Jack White Slams Black Keys Frontman in Leaked Emails
New details have surfaced in Jack White‘s ongoing custody battle with ex-wife Karen Elson. The Nashville City Paper reported yesterday that Elson obtained a restraining order against the singer-guitarist, citing fears for her safety as a result of his alleged harassment. According to court documents, White allegedly pressured Elson to remove the couple’s children from a school they attended along with the child of an unnamed Nashville-based entertainer who he felt “ripped off” his music.
Emails submitted to the court for that motion reveal that White’s rival is Black Keys singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach, who moved to Nashville in 2010 and who, like White, rose to fame fronting a blues-y Midwestern garage-rock duo with a monochromatic name. “My conce[r]n with Auerbach is because I don’t want the kids involved in any of that crap,” White wrote in an email to Elson. “That’s a possible 12 fucking years I’m going to have to be sitting in kids chairs next to that asshole with other people trying to lump us in together. He gets yet another free reign to follow me around and copy me and push himself into my world.”
The restraining order charged that White harassed and intimidated Elson and her paralegal in phone calls, texts and emails, and that White also disparaged Elson in emails to the couple’s business manager. “Absolutely no threat [h]as been made in any possible way,” White wrote in one of the leaked emails. “You are the one turning this into a standard destruction of a friendship so that it feeds your dirty lawyer checkbook. You have no right to try and villainize me to help your aims.”
A representative for White made the following statement: “Anything that Jack White has to say, will be contained in his responses pleading to the court.”