How do you explain what seems so inexplicable–the success of the White Stripes?
Rocker Steven Van Zandt chooses one word and then issues a disclaimer: “It’s a phenomenon,” Van Zandt said. “Unfortunately, you can’t use them as an example of anything other than they’re a part of this contemporary garage-rock movement.”
Well, sort of.
The White Stripes did emerge several years ago when other bands were reviving and recycling certain sounds of the 1960s. But the Stripes’ sound was something completely different. In fact, their take on American blues has much more in common with ’70s British rock bands, especially Led Zeppelin, than with any of the “neo-Nuggets” bands.
The Stripes are a phenomenon for reasons that have little to do with who they sound like or don’t sound like or which eras they draw their sound from. Some of those reasons make perfect sense, and most concern Jack White, who is arguably the biggest young rock star on the planet and the closest thing we’ve come to Kurt Cobain in 10 years.
Why? Chalk it up to a guitar virtuosity in the league of Jimmy Page’s, a persona that mixes charisma and machismo, a singing voice that gives mainstream music the finger, an unwillingness to stand still and deliver merely what’s expected of him, an absorption in several forms of vintage American music, and the ability to contrive a mystique about his band that somehow falls well short of pretense and self-indulgence.
If the Stripes’ success is indeed a phenomenon, it’s one built on two primary components: music and myth–lots of black magic and a few white lies.
Jack White may be the brightest guitar star of his generation, but the Stripes are about something other than his hellacious riffs and their songs, which, if broken down into music components, aren’t all that brilliant or dynamic. Even one of their best and most popular songs, “Seven Nation Army,” is built around a rugged, shotgun-shack frame, then embellished with vocal histrionics and heavy guitar decor and plenty of attitude.
Or take “My Doorbell” from the new album “Get Behind Me Satan,” a song widely described as one of the Stripes’ catchiest. It has a simple pop bounce to it, but its melody is primitive and unimaginative.
As a lyricist, White is in a category of his own–as wry, witty and clever as he can be tragic, sarcastic and romantic.
Meg White’s sloppiness as a drummer and her weaknesses as a singer burnish Jack’s idealized version of the truth: that music is about immediacy, about capturing a live moment, not about recording it laboriously and then airbrushing it with expensive technology. Jack is a do-it-yourself/indie rocker at heart, so he wants his music to sound homemade and unprocessed.
In the end, the Stripes prove that the one thing they can’t survive without is each other. They need Meg’s novelty as much as they do Jack’s talent and magnetism and knack for choreographing and constructing his band’s image. Next to her, he seems larger, more heroic, more in command and more humane.
With a better drummer behind him, the Stripes would sound tighter and cleaner and better technically, but they’d be much less interesting.
And therein lies the phenomenon.
The White Stripes
When: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Where: Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Pkwy.
Pick up Tuesday’s RedEye for a review of The White Stripes’ Monday night concert.
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Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and Kris Karnopp (kkarnopp@tribune.com)
