Q: You’ve said that your band’s new album, ”Elephant,” is about the ”death of the sweetheart.” What does that mean?
JACK WHITE: The sweetheart, the gentleman — it’s the same thing. These ideas seem to be in decline, and I hate it. You look at your average teenager with the body piercings and the tattoos. You have white kids going around talking in ghetto accents because they think that makes them hard. It’s so cool to be hard. We’re against that.
MEG WHITE: The message everywhere is it’s O.K. not to care about anything. Everything can be judged, everything can be trashed.
So are you proposing that people embrace the values of a previous era?
JACK: No, I don’t want to be considered old-fashioned or a Luddite or conservative. But it’s sad to see young kids today — they’re sitting around listening to hip-hop or new metal, with a Sony PlayStation, a bong of marijuana. This is their life. It’s a whole culture. And the parenting is so relaxed about that.
In other words, kids need discipline. That sounds counter to the rock ‘n’ roll ideal.
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