The White Stripes
It was a band of two, made of nothing but guitar and drums, red and white and black.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Members and colleagues ⏳🌊
- MemberJack White
He played guitar and sang, and personally designed the band's story and image.
- MemberMeg White
With no formal training, she played simple, primal drums, and in public she barely spoke.
- InfluenceBrian Muldoon
The owner of the upholstery shop where Jack worked as an apprentice, and the first to introduce him to drumming and playing in a band.
- PartnerRenée Zellweger
.
- PartnerKaren Elson
A model who married Jack in 2005; together they had two children, Scarlett and Henry Lee.
- CollaborationBrendan Benson
A contemporary musician who formed The Raconteurs with Jack while The White Stripes were lying low.
I. John and Megan of Detroit · 1975–1997
Formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan, the band consisted of just two people: Jack White on guitar and vocals and Meg White on drums. (Jack) Jack White was born in Detroit in July 1975. Born John Anthony Gillis, he was the youngest of ten children. He grew up in a devout Catholic household, and as a teenager he apprenticed at an upholstery shop, working under Brian Muldoon. Muldoon encouraged him to play in bands, and together they formed a group called The Upholsterers, while Jack pored over the records of bluesmen Son House and Blind Willie McTell, shaping a musical language all his own. (Meg) Meg White was born Megan Martha White in December 1974 in Grosse Pointe Farms, near Detroit. Quiet and sparing with words, she had never studied music formally. She was tending bar in Royal Oak when she met Jack, who had come in as a customer. (Marriage) The two married in September 1996. Jack took his bride's surname, White, as his own — an unusual choice, the husband taking the wife's name. Living together, Jack put drumsticks in the hands of the utterly inexperienced Meg and kept her from taking formal lessons. He believed that primal, unschooled pounding was exactly the sound he wanted. (Stage) In July 1997 the two took the stage for the first time. From then on they introduced themselves to the world as siblings — Jack the brother and Meg the older sister. All the while, they kept hidden the fact that they were a couple who had married and would part. The rule of dressing in, and filling the stage with, only three colors, red and white and black, was also fixed around this time.
II. Two at Italy Records · 1997–1999
(Label) Italy Records, a small independent label run by Dave Buick, became their first outlet. Within the rough Detroit rock scene centered on the club the Gold Dollar and led by older bands such as The Gories, The White Stripes settled in as something both odd and unpretentious. (Single) In 1998 they released their first single, “Let's Shake Hands,” a raw blues-rock number recorded in a matter of hours. (Debut album) In 1999 they put out their self-titled debut, The White Stripes. A dedication to Son House was inscribed on the album, and Jack produced it himself. He set himself the rule of using no bass guitar at all — he wanted to test the limits of what guitar and drums alone could do. (Rules) Stage costumes and album covers alike were held to three colors: red, white and black. The scheme, recalling candy canes or peppermint candies, went on to become the band's visual trademark. In interview after interview, Jack said that self-imposed constraints set creativity free. (Temperament) In interviews Jack was talkative, the one who designed the band's narrative himself, while Meg barely spoke and stayed behind him. This asymmetry would later feed a popular misconception — that Meg was merely ornamental — about the two of them.
The first single from Italy Records, capturing the raw sound of a band the two had only just formed.
- In the rough guitar riff, which sounds as if it were recorded in one take with almost no editing, you can hear the prototype of early blues rock.
- Meg's drumming holds the song up with nothing but a simple kick and snare, her playing driven by force rather than flashy technique.
- Jack's vocals tear out roughly, as if mimicking the howling delivery of Delta blues singers.
- The low register, filled by guitar and drums alone with no bass, foreshadows the band's later sound.
III. From De Stijl to White Blood Cells · 2000–2001
(De Stijl) In 2000 they released their second album, De Stijl. The title came from De Stijl, the Dutch art movement best represented by Mondrian. It was dedicated to furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld and to Blind Willie McTell. (Divorce) In truth, by this time the two were no longer married. Their divorce was finalized in March 2000, but the band never stopped. Even after the split their musical partnership continued, and this tangled situation long remained unknown to fans. (Breakthrough) In 2001 they completed their third album, White Blood Cells, at a studio in Memphis, with Jack producing, in just three days and for around $5,000. The no-bass principle held here too. Bands like The Strokes, The Hives and The Vines happened to emerge around the same time, and the press called it the garage rock revival. (MTV) Michel Gondry made the video for the track “Fell in Love with a Girl” as a Lego-brick animation; it went into heavy rotation on MTV, and the band won national recognition almost overnight. (Exposé) As their fame grew, a Detroit Free Press reporter checked court marriage records and in 2001 reported that the two were not siblings but a former married couple. The band let it pass without much explanation, and on stage they went on treating each other as brother and sister.
