THE WHITE STRIPES' JACK WHITE is blaming his car's safety features for the broken finger that led to the duo cancelling a string of summer (03) shows.

The DEAD LEAVES + THE DIRTY GROUND singer was left nursing a shattered finger after a car crash earlier this summer (03), and he insists he wouldn't have been injured at all if it wasn't for his car's airbag.

He reveals, "The airbag broke my finger when it deployed. Maybe I would have been better off without an airbag.

"I wasn't too freaked out. I was OK with it. It was one of those things where your mind acclimatises to whatever the situation is. It just sort of upset me that I had to stop touring and I couldn't write music or play guitar or piano."

White posted a clip of his finger surgery on the band's website to prove to sceptics that he had, indeed, broken his finger. He admits he loved the footage.

He adds, "I've always been interested in those things. I always watch surgery documentaries on TV, and I just thought it was an interesting little film on its own because they were playing White Stripes music in the operating room.

'You see their face, then them opening the finger up, drilling screws in it, then the X-ray, and at the end he said it was beautiful. I just thought it was cool."

28/08/2003 01:49