The year is 2022, and Jack White might actually, finally, get a cellphone.
The White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather rocker has famously been averse to the idea — in 2019, he told the U.K.’s Channel 4 News that he “never owned” a cellphone, adding, “To me, everyone [on their phones] sort of looks silly.”
Now, in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, White admits that not having a cellphone raises some inconveniences 22 years into the 21st century.
“During the pandemic, [I was] trying to get a COVID test and [I] pull into a place and [they] say, ‘Scan the QR code,'” White recalls. “Well I don’t have a phone, and they were like, ‘Then you can’t get a test.’ And I’m, like, ‘Ah, man.'”
When Lowe asks White if he finally decided to take the cellphone plunge, he responds, “I don’t have one yet, but I think my days are numbered.”
Elsewhere in the interview, White touches on the fabled recording sessions he had with rapper Jay-Z — “Some of that stuff I think will see the light of day,” he says — as well as the one time he met late music legend Prince.
“The phrase [Prince] had said to me was, like, ‘No one is going to tell you how to play your guitar, Jack,'” White remembers. “And he talked about the James Bond song I had just done [2002’s “Another Way to Die”]. And he said, ‘I really like it.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s great. Because some people, it’s like making a song for Star Wars fans or something. You’re throwing yourself into the sea of…It’s a very divisive track.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, I thought it was real strong.'”
White will release a new solo album, Fear of the Dawn, this Friday.
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