A short, urgent song of 1 minute 50 seconds that, together with Michel Gondry's Lego-animation music video, made the band a national name.
- Though the song runs under 2 minutes, its structure is unusual: rather than repeating the chorus, it charges ahead and simply ends.
- Listen for the places where the low strings of the guitar alone fill in the bass, and you'll feel the band's principle firsthand.
- A guitar tone deliberately distorted to the point of tearing (distortion) pulls the whole song taut.
- Jack's vocals pour out fast with no room to breathe, an urgency well suited to the song's brevity.
A song that shows the opposite face within the same album — a tender acoustic ballad set among the raw blues rock.
- Instead of electric guitar, a finger-plucked acoustic guitar (fingerpicking) carries the whole song.
- Jack's voice is far lower and softer than usual, singing almost in a whisper.
- The drums barely appear, so it's worth savoring the spaciousness of moments when only the two voices and guitar remain.
- Heard against the noise of the songs before and after it, this one's stillness stands out all the more.
IV. Elephant and the weight of fame · 2002–2003
(Elephant) In 2003 they recorded the album Elephant at Toe Rag Studios in London. They recorded on analog equipment with producer Liam Watson, though the oft-repeated story that they used only pre-1963 gear was later denied by Watson himself. Recorded on analog 8-track tape, the album is wrapped in a rough, warm texture throughout. (Seven Nation Army) The riff of “Seven Nation Army” was made by running the guitar through an octave pedal to produce low, bass-like notes. That simple riff went on to become a chant sung by crowds in football stadiums around the world — a kind of success the band never intended. (Grammy) In 2004 the album won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. A duo that only a few years earlier had been drifting from one small club to the next now turned up on magazine covers and awards-show stages. (Private life) That same year, after a fight at a Detroit club with Jason Stollsteimer, singer of fellow band The Von Bondies, Jack pleaded guilty to assault, paid a fine and completed an anger management program. The incident brought the rivalries and tensions within the garage rock scene into the open.
A single riff, made to sound like a bass through an octave pedal, went on to become a chant in football stadiums around the world.
- The opening riff was made by running the guitar through an octave pedal such as the DigiTech Whammy, dropping it an octave so it sounds like a bass.
- Meg's drumming repeats a simple, booming beat built mostly on the toms, and that simplicity made it easy for crowds to join in.
- Follow how the restrained vocals grow gradually more menacing as they build toward the chorus.
- Near the end, the passage where the riff repeats as pure instrumental often expands into a crowd sing-along at live shows.
A blues improvisation running close to 7 minutes, it best displays the analog texture of an album completed on vintage gear in London.
- Throughout the song you can feel the warm, rough guitar tone pouring from Toe Rag Studios' old tube amps.
- The long guitar solo in the middle of the song stretches out improvisationally, like a live studio performance.
- Quiet passages that suddenly swell recur throughout, and that drop-off creates the song's tension.
- It's fun to follow the shifts in Jack's vocal tone as he sings in a swaggering bluesman's manner.
V. From Get Behind Me Satan to Icky Thump · 2004–2007
(Change) In 2005 they released the album Get Behind Me Satan. Stepping away from guitar-driven blues, it put piano and marimba in the foreground. It was recorded at Jack's Gothic-style house in Detroit, and in one interview Jack said he had to let go of the guitar before he could discover anything new. (Family) That June, Jack married the English model Karen Elson in a canoe on the Amazon River in Brazil. A daughter, Scarlett Teresa, was born the following year, and a son, Henry Lee, the year after. After years hidden behind the band's fake-siblings story, his private life came into view for the first time as a settled family. (Icky Thump) The 2007 album Icky Thump returned to a heavy, raw guitar sound. As Jack grew interested in his Scottish ancestry, he scattered bagpipe-like guitar solos and Celtic-tinged melodies throughout. (Unease) On July 16, on George Street in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, they made headlines with a show in which they played a single note and left the stage, and the July 31 show in Southaven, Mississippi — though no one knew it at the time — became the White Stripes' last full concert.
This is the song in which the period's turn away from guitar-driven blues shows most clearly.
- The opening riff heavily compresses and distorts the guitar signal, producing a metallic, mechanical tone unlike anything before.
- Meg's drumbeat feels far stiffer and more relentlessly repetitive than before.
- Listen closely for the passages where Jack's vocal sits higher than usual, in a tone close to falsetto.
- You can also hear the piano and synthesizer, newly brought in around this time, blending into the background.
A return to blues rock that still adds synthesizer bass and bagpipe-like guitar, gently breaking the rules the two had set for themselves.
- The title track's riff layers a synthesizer bass line played on keyboard over a thick distorted (fuzz) guitar, an exception to their long-held rule of never using a bass guitar.
