The White Stripes — “Seven Nation Army”

I'm saying, you can say that you're a hero.

“You're a master of the club, right? But you don't understand.”

Exactly. It's just a challenge. You're just a master of the club. You're just a master of the club. And if you work, you'll be able to do it. - That's right? - Save. You're just a master. - You're just a master. - Now you're just a master. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club.

It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club.

It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It's a challenge for all of us to be a master of the club. It doesn't feel like a melody. It doesn't feel like a modest series of repeated musical notes

that one person can take credit for.

“In the sense that one day, one person came up with that melody”

and now the melody exists because of that one person. Are we sure about that? No way.

This melody is always existed.

This melody is too thoroughly ingrained in the fabric of human existence to have ever not existed. This melody is existed for exactly as long as the land and the sea and the light have existed.

And the Lord said, "Let there be light and the melody exists." Right? Right. Adam and or Eve hummed this melody as he and/or she bit into an apple from the tree of knowledge. Right? Right. You get me.

But I guess I'm wrong. Gragingly, skeptically, I am professionally obligated to tell you that apparently for years,

“adverbs for centuries of human existence,”

for eons of planetary existence. This melody did not exist and then one day, this melody just popped out of this one dude's mouth. What he just heard is a man named Solomon Linda, singing/writing/creating in the biblical sense.

The melody to the song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." In the year 1939, in a recording studio in Johannesburg, South Africa, Solomon Linda, Zulu Tribesman and singer and songwriter, and leader of the super popular Acapella group, Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds.

In that photo that Solomon on the far left there, he also gets top billing in this group because he's the tallest. We just heard Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds, singing a song of theirs called "Imbue," spelled M-B-U-B-E.

"Imbue" is the Zulu word for Lion. This song is less than three minutes long and the whole song's lovely, but yeah, wow, in the last 20 seconds, as the song's fading out as an afterthought, you might say, "Solomon Linda says, "Let there be light,"

and he just fires off the melody that we've all heard a billion times a piece

because it's always existed.

He just tweets it out. Solomon improvises that melody. Off the dome, get out of town. So I read this article in Rolling Stone Magazine in the year 2000. In this article, it's stuck with me now for 26 years.

The May 25th, 2000 issue of Rolling Stone. Brittany Spears on the cover, oops, I did it again, era. Brittany's posing in front of the American flag. There she is. I read this incredibly long, wild, captivating,

convoluted, intensely reported and quite disheartening, Rolling Stone article about the history, the grim genealogy of the lion's sleeps tonight. An article written by the South African author and journalist,

Rian Malan, the first paragraph of this article

has been banging around in my skull for a quarter century now. Quote, once upon a time, a long time ago, a small miracle took place in the brain of a man named Solomon Linda. It was 1939, and he was standing in front of a microphone in the only recording studio in Black Africa,

sub-Saharan Africa, when it happened. He hadn't composed the melody or written it down or anything. He just opened his mouth and outed came, a haunