STACK #202 Aug 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

Jack is a notoriously unreliable narrator

colour palette – which remains a feature of everything Third Man-related to this day, including employee uniforms – was first used for Jack’s upholstery business. Inspired by the colours of Stanley tools, to Jack, black and yellow signified the idea of ‘work’. According to Wilkinson, Jack had a yellow van and a yellow cutting table as part of his upholstery business, and wrote his invoices in black crayon on yellow paper. In one episode of the excellent Striped: The Story Of The White Stripes podcast, Ben Blackwell (co-owner/co-founder of Third Man Records) reveals these ‘invoices’ were childlike, Jack scrawling hastily written “IOU”s which tended to confuse his more conventional customers. “The presentation wasn’t good for business,” Jack has since confirmed. “I didn’t care if I made any money,” he told David Fricke. “I was so happy to pull up in front of someone’s house wearing a yellow-and-black uniform, with a yellow clipboard.” Born John Gillis, Jack White took Meg’s surname when he married her in 1996 (they divorced in 2000). Legally, his name is John White. The White Stripes began, kind of by accident, in 1997. Jack was recording in the couple’s attic and needed a beat, so he asked Meg to get behind the kit and bash something out. The first song they played together was Bowie’s Moon-age Daydream . Jack felt inspired by the childlike simplicity of Meg’s Jack also elected to play cheap guitars in The White Stripes, hoping to prove that the instrument you choose is irrelevant when it comes to making quality tunes. For a long time The White Stripes claimed they were siblings, which was kind of creepy given that they were playing, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Passive Manipulation (the 34-second …Satan track on which Meg

takes lead vocals): “Don’t just succumb to the wishes of your brothers… You need to know the difference/ Between a father and a lover.” Jack doesn’t do many interviews – it’s all about mystique. In lieu of interviews to promote ...Satan , The White Stripes sent out a press pack that included their own transcribed dialogue to reveal – well, a whole lotta nothing, really (e.g., Meg to Jack: “Are these songs about you? …I thought maybe you made an exception after coming out of the closet”). The title of Get Behind Me Satan , The White Stripes’ fifth album, is a shortened version of “Get thee behind me, Satan”, which Jack reckons is his “favourite thing that Jesus ever said”. Interestingly, the band’s most sonically inventive album was actually recorded between The Raconteurs (The Saboteurs for us Aussies) sessions. Side note: A jazz group from Queensland shared The Raconteurs’ band name and demanded an exorbitant fee if the US supergroup (which is rounded out by Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler) wished to purchase it. Jack chose to change his group’s name instead. The White Stripes’ previous Grammy-winning masterpiece Elephant used no technology made after 1965 (it sounds almost live). Hitting the studio with exactly zero completed songs written for its follow-up, The White Stripes recorded Get Behind Me Satan in just two weeks!

Above: A promotional photoshoot image for Get Behind Me Satan . Below: At London’s Alexandra Palace, 2005. Bottom: Performing in Mexico, 2005.

After noticing that the master upholsterer had used three staples to secure a piece of fabric, Jack had an a-ha moment

creative wizard’s noggin. In Jack’s words: “When you see a band

In the aforementioned press-supplied Q&A, Jack revealed, “This album was cursed when we started, and then suddenly came around near the end.” During another interview, Jack claimed that their equipment often mysteriously fell over or broke during …Satan ’s recording sessions and that they were “close to scrapping the whole record”. Do we believe that, though? Jack is a notoriously unreliable narrator...

that is two pieces, husband and wife,

girlfriend and boyfriend, you think, ‘Oh, I see…’ When they’re brother

and sister, you think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ You care more about the music, not the relationship – whether they’re trying to save their relationship by being in a band.” Fair enough, but, whatever way you look at it, The Whites were clearly having a giraffe when they penned these lyrics for

actually a couple. Perhaps Jack thought claiming they shared DNA would go some way toward explaining the duo’s onstage alchemy? Who knows what goes on in the

Continue reading the full fascinating story online at stack.com.au!

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