Jack White Just Schooled the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on What Real Rock Looks Like
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has always had a weird aversion to distortion pedals. For decades, it’s been the velvet rope club for the same old “safe legends,” while punk, metal, and the unhinged corners of rock’s DNA get left to rot in the basement. That’s not just lame – it’s just plain embarrassing.
So when Jack White hit the stage to accept The White Stripes’ induction over the weekend, he didn’t just smile and nod. He detonated a truth bomb. Between the polite applause and the industry smugness, White rattled off a roll call of the underappreciated, the raw, and the righteously loud: Death, The Misfits, Fugazi, Black Flag, The Cramps, Minor Threat, and more. Basically, the acts that made rock dangerous in the first place.
His list read like a mixtape from your coolest friend’s garage: The Gories, The Gun Club, Loretta Lynn, Fugazi, The Misfits, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Love & Arthur Lee, The Flat Duo Jets & Dexter Romweber, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, The Hentchmen, Dick Dale, Beck, Pavement, The Strokes, Black Flag, Sleater-Kinney, Death, The Breeders, The Cramps, Merle Haggard, The Hives, The Damned, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Minor Threat, The Rats, and Captain Beefheart.
Between name drops, White turned preacher:
“To young artists, I want to say, get your hands dirty and drop the screens. Get out in your garage or your little room and get obsessed.”
In a world drowning in algorithms and short attention spans, that’s a rallying cry worth blasting through a busted amp.
And yeah, he admitted, he’s been in a bunch of bands no one remembers. But The White Stripes – his scrappy, minimalist Frankenstein of blues and punk – hit a nerve. Why? Who the hell knows. But when lightning strikes, and the world actually listens to something that real – it’s pure, unfiltered magic.
Maybe the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame should take notes.
