people really excited and screaming about it again.”

White never mentions himself as a possible candidate for “injecting” that “wildness,” but he’ll get his chance at it come March 23rd, when he releases his Boarding House Ranch, one of Consequence of Sound’s (and our readers’) most anticipated albums of 2018.

Hear the full interview — in which White also shares some time advice he received from Q-Tip — below.