Jack White still upset over Guinness World Records snub
Rocker Jack White is still annoyed with Guinness World Record bosses after they denied his attempt at staging the shortest concert, calling the company an "elitist organization".
The 36 year old and his former The White Stripes bandmate and ex-wife Meg White attempted to make history by performing one note - a clash of the cymbal - during a tour stop in Newfoundland, Canada, but the rocker reveals the pair's record bid was shut down by officials at Guinness, and White is convinced they simply didn't want the duo in their famous annual.
He tells Interview magazine, "We'd done this whole tour of Canada,
where we played in every province, and almost every day we would do
a free show. I would decide each morning what kind of show we would
do... So when we were in Newfoundland, the idea that I came up with
at breakfast was, 'Let's play one note today...'
"I told Meg as we were getting out of the car. I said, 'Make sure
you grab your cymbal (and) when you hit the cymbal, grab it so that
the note only lasts a millisecond.' I was thinking that afterwards
we could contact the Guinness World Records people and see if we
could get the record for shortest concert of all time. So we did
it, but ultimately they turned us down.
"The thing is, though, that the Guinness book is a very elitist
organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They
just have an office full of people who decide what a record is and
what isn't... Most of the records in there - who has the biggest
collection of salt-and-pepper shakers or whatever - are just
whatever they want them to be. So with something like the shortest
concert of all time, they didn't think whatever we did was
interesting enough to make it a record.
"I don't know why they get to decide that, but, you know, they own
the book."