I love a good Jack White bitchfest, and Jack has delivered once again. This hilarious guacamole-gate story surfaced last weekend, but the BAFTAs and Grammys hit, so I decided to ignore it. Thanks to Jack’s temper, the controversy came back.

Here’s what happened. Jack performed at the University of Oklahoma a week ago. The campus paper got wind of Jack’s tour rider, and they published it for all to examine. Jack’s $80,000 payment was exposed, as was a very specific guacamole recipe. Detailed tour riders are nothing new to gossip hounds, but many delighted in the language (“we like it chunky“) used in the guac recipe. And it was a really good recipe. Jack’s touring PR agency, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, threatened an OU boycott of their artists, which include Pharrell and Alicia Keys.

Jack was reportedly upset about the salary news but not so much about the guacamole (which wasn’t even for him). All of this should have blown over, but the media kept talking. Then NPR discussed about the ins and outs of the guacamole recipe on Weekend Edition, which made Jack angry. He fired off an open letter on his website to call out NPR and the media. Jack ranted about guacamole and bananas and ethics. He’s really fired up, and here are a few paragraphs of the rant:

wow. classy.

seems like there’s a new rule number one for up and coming journalists: don’t let the facts get in the way of click bait. first off, this is none of your business, but i have no specific demands in my dressing room. i know i could ask for lots of things but i actually don’t ask for ANYTHING. i take with me what i need, and that ain’t much. anything on the rider is for the band and the crew. this “guacamole recipe” is my hilarious tour managers inside joke with the local promoters, it’s his recipe, not mine. it’s just something to break up the boredom, seeing who can make it best. though i wouldn’t know because i’ve never had it. i can’t even make kool aid let alone cook any real food enough to have a “recipe.” sorry, i don’t have that talent.

bananas: did it occur to anyone someone on the tour might have an allergy to them? no? hmmm. one day some fantasy journalist out there will call someone in the biz and actually have a rider explained to them, maybe none of them have ever been on tour. oh well, let’s move on, first amendment issues: i fully believe in the freedom of the press (though the supposed search for truth from the press requires microscopes and a some morton salt), and i also defend anyone’s right to free speech (just look at my lack of respect for grammar in this letter and tell me i’m not for communicating freely) and i defend the right to free information in regards to public funds, but never in my 20 years of playing shows has my contract and tour rider been published in the paper that i recall.

do you know why we don’t do that or want that? a hundred articles about bananas, free speech, and guacamole is why; it’s because people don’t understand what a rider is or what the terms of a contract are. they’re out of their element, and you can’t blame them for it. and people who write about that know this. people WANT a rider to be a list of demands that a diva insists occur lest he or she refuse to play a note of music.

[From Third Man Records]

Jack goes on for several more paragraphs about TMZ and how he’d rather make music than crochet. Look … I see Jack’s point. All of this is ridiculous, and that’s why the internet seized upon the story. Because the rider itself made a big deal about guacamole and how Jack required a New York strip steak in his dressing room. Jack calls the OU paper “thin skinned,” which is funny. He’s only guaranteeing that this story shall keep on living. Now there are grumpy Jack White guacamole photo memes circulating. OU shouldn’t have published the tour rider. But Jack should have done what most artists do when their riders leak — ignore it. I’m sure he’s not at all enjoying the “click bait” to his website.

Did Jack overreact?

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN