#390 - The White Stripes - Elephant (2003)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on April 4th of 2003 on V2, XL, and Third Man Records and produced by Jack White, this is the fourth studio album by the Detroit, Michigan Blues, Punk, Alternative, Garage Rock duo.
Detroit native Jack Gillis, the youngest of ten children, whose older brothers were in a local band learned to play the instruments they left around their house.
Starting as a drummer, Jack was influenced by the usual Classic Rock heroes before he became smitten with the Blues and ‘60s Garage Rock.
According to Jack he had been accepted into a Catholic seminary in Wisconsin but instead chose to go to a public high school where he majored in business and played drums and trombone in the school band.
He also took an upholstery apprenticeship with a family friend who turned him on to Punk Rock. His boss, who played drums, invited Jack to play with him so Jack switched to guitar.
When Jack was a high school senior he would read poetry at open mic nights at a Southern-themed restaurant called Memphis Smoke where he met fellow local high school student and aspiring chef Megan White who worked there.
They became friends and started dating.
After his apprenticeship Jack, who was now playing drums in popular local Cowpunk band Goober & the Peas as well as playing guitar and singing at solo shows, opened his own one-man business called Third Man Upholstery. The name Jack would later call his record company.
Jack and Meg married in 1996 with him legally taking her last name.
The following year non-musician Meg learned to play Jack’s drum set while he played guitar and sang.
Meg’s inexperienced and rudimentary drumming excited and inspired Jack and his fondness for old and dilapidated equipment like his beat-up amplifier and his red, plastic, 1964, Airline brand, Montgomery-Ward catalog, guitar gave them a unique and primitive sound.
They decided to call their duo the White Stripes based on Meg‘s love for peppermint candies and as an acknowledgment of them being white kids playing the Blues. They also chose the band’s strict color scheme of white, red, and black and to concoct a mysterious history by publicly portraying themselves as brother and sister.
They started gigging a few months later in Michigan’s thriving, underground, Garage Rock scene.
In 1999 after putting out a couple, short-run, vinyl singles on a small, local, independent, label they signed with the bigger, California, indie, label Sympathy for the Record Industry and released another single, their first album, and a follow up single.
Then in 2000 they got divorced.
Jack figured that was the end of the White Stripes until Meg convinced him that they could and should still keep the band together.
Their second album saw their critical acclaim and popularity start to grow and when their 2001 third album was picked up and re-released by the major label V2 Records in 2002 they became a smash hit in the U.K.
Their heralded return to a more organic, raw, stripped down, Garage Rock, sound was grouped in with an unrelated but like-minded crop of new bands like The Hives, The Strokes, and The Vines.
Their exciting, primitive, Blues, stomping saw them being compared to Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols, selling out concerts, and having their albums charting and selling hundreds of thousands copies.
By the time public had caught on that they weren’t really siblings their dubious mythology had been bypassed by their songs and talent.
And after their innovative video for 2001’s “Fell in Love with a Girl” got huge airplay on MTV and won three video awards that year they were poised for their major-label debut.
Sticking with their successful Lo-Fi approach they spent a couple weeks at Toe-Rag Studios in Hackney, London, England where none of the equipment was more recent than 1963.
They recorded on an old, deteriorating, eight-track, analog, tape, machine and kept the sessions spontaneous and fresh, even composing some of their new songs on the spot.
Their back-to-basics, pre-modern, ethos was proudly disclaimed in “Elephant”’s liner notes as, “No computers were used during the writing, recording, mixing, or mastering of this record.”
Against their record company’s opposition Jack pushed for and won getting their first single to be “Seven Nation Army” and with another breakthrough video the song became a career-changing, success and won the Grammy for Best Rock Song.
On that strength “Elephant” went to #6 on the Billboard album charts and #1 in the U.K. and won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.
Although some critics thought they had essentially updated some of the songs from their earlier albums the newer listeners ate it up.
“Seven Nation Army” was instantly adopted as an anthem at sporting events and the White Stripes became household names.
This was a shock to Jack who later said, ”We had no business being in the mainstream. We assumed the music we were making was private, in a way.
After two more critically and commercially successful albums during which Jack had forays into several other musical projects and some acting they officially announced that the band was ceasing to record and effectively ending the White Stripes.
Publicly it was announced that among the many reasons was “mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band.”
However Jack later said that it was Meg’s lack of enthusiasm for them and their achievements.
In her defense the always shy Meg’s acute social anxiety and desire for a low profile life was a huge part in the decision.
Jack has gone on to become a wildly successful solo artist, member of various bands, producer, and songwriter while Meg has chosen to live away from the public eye. As she has said, “…the more you talk, the less people listen.”