Jack White and The Black Keys have a long, ugly history together.
White has publicly accused Keys members Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of ripping off his signature sound, and with their shared taste for distortion-heavy, blues-tinged garage rock, it’s not hard to see why White might feel the band owes him a debt.
White once issued a half-assed apology for his criticism of the Keys, but according to Carney, the famous frontman is still royally pissed over some perceived sonic plagiarism.
Carney says White confronted him in a bar and tried to pick a fight over the weekend. Fortunately, for the sake of fans of petty grown-man beef everywhere, Carney tweeted a detailed account of the altercation.
“I’ve never met Jack White. Until last night,” Carney begins, ominously. “He came to a bar in Nyc I go to a lot with a few friends and tried to fight me.
“I don’t fight and don’t get fighting but he was mad!!! He is why I play music. The bully assholes who made me feel like nothing. Music was a private non competitive thing.”
Carney went on to reference a 2008 documentary that starred White – and dish out a scathing Gen-X burn for the ages:
“It might get loud but it might also get really really sad and pathetic,” Carney tweeted. “Jack white is basically billy corgan’s dumb ass zero t-shirt in human form.”
Snap. Somewhere, Billy Corgan is all, “What did I do?”
Naturally, White wasted no time responding to Carney’s accusations, issuing a statement reading:
“Nobody tried to fight you, Patrick. Nobody touched you or ‘bullied’ you. You were asked a question you couldn’t answer so you walked away. So quit whining to the Internet and speak face to face like a human being. End of story.”
It’s tough to know who to believe here.
White’s quick temper and penchant for violence are well-documented (the singer has been accused of abusing ex-wife Karen Elson and beating the crap out of Von Bondies’ singer Jason Stollsteimer), but Carney isn’t exactly one to shy away from a conflict himself.
Carney famously picked a fight with Justin Bieber following the Biebs’ 2013 Grammy snub, thus igniting one of the most random music industry feuds of all time.
Clearly, the only way this’ll be settled is if Carney goes back in time and forms a band that doesn’t have a sound, name and makeup that’s so suspiciously similar to the White Stripes’.
Just add a bass player, dude!