Jack White recently attended the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association’s Heartland Fall Forum in Detroit to discuss the new book, ‘The White Stripes Complete Lyrics 1997-2007.’ During the session, he answered a fan question about his favorite The White Stripes song.
Talking about ‘We’re Going To Be Friends,’ he explained:
“I think it’s very positive. I think other people can relate to it. It’s better that other people can get something out of it than just me, but also it proved to me that I could do something different if I opened my mind, and that opened my mind to many different kinds of songs over the years.”
The spare track from ‘White Blood Cells’ joined the collection of lyrics by Jack and Meg White in the book, which came out on October 10. ‘The White Stripes Complete Lyrics 1997-2007′ also featured essays about the former band members’ songwriting, written by Hanif Abdurraqib, Ben Blackwell, and Caroline Randall Williams.
Commenting on these during the event, White said:
“I was just opening pages of lyrics. and I was reading what y’all wrote in the beginning, referencing songs, and I said, ‘Oh, let me go see what they were talking about.’ And I couldn’t get through any of those songs; I would cry halfway through each of those songs.”
Then, he went on:
“And I thought, ‘Oh, it’s been a rough couple of days, maybe that’s hitting me,’ or maybe it’s bringing back a memory of what that [song] was. But then by the third or fourth time…the left side of my brain or whatever was [saying],’ I’m so glad somebody wrote that,’ and the right side of my brain was, ‘It’s you, idiot! You wrote it!’ It’s so funny. I jumped out of my own body for a second.”