Music

Jack White picked a fight with The Black Keys' Patrick Carney in a bar

by Jesse Locke

The simmering beef between the world’s most popular blues-rock duos heated up over the weekend, at least according to The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney.

Relating his story in a series of tweets, the drummer says Jack White “tried to fight” him in a New York bar. This included some serious digs, calling The White Stripes frontman a “bully asshole”, “really sad and pathetic” and “Billy Corgan’s dumb ass zero t-shirt in human form.”

Though they’ve been jawing back and forth online and in print for years, this was the first time White and Carney had met in meatspace, surprisingly enough. The beef was first cooked up in 2013 when a series of leaked emails between White and his ex-wife Karen Elson revealed some choice words about the Akron, Ohio duo. In a Rolling Stone cover story, White later accused The Black Keys of ripping off the sound he had created with The White Stripes, causing thousands of eye rolls and grave spins across the land. White later issued an apology, but Carney fired back with the understatement that White “sounds like an asshole.”

While The Black Keys stickman is yet to comment beyond his original tweets, White has issued the following statement to Entertainment Weekly: “Nobody tried to fight you, Patrick. Nobody touched you or ‘bullied’ you. You were asked a question you couldn’t answer so you walked away. So quit whining to the Internet and speak face to face like a human being. End of story.”

See Carney’s shots fired below: