This past Saturday, October 10th, Jack White paid tribute to Eddie Van Halen on Saturday Night Live by performing tracks from across his career.
The first performance by White was a medley build around the White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit,” off of their album Elephant, reworking it in a way to feature snippets of “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” which he had collaborated with Beyonce on her album Lemonade, and “Jesus Is Coming Soon.” The latter is a traditional gospel song written during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.
Watch the Jack White SNL performance of “Ball and Biscuit”/ “Don’t Hurt Yourself” / “Jesus is Coming Soon”
Jack White was a last-minute addition to this past Saturday Night Live episode, hosted by Bill Burr. He was added after original musical guest Morgan Wallen was caught partying mask-less, and thus disinvited to the show.
Later on SNL, White brought out a guitar designed by Eddie Van Halen for him. He played the guitar while performing “Lazaretto” as a way to pay tribute to Eddie Van Halen, who passed away earlier that week.
White talked about the guitar’s significance in an Instagram post before the performance. The post featured pictures of the guitar through the process of its making and its current state. In the caption for the post, Jack White said “I thought it could be a nice gesture for me to use this blue Eddie Van Halen model guitar for one of the songs tonight on SNL. the guitar was designed by Eddie (with a few customizations I had added). Eddie was very kind to me and saw to it that this guitar was made for me to my specs. I won’t even insult the man’s talent by trying to play one of his songs tonight. thanks again Eddie for this guitar and rest in peace sir.”