- In the piercing, bagpipe-like guitar solo midway through, you can glimpse Jack's interest in his Scottish ancestry.
- It's worth following how Jack's vocal grows rougher and more aggressive with each verse.
- Toward the end, long, drawn-out guitar noise and squeals bring the song to a raucous close.
VI. Silence and breakup · 2007–2011
(Silence) After Southaven in 2007, there were no more full concerts. Their final public performance together came in February 2009, when they appeared on the last broadcast of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and played "We're Going to Be Friends." (Other bands) Jack did not sit still during the silence. He formed the Raconteurs with Brendan Benson, releasing a debut album in 2006, and in 2009 formed the Dead Weather with Alison Mosshart. Even while the White Stripes stood idle, his creative drive kept pouring out elsewhere. (Breakup) On February 2, 2011, the two announced their breakup in an official statement. It was not because of health problems, they said, but to preserve what was beautiful and special about the band. A partnership of 14 years came to a quiet close, without much fuss. (Afterward) Jack White carried on an active career, releasing his first solo album, Blunderbuss, in 2012, and in 2009 he moved Third Man Records, the label he had founded in 2001, to Nashville, building it into a hub for producing and releasing records. Meg White, by contrast, withdrew almost entirely from music and stayed out of public view. The sound the two made remains a symbol of the garage rock revival of the 2000s.
Lesser-known stories
From their earliest days the White Stripes introduced themselves as brother and sister, but in fact they were a couple who had married in 1996 and divorced in 2000. This became widely known in 2001, when a Detroit Free Press reporter confirmed it by digging through court records. For a long time the two did not bother to correct the misunderstanding, which many read as an effort to protect the band's mystique. Jack White's taking his wife's surname, White, after their marriage was also an unusual choice. Husbands rarely took their wives' names, and even after the divorce it stuck as his stage name, becoming far better known than his birth name, John Gillis. Meg's drumming was a point of contention throughout the band's career. In 2003 Jack got into a fistfight at a Detroit bar with the singer of fellow band the Von Bondies and pleaded guilty to assault; the incident remains in court records but left almost no trace on the band's public image. Overshadowed by his image as a gentle minimalist, it is rarely mentioned. No one knew that day that the July 31, 2007, show in Southaven, Mississippi, would be the band's last full concert. The show two weeks earlier in St. John's, where they played a single note and walked off, is far more famous, but it was not the last. That it was the last was confirmed only belatedly and in hindsight, as a documentary film came out in 2009 and the breakup announcement followed in 2011.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Garage rock
(Meaning) Garage is the English word for the place where a car is kept. As the name suggests, it comes from the rough sound of amateur bands who practiced and recorded in home garages instead of proper studios. (In rock) It refers to a branch of rock that puts simple, spontaneous playing and an unpolished texture ahead of elaborate arrangements. It is much like the clumsy but forceful sound a school band makes practicing in a classroom or storeroom without a proper recording studio.
Lo-fi
(Meaning) Lo-fi is a contraction of "low" and "fidelity." (In rock) It refers to recording that deliberately keeps noise and rough textures rather than cleaning them up. Just as a video casually shot on a smartphone can feel more intimate, lo-fi rock chooses the raw feel of the moment over polish. (Elsewhere) Recently it has also become a widely used name for a genre of mellow background music (so-called lo-fi hip-hop).
Octave pedal
(In rock) An effects unit that shifts the pitch of the guitar signal down or up an octave, so that it sounds as if another instrument were playing. Much as singing an octave lower at karaoke makes a voice sound far deeper, it can lower the guitar's sound until it passes for a bass.
Fuzz
(Meaning) Fuzz is an English word that originally means something soft yet rough, like down or lint. (In rock) It refers to a distortion effect that deliberately mashes and tears the guitar signal to create a thick, rough sound. Picture the texture of smeared crayon rather than a crisp pencil line, and it becomes easy to grasp.
Minimalism
(Meaning) Minimal means "the least possible," and minimalism is an attitude of stripping away what is unnecessary and keeping only the bare minimum. (In rock) An approach that pares expressive elements such as the number of instruments, the arrangement and color down to an extreme, making simplicity itself the signature. Like a test answer written short and to the point with no padding, the White Stripes expressed the band with just two instruments, guitar and drums, and three colors, red·white·black. (Elsewhere) It is also commonly used for styles of architecture and interior design that strip away ornament and make the most of empty space.
Grammy Award
(Meaning) The name Grammy comes from the trophy, which is shaped like an old gramophone. (In rock) An award given each year by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to the records and songs judged the year's best. Like the honors a school hands out to close the year, it is regarded within the music industry as the place where a year's achievements are recognized.