Nick Valensi joins Jack White for 2 epic songs, thrills fans
If you’ve been missing Nick Valensi’s guitar work since he stepped away from The Strokes, Jack White just gave you a reason to smile. Nick Valensi popped up as a surprise guest during White’s Monday night show at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles, trading riffs on two songs in a moment that instantly had rock fans talking, as first reported by Stereogum.
The pair performed “Broken Boy Soldier,” a 2006 track by White’s band The Raconteurs, followed by the live debut of “Bless Yourself,” a cut from White’s 2024 album “No Name.” Both songs found the two guitarists locked in together. As Stereogum put it, “On both songs, the two guitarists did some simultaneous shredding, and they looked and sounded extremely cool.” Al Pacino was reportedly in the crowd.
Nick Valensi and Jack White go back two decades
This wasn’t some random pairing of two guys who happened to know each other’s songs. The history between Nick Valensi and White stretches back to 2002, when The White Stripes and The Strokes traded co-headlining shows in New York and Detroit during what became one of rock’s defining moments of that era. White joined The Strokes onstage at Radio City that same year for “New York City Cops,” then linked up with the band again later that year at the Reading Festival.
Both acts were considered the flagbearers of the early-2000s garage-rock revival, a scene that reshaped what mainstream rock sounded like at the time. The White Stripes are no longer an active band, but The Strokes have continued on, minus one key member for now.
Why Nick Valensi was free to jump onstage
In May, The Strokes announced that Nick Valensi would take what the band called a “temporary break,” with his last performance alongside the group coming at Coachella. White also played Coachella this year, and according to Stereogum, he gave The Strokes a shout-out from the stage and posed for a photo with the band backstage.
With Valensi currently on the sidelines from his main band, he’s had room to show up in unexpected places, and White’s stage seems to have been exactly the right one. Whether this was a one-off or the start of something more frequent remains to be seen, but the chemistry between the two guitarists suggests fans could see more from this pairing down the line.
The second Palladium night
Monday’s show was the first of two nights White booked at the Hollywood Palladium, with keyboardist Bobby Emmett rounding out his backing band. The second show, Tuesday, Sept. 29, came with its own storyline: Twin Temple, the Satanic oldies-pastiche duo, was set to open.
That booking had some drama behind it. In July, outlaw country artist Charley Crockett dropped Twin Temple from his tour dates over the duo’s Satanic imagery, RTTNews reported. White responded by publicly inviting Twin Temple to open his Sept. 29 Palladium show, sparking a minor feud with Crockett. Stereogum reported that the duo also had to work through radius clause issues tied to their dates opening for Danzig.
Valensi’s break from The Strokes has no confirmed end date, and there’s no word yet on whether he and White plan to team up again. For now, fans have a genuinely rare memory: two guitarists whose bands helped define an era, sharing a stage again after more than 20 years of separate paths. For more concert news, check out our music coverage.
Source: Stereogum