Japandroids Guitarist Brian King Discusses Jack White and the "It" Factor

Pitchfork: As far as contemporary artists, I feel like that mythic [rock 'n' roll] aura is present in somebody like Jack White, too. Is that something you personally aspire to?

Brian King: I don't know if you can aspire to be that necessarily. In some respect, Jack White became that because he's Jack White. If you listen to the early White Stripes records, it's the same Jack White. That voice is the same. The songwriting ability is there. The guy just has that special thing. People like us cannot aspire to be that; you have to accept that it's OK not to be a Jack White. It's unfair to put that burden on yourself.

There's a difference between people who are born with that special thing and people who love the people who are born with that special thing so much that they want to try their best to get as close as they can to it. I don't consider myself to be a very creative person. We have to work really, really hard to write a song we think is really good. I mean, we have two records in three years, and the records only have eight songs each. It's a slow process. It might take a whole month to write a song we think is good.

If you lock Jack White in a room with an acoustic guitar, he's gonna come up with something great. If you don't have that gift, you have to grind away-- that's more what our band does. The Replacements seem like a band where no one was born particularly great. They were just along for the ride and kind of accidentally came out with something incredibly powerful.