Dec 14

The White Stripes

THE WHITE STRIPES

 
The White Stripes  were an American rock duo, formed in 1997 in Detroit, Michigan.  After releasing several singles and three albums within the Detroit music scene, The White Stripes rose to prominence in 2002, as part of the garage rock revival scene.  Their successful and critically acclaimed albums White Blood Cells and Elephant drew attention from a large variety of media outlets in the United States and the United Kingdom.  The band dissolved in 2011 after a lengthy hiatus from performing and recording.  Their last three albums each won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
It is easy to argue that "they don't make 'em like they used to", and that would also be my main argument I suppose.  For every Beatles and Cream and Beach Boys and U2 and White Stripes that made the big time, there are hundreds of bands that were every bit as good and were also well regarded enough to get a record deal – they just missed out on all of the stardom.  (There are thousands more that didn't even get signed, but without some recordings, I have nothing to talk about). 
 
Of course, the other side of the complaint I mentioned above is that, sure enough, "they do still make 'em like they used to" from time to time.  I heard an ad on VH1 the other day that used a killer track by the Black Keys as the background music.  The success of this band – they've been going strong for more than a full decade now – proves that the Garage Rock Revival of the early 2000's from bands like the White Stripes, the Hives, the Killers, Eagles of Death Metal, and Queens of the Stone Age still has some life in it.  
 
 (January 2012)
 
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Back when MTV and VH1 used to play music videos, and when I wasn't watching anything else, I would often have one of those channels on, with my videocassette recorder at the ready, in case a video came on of a song that I really liked.  Particularly when there was a song in "heavy rotation" that I really wanted, I would often have the VCR already cued up, on "hold", so that I would miss as little of the video as possible.  Sometimes I would get lucky, and I would already be recording a song when another one came on that I wanted as well. 
 
That happened one time with "No One Knows" by Queens of the Stone Age.  The time was back in the Garage Rock Revival period of the early 2000's, when the White Stripes, the Hives, the Strokes, and several other great retro bands were really getting established.  I hadn't heard the song before, but the beat sounded good, so I left the recorder running.  That song got to be a real favorite of mine, and I was particularly thrilled when I later recognized Dave Grohl – former drummer for Nirvana and front man for Foo Fighters – on drums in the video (that's a video cap from the "No One Knows" music video above). 
 
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Guitarist Aubrey Nehring is also the vocalist for the Invisible Eyes; he reminds me of Jack White on some of the tracks on the first White Stripes album, The White Stripes such as "The Big Three Killed My Baby" and their cover of "St. James Infirmary Blues". 
 
(December 2012)
 
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I would view this 2003 album as documenting one of the first wave of bands that were directly influenced by the Garage Rock Revival – it was released in the year after the White Stripes' "Fell in Love with a Girl" single and the Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf album were released, as well as the mini-battle of the bands between the Hives and the Vines on the MTV Music Video Awards. 
 
(January 2013)
 
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The 2008 documentary, It Might Get Loud shows rock guitarist legends from three generations discussing their music and their careers and their influences:  Jimmy Page (the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (the White Stripes, the Raconteurs).  Needless to say, they all three made the Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Guitarists also:  #3, #38 and #70, respectively. 

 

At one point, Jimmy Page starts flipping through a pile of 45's and pulls out "Rumble" by Link Wray and His Ray Men.  To see a rock legend grooving along with that song, to see that big beaming smile on his face, to hear him discussing how the song developed, to see Page actually doing "air guitar" to "Rumble":  that really is something special.  The clip from It Might Get Loud is well worth a viewing:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLEUSn8y9TI . 

 

(February 2013)

 

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I had thought that "Funnel of Love" appears on Wanda Jackson's 2011 comeback album, The Party Ain't Over that was produced by Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs, but that ain't true either. 
 
(June 2013/2)
 
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Patti Smith Group's previous album, Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the fiery 1960's Detroit band MC5; and Patti Smith later met the band's guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith.  They married in 1980, and the couple raised two children.  The joke at the time was that she married him only because she wouldn't have to change her name.  Their son, Jackson Smith married White Stripes drummer Meg White in 2009; interestingly, Meg didn't have to change her name either when she had previously married the band's guitarist Jack White. 

 

(February 2014)

 

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The second album by the Dirtbombs, Ultraglide in Black came out in 2001 when the Garage Rock Revival was on the rise, led in part by Detroit's own the White Stripes.  The Dirtbombs were the opening act for the White Stripes in this period, with bandleader Jack White acknowledging his influence by the Gories.   

 

(December 2014)

 

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Ray Brandes describes the band's approach to the recording sessions:  "Since the Crawdaddys’ legendary obsession with authenticity also applied to the equipment used to play and record the songs on the album, every sound needed to be justified by a musical recording of the era; and this of course meant no instruments manufactured after 1965, and no round-wound bass strings, nylon picks or synthetic drum heads."  Jack White basically felt the same way. so the White Stripes similarly used vintage equipment in many of their recordings. 

 

(January 2015/2)

 

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Jack White of the White Stripes organized a band called the Do-Whaters that included the rhythm section from the Greenhornes, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler, plus Dave Feeny, another Detroit musician and producer.  They became the backing band for Loretta Lynn on her universally acclaimed 2004 comeback album, Van Lear Rose, which was masterminded and produced by Jack White. 

 

As quoted in Wikipedia:  "Rhapsody ranked the album #16 on its Country’s Best Albums of the Decade list:  'Jack White, of the bizarre and bluesy duo the White Stripes, produced this effort to jaw-dropping effect.  Van Lear Rose is a stripped-down effort that isn't afraid to get dirty – both in its dark subject matter and in its raucous, gritty tones.  And as much as this body of work highlights [Loretta] Lynn's down-home vocals (which are as strong as ever), it's White's production that sends her crashing – literally – into the 21st century.  On paper, these two disparate souls have little in common, but the bold excitement of the music proves the two are a match made in heaven.'" 

 

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Soledad Brothers released two singles for Italy Records and Estrus Records in 1998 and 1999, plus a self-produced album in 1998 called Master Supertone having a truly tiny release (just 20 copies were pressed).  Jack White had produced the band's second single, "The Gospel According to John", and its success led to the album Soledad Brothers that came out on Estrus Records in 2000.  The other half of the White Stripes, Meg White contributed some percussion to the album also. 

 

(February 2015)

 

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Rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley was from Detroit; in 1955, "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets was the first big rock and roll hit. Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a crossover R&B hit in 1954 with “Work with Me, Annie”; this band also recorded the original version of “The Twist” in 1959 as a B-side that Chubby Checker catapulted to a nationwide craze the following year. More recently, the White Stripes is one of the primary bands that ignited the Garage Rock Revival of the early 2000’s, among a host of other like-minded Detroit groups. 
(March 2016)
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Karen O (lead vocals, piano) met Nick Zinner (guitar, keyboards) at a bar in New York and made an instant connection. As the band evolved, Brian Chase (drums) joined the lineup; he and Karen O had known each other as students at Oberlin College, where they were heavily influenced by the “avant-punk” bands in Ohio during that time period. Yeah Yeah Yeahs became the opening act for hot bands of the period like Sleater-Kinney, the Strokes, and the White Stripes. 
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Among the rock bands that have arisen since the Garage Rock Revival began in the early 2000’s, the Black Keys has attained a prominence in the American consciousness that Queens of the Stone Age, the Hives, the Strokes, and even the White Stripes never quite managed. As an example, I have noticed the band mentioned in our local paper twice in the past two or three months. Suzy Shaw of Bomp! Records told me that she was eating lunch in Los Angeles once and overheard several suit-clad businessmen talking about the Black Keys a few tables over. 
(June 2017)

Last edited: March 22, 2021