STACK #202 Aug 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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THE WHITE STRIPES GET BEHIND ME SATAN

Bryget Chrisfield explores the creation, impact, and legacy of her favourite classic records.This month it’s the fifth album from Detroit rock duoTheWhite Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan .

T he Grammy-winning Get Behind Me Satan was definitely a stylistic departure for The White Stripes, inviting piano, mandolin, acoustic guitar and even marimba (xylophone’s exotic cousin) to join the guitar-drums-vocals party. Could Jack White’s 2003 car accident – which basically left him with a crushed left index finger – have partly caused this temporary shift away from his true love: squalling electric guitar? When the three fractures he suffered as a result of this crash started pushing apart instead of healing, Jack required immediate surgery (which he filmed and put online, FFS!) to permanently insert three metal screws. “I can’t write, I can’t play piano, I can’t play guitar, I can’t do anything creative. I can’t even tie my shoes,” he bemoaned at the time. Following the release of The White

Stripes’ third album, Elephant – which dropped three months prior to the accident, in 2003 – the band was enjoying a commercial peak. But Jack’s injury forced him to prioritise recovery, and cancel shows (including appearances at Reading and Leeds festivals). During this time, Jack wrote and produced Loretta Lynn’s Grammy- winning Van Lear album (2004) and the Coal Miner’s Daughter singer’s influence can be heard filtering through a couple of Get Behind Me Satan ’s tracks: the Appalachian hoedown Little Ghost and a rousing waltz, I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet) , which wouldn’t sound out of place within Loretta’s songbook. Going into the Get Behind Me Satan sessions, The White Stripes’ musical

Year 2005

Dutch), was all about stripping things back to “the simplest components”: “the blues were taking music down to three chords, twelve bars, three lines.” It was back when Jack was working as an apprentice at his next-door neighbour Brian Muldoon’s upholstery shop that he decided three was the magic number. After noticing that the master upholsterer had used three staples to secure a piece of fabric, Jack had an a-ha moment. “Three was the minimum number of staples an upholsterer could use and call a piece done,” he explained during a 2017 interview. Before he worked for

approach had, understandably, evolved. But still, the purists who were more enamoured of the punky, riff-led, garage-rock of the group’s previous three records were miffed. Now let’s discuss Jack’s favourite number: three. Not only did he initially limit the duo’s musical vocabulary to just three instruments (vocals, guitar and drums), The White Stripes only ever wore red, white and black

Jack required immediate surgery (which he filmed and put online, FFS!)

Muldoon, Jack rescued a copy of The Stooges’

debut album from his dumpster. “That really changed my life,” Jack told Questlove on the drummer’s Questlove Supreme podcast. “I recorded I Wanna Be Your Dog on 4-track because of that, and it

stage attire as well. In 2001, Jack founded the independent record label Third Man Records (where …Satan was recorded) in Detroit, Michigan. Oh, yeah, and the third track on The White Stripes’ eponymous debut album is called The Big Three Killed My Baby (it was the second single to be lifted from that album, though, not the third – missed opportunity?). Jack also told Alec Wilkinson that The White Stripes’ second album, 2000’s De Stijl (“The Style” in

led me into punk rock in a bigger way.” Muldoon also introduced Jack to The Cramps and The Velvet Underground once he started working in the store. When Jack was 21, he opened his own upholstery store. Since he was the third upholsterer to open on the block, Jack called his business Third Man Upholstery (later using this brand name for his record label, and stores in both Detroit and Nashville). Third Man’s black-and-yellow

Jack and MegWhite at the 2004 Grammys, where their 2003 record Elephant won Best Alternative Album

20 AUGUST 2021

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