Jack White and Conan O’Brien have a long history. The White Stripes played a four-night residency on O’Brien’s Late Night show back in 2003 (the host memorably quipped that the duo dressed like Batman villains); in 2005, the carrot-topped funnyman cameoed in the Michel Gondry-directed video for “The Denial Twist”; Jack and Meg helped Conan close the curtain on Late Night in 2009 with a rendition of “We’re Going to Be Friends”; the Blunderbuss bluesman ushered in the NBC castoff’s current TBS era; and White returned to Conan for a jittery gig just last month. Now, the two have reunited for a 75-minute (!!!) chat over drinks as part of O’Brien’s “Serious Jibber-Jabber” interview series, which has previously featured This Is 40 director Judd Apatow, statistician Nate Silver, and presidential biographer Edmund Morris.
To kick the 35mm-filmed episode off, O’Brien recalls when the two first met, at a bowling alley in Detroit in the late 1990s (yes, the very same bowling alley Jack White and the Bricks once played). The conversation then moves through White’s well-documented background in upholstery, the dangers of coming off as pretentious, Catholic guilt, and the inspiration behind the Stripes’ peppermint color scheme. Watch the entire thing up above.
