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Jack White Talks to Questlove About Dumpster Diving, Led Zeppelin I, and the Number 3

Jack White sits in conversation with Questlove for podcast
NASHVILLE, TN - JUNE 04: Inductee Jack White (pictured) inductes Loretta Lynn into The Nashville Walk Of Fame on June 4, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

Jack White recently went on Questlove‘s podcast, A Questlove Supreme, to talk about his legacy and discovering punk rock. The interview is interesting to anyone who wants to listen to two artists pontificate and be lovingly dorky about music. In it, Jack White talks about exploring the Detroit dumpsters built to combat the city’s rat problem. “I found the Stooges’ first album on vinyl in one of those dumpsters – and that really changed my life,” White told Quest. “I recorded ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ on 4-track because of that, and it led me into punk rock in a bigger way.”

He also shared his thoughts on the albums from his childhood that he gravitated towards, name-checking the aforementioned Stooges, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. White further called Led Zeppelin I, “pretty hard to top,” when it comes to the best first album of any group.

Later in the interview, White shared his thoughts on the significance of the number 3.  “We were working on a couch, and it was three staples I’d put down, and it was the minimum amount to hold a piece of fabric on a side of wood, left, right, center. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s great. That doesn’t leave everything black and white so there’s two choices: Republican, Democrat; black and white. There’s a third option, which sort of means everything.’ And I thought, ‘That’s a great balance for anything I do artistically.'”

Listen to the full interview here.