Jack White is a professional musician, but before that, his primary trade was upholstery. It’s a passion he has actually kept up with as The White Stripes and his solo career took off over the years. At one point, in fact, White offered to upholster the furniture for Conan O’Brien’s Conan talk show on TBS, but that didn’t happen because the host didn’t think it was a serious offer, despite the fact that it very much was.
White guested on a recent episode of the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast (which uses The White Stripes’ “We’re Going To Be Friends” as its theme song, by the way) and O’Brien told the story as White laughed and nodded along. O’Brien said:
“One [regret] is when we were doing our show at TBS, you contacted me and — I had no idea you were serious — you said, ‘I’d like to do the upholstery… I’d like to make you your talk show couch,’ and I was like, ‘That’s so hilarious, man, that’s great.’ And later on, you were like, ‘No no no, I was serious. I would have made your…’ You would have made… and I felt like [it was] such a lost opportunity to have a talk show where Jack White made my talk show couch.”
So, while that didn’t end up working out, White did recently upholster a piece of furniture for another famous figure: Adam Savage, formerly of Mythbusters. In an early-May video on his Tested YouTube channel, Savage showed off and spoke about a workshop stool that White had recently reupholstered for him, a task White approached with a lot of care and attention to detail.
Watch O’Brien tell the White story above.