the White Stripes

the White Stripes, American rock duo from Detroit, known for combining punk, folk, country, and Mississippi Delta blues. Original band members were guitarist-vocalist Jack White (original name John Anthony Gillis; b. July 9, 1975, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.) and drummer Meg White (original name Megan Martha White; b. December 10, 1974, Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan).

During the 1990s Meg held a variety of service jobs, and Jack worked as a furniture upholsterer. Exposed to a wide range of music by his employer, Brian Muldoon, Jack became interested in the sound of Detroit punk pioneers Iggy and the Stooges and the MC5. Jack (on guitar) and Muldoon recorded a blues-infused single under the name the Upholsterers. Trading one set of influences for another, in 1993 Jack signed on as drummer for the established “cow-punk” band Goober and the Peas. Jack gained experience onstage and in the recording studio, and the group’s sound (a fusion of punk and rockabilly) and its stage persona (featuring cowboy hats and embroidered western suits) would reappear in his later work. In 1996 Goober and the Peas broke up, and Jack and Meg were married. (Although Jack and Meg claimed to be brother and sister, the media eventually discovered a marriage license [1996] and a divorce certificate [2000].) That year the couple moved into Jack’s childhood home, and they began to craft the sound of the White Stripes. The duo played at venues around Detroit, frequently appearing with Two-Star Tabernacle, a country-rock outfit that featured Jack and former Goober and the Peas front man Dan Miller. The White Stripes signed a contract with the independent Sympathy for the Record Industry label, and the duo’s self-titled debut album was released in 1999. It was followed the next year by De Stijl.

In 2001 the White Stripes released their breakthrough album, White Blood Cells. Michel Gondry’s eye-catching video for the single “Fell in Love with a Girl” received regular airplay on MTV, and the group became media darlings. The duo followed with Elephant (2003), a percussion-driven collection of songs that featured Meg’s debut as a vocalist. Elephant earned a Grammy Award for best alternative music album, and it sold over a million copies on the strength of singles such as “Seven Nation Army” and “The Hardest Button to Button.” Jack appeared in the film Cold Mountain (2003), and he contributed five songs to its Grammy-nominated soundtrack. He also produced country legend Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose (2004), a collection of honky-tonk anthems that earned a pair of Grammy awards and introduced Lynn to a new generation of fans. The White Stripes earned another Grammy for their album Get Behind Me Satan (2005), and the song “Icky Thump,” from their album of the same name (2007), became the band’s first Top 40 hit on the Billboard singles chart. In addition, Icky Thump was the White Stripes’ third recording to earn the Grammy for best alternative music album, and the title song was also awarded a Grammy.

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The White Stripes went on hiatus in 2007 after Meg was afflicted with performance-related anxiety. They returned to the stage for a single performance in February 2009 for the final episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Continuing to expand his body of work, Jack experimented with straightforward power pop as a member of the Raconteurs. The quartet produced a pair of well-received albums (2006 and 2008) and quickly became a fixture on the summer concert circuit. Meg married guitarist Jackson Smith (son of rock legend Patti Smith) in May 2009, and Jack undertook yet another side project. Enlisting members of the Kills and Queens of the Stone Age, Jack formed the Dead Weather, a bluesy psychedelic rock combo whose debut album, Horehound, was released in July 2009.

In March 2009 Jack founded Third Man Records, a Nashville record store, performance space, and label. As the rest of the music industry was trying to adjust its business model to accommodate digital downloads, White’s label embraced the physical artifacts of the album era: the turntable, the gatefold cover, and, above all, high-quality vinyl releases. As Jack spent more time on Third Man and other projects—he produced The Party Ain’t Over, the 2011 comeback album from rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson—White Stripes fans began to suspect that the band’s hiatus might be permanent. This was confirmed when in February 2011 Meg and Jack announced that they would no longer record or appear as the White Stripes. The following year Jack embarked on a solo career with the stylistically expansive Blunderbuss.