The Blues Is (Still) Number One!

Jon Spencer talks about growing old, prostate exams, and why it hurts when the bands you love get ignored

Winona Ryder as Jon Spencer from the “Talk About the Blues” video.

The first question I ask Jon Spencer is not, “Why are you not more famous than Jack White”? But from the moment we started talking, it’s been the elephant in the room.

Just so we’re clear, I have no ill will towards Jack White. I count myself a fan. Everything he’s done, from the White Stripes to the Raconteurs to the Dead Weather, has melted my brain with its awesomeness. But I’m also well aware that the late, great Blues Explosion—the band that made Jon Spencer kiiiinda famous and inspired a generation of indie snob kids like me to chant “bell bottoms, bell bottoms, bell bottoms” with little or no provocation during much of the late ‘90s—has only reached a small fraction of White’s audience.

And that annoys me. It annoys me that Orange, one of the Blues Explosion’s best records and probably the best blues-punk record of all time, likely won’t get much fanfare this year for its 30th anniversary. But business has been good for White Stripes nostalgia, with deluxe reissues and a big book of lyrics. I don’t need a book of lyrics for the Blues Explosion because to this day I can still sing every line of “Dissect” from memory. “This lover here tastes a whooooole lot like chicken!”

Again, Jack White is awesome. Jack White deserves the accolades. But Jack White deserves to be more beloved and successful than Jon Spencer like Greta Van Fleet deserves to be more beloved and successful than Led Zeppelin.

“My understanding is, Jack White is a much more traditional pop songwriter,” Spencer tells me when I finally broach the subject. “There’s nothing wrong with that; that’s just his bag and that’s what he’s doing. But it’s music that’s more palatable to a wide, mainstream audience. It sounds very much like what was on the radio when I was a kid in the ‘70s. It’s tried and true.”

Spencer is being polite. I was hoping he’d say something along the lines of “that Nashville-living white-blues-playing bitch can kiss my rubber-pants-encased ass.” But he doesn’t go there. He’s civil. He’s even respectful. So I try a different tactic.

“I understand why people like the White Stripes,” I tell him. “But why don’t they like the Blues Explosion as much?”

He considers this for a minute. “I guess it’s a tough pill for some people to swallow. We’re a little too out there. There’s always been a confrontational element to the band. We’re more experimental, we’re more punk. We’re too crazy for some people. But that’s okay with me.”

I don’t come right out and say as much to Spencer, but his popularity (or lack thereof) disturbs me not because of what it says about him, but what it says about me.

Jon Spencer is funny. Jack White is not. Spencer is campy and silly and smirking. White is intense and arty and sneering. Spencer mugs. White broods. White sings lyrics like “Every single one’s got a story to tell/ From the Queen of England to the hounds of hell.” Spencer sings lyrics like “Eat your bowler hat/ Look at my ass.”

White is the guy you knew at college who worked at the radio station and only listened to Leadbelly and MC5 and judged anybody who didn’t. Spencer is the guy who introduced you to the Dead Milkmen and Wesley Willis and smoked all your drugs.

In the same way that you are what you eat, you are what you listen to. Your musical choices are a reflection of your personality, or what you hope that reflection looks like. I chose my blues punk role model, and he ended up being the underachieving jokester.

Winona Ryder may’ve been in a Blues Explosion video, but she didn’t sleep with Spencer; she slept with Jack White. (Spencer, I guess, is the one she liked “just as a friend.”) It’s like high school all over again, but on a more hyper-meta level.

“We’re not making comedy records,” Spencer tells me.

“Fuck no you’re not,” I agree, a bit too vehemently.

“There’s a bent, crazy edge sometimes, but it’s serious music. That seems to be lost on a lot of people. I’m hesitant to use words like ‘humor’ or ‘fun,’ because when people hear that, they think, ‘Oh, it’s just a joke.’ We’re not a joke. It’s not meant to be ironic, despite what some critics have suggested.”

“You mean Jim DeRogatis?” I ask.

“Yeah, that dude.” He laughs, but it’s a frustrated, disbelieving laugh, like when you run out of gas in the middle of a Nevada desert.

I don’t know Jim DeRogatis. I know he lives in Chicago (like me) and writes about music (ditto) but I’ve never met the man. I only know his name because he wrote an awful essay for Penthouse in 1997 about the supposed awfulness of the Blues Explosion.

“Spencer almost always dishes out kitsch,” DeRogatis wrote. “And in that regard, he’s in the same league as Dan Aykroyd and Bruce Willis jamming on ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ at the House of Blues.”

When I read that, I was outraged. I felt personally attacked. I wanted to punch DeRogatis right in his stupid music snob face. I even tried to convince some of my friends that we should drive around Chicago until we found DeRogatis.

“We’ll kick him in the kidneys while singing ‘the Blues is number one,’ so he knows why he’s getting pounded,” I said, unconvincingly. My rallying cry was ignored, and we returned to smoking weed and trying to parse out Blues Explosion lyrics. (I miss a lot of things about the last century, but mostly I miss the blissful boredom.)

“I think it gets easier,” Spencer tells me. “When you get older, you don’t give a fuck as much anymore.”

I find this weirdly comforting. If punk rock means not giving a fuck, then you can’t truly have a punk rock ethos when you’re young and music means everything to you. You have to wait until you’re middle-aged and you only care as much as is absolutely necessary.

I love music, and I love the Blues Explosion. But I will not, under any circumstances, pretend that I’m going to punch anyone to defend it. Not anymore.

At some point, our conversation drifts from Jack White and the fickle tastes of mainstream music fans into the murky “inside baseball” topic of parenting. We’re both middle-aged dads, both with sons named Charlie. It was the kind of conversation that’s only riveting if you’re also a parent. Spencer says things like “It goes really, really fast” and “it’s an intense love, man. Enjoy it.”

This from a guy who wrote the lyrics “My father was Sister Ray/ Take a whiff of my pant leg, baby/ FUCK!”

He may not care about beating Jack White at his own game, but he gives a fuck about some things, like not mortifying his son.

“At times I worry that I’m embarrassing him in some way,” he says. “He grew up around his parents being in bands and playing punk rock. I hope it’s not something that worries him.”

I saw my first Blues Explosion show in 1996. It was life-changing. When they played “Wail,” I danced like there were electrodes on my nuts. I fell on my ass several times and nearly gave myself a concussion.

I left the show covered in beer and sweat and at least one cigarette burn on my shirt. Now here I am, more than twice as old as I was back then, talking to Spencer about being a father and ruining sleepovers for our respective Charlies and trying not to make the same mistakes that our fathers did.

Life moves fucking fast.

Spencer isn’t annoyed by the conversation’s trajectory. He seems pleased by it, even when we take a detour into discussing our prostates, which is something men our age talk about now.

“Full disclosure, I’ve experienced that right of passage,” he admits. “It’s a little strange that my MD recommended it a little early.”

“Because you have a family history of prostate cancer?” I ask.

“No. I think my doctor just wanted the money. That’s not a joke.”

Unlike a lot of rock stars I’ve interviewed, Spencer seems comfortable not just talking about being old but actually BEING old. It suits him.

“Our bodies are just the machines and gears that carry around our thoughts and ideas,” Spencer tells me. “You can grow old with experience and grace, but you’re still trapped. Your body’s still going to fall apart. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

For the record, Spencer’s prostate is fine. He’ll be making music, god willing, for many years to come. He may never be Jack White, but he’s okay with that—and so am I, though it took me a little longer to get there.

If I ever get to chance to interview Jack White, I probably won’t ask him about the Blues Explosion (which was, I’ll admit, always a dark fantasy of mine) and whether he feels sheepish that he ended up with the career that Spencer had squatter’s rights to. I realize now that it doesn’t matter. But I also won’t ask him about his prostate. It could be as huge as a watermelon, but I’m not going to be the journalist who tells him he should let a doctor stick his finger up there and check it out.

I’m an old man who’s lost his fight, but I still have a little of that punk fire in my belly.