After rock star Jack White (The White Stripes, Raconteurs, The Dead Weather) played a show at Oklahoma University, his booking agency reportedly threw a fit and threatened never to play the campus again. The agency now claims it never said that, but what is sure is that Jack White was displeased with the Oklahoma Daily, the school paper, publishing his rider.
The rider, White’s list of requests from the venue, asked for guacamole–not just any guacamole, but a detailed, stringent recipe–a New York strip steak, and absolutely no bananas “anywhere in the building.”
White’s management later called the Daily‘s publishing of the contract “unfortunate, unprofessional, and unwelcoming.” In response, the Daily noted they found the contract through a Freedom of Information Act request, something available to anyone for any reason. OU is a public university, after all.
The rider may have been embarrassing, but leave the students alone, for Heaven’s sake. There’s nothing unprofessional about a student reporter doing his job and finding out how money is being spent. (In case you’re wondering, it cost the school $80,000 to book White.)
To the paper’s credit, it did not back down after White’s complaining. Good on them.
