Jack White’s Saturday Night Live "Love Interruption"

Our hard-working hero Jack White III kicked off his solo career over the weekend with a typically amazing performance on Saturday Night Live hosted by the heavily botoxed, seemingly sober Lindsay Lohan.

The first tune he did was “Love Interruption,” a Memphis-style soul ballad with electric piano reminiscent of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man,” featuring vocal assist from Ruby Amanfu (seen above).

Jack came back later in the show with a different backup band and justified sitting through 45 minutes of lame skits to play the wonderfully titled tune “Sixteen Saltines” a blistering tune in the Raconteurs tradition, if there is such a thing.
 
 

White’s first solo album Blunderbuss comes out on April 24 in the US and promises to be one of the most interesting releases of the year.

I assumed “blunderbuss” was a made-up word but then I looked it up on Mirriam-Webster and learned it has at least two meanings: 

• A muzzle-loading firearm with a short barrel and flaring muzzle to facilitate loading 
• A person who moves unsteadily or confusedly, or makes a mistake through stupidity, ignorance, or carelessness

With three successful bands behind him and guitar legend status firmly in place, Jack White is roughly at the point in his career that Eric Clapton was at the release of his 1970 debut solo LP, the cleverly titled Eric Clapton, which spawned the hits “After Midnight” and the bland but catchy “Let it Rain.”

Let’s hope White strays from the solo-career template laid down by Slowhand, who descended into heroin addiction soon after going solo and, after cleaning up, released an equally nightmarish string of overproduced records in the 80s like "Bad Love," his collaboration with Phil Collins which features the haunting couplet "I've had enough/Bad love" - sounds like E.C. needed a love interruption. 




Buy Jack White's "Love Interruption" on iTunes here.
Get Eric Clapton's self-titled debut here.