Jack White Sees Red Over Tour Rider Leak

Jack White.

Jack White has been in the news a lot recently ”“ and not for his music. Prior to a performance at the University of Oklahoma earlier this month, the college’s student newspaper published White’s contract and tour rider (a list of provisions that musicians issue to the venue). The prohibition of bananas and a step-by-step recipe for guacamole were a few of the items on the rider that caught the eye of the media, leading to a sustained flurry of articles. Following this, White published an open letter earlier today voicing his exasperation, music blog Consequence of Sound reported.

Titled ”˜For God Sakes!’, White posted the letter on the website of his independent record label, Third Man Records. He made his frustration with the issue clear, calling the media’s continued reports mere clickbait, and shooting down the tag of being a diva. “People WANT a rider to be a list of demands that a diva insists occur lest he or she refuse to play a note of music. But in reality, it’s just some food and drinks backstage for the hundred workers and guests who have to live in a concrete bunker for 15 hours,” White wrote.

His guacamole recipe, too, was written off to be nothing more than his “tour manager’s inside joke with the local promoters”, and the banana rule attributed to an allergy suffered by a person part of his tour. White didn’t shy from taking shots at the media either, writing, “I fully believe in the freedom of the press (though the supposed search for truth from the press requires microscopes and a some morton salt), [”¦] but never in my 20 years of playing shows has my contract and tour rider been published in the paper that I recall.” He added further, “People don’t understand what a rider is or what the terms of a contract are. They’re out of their element, and you can’t blame them for it. And people who write about that know this.”

Read the rest of Jack White’s open letter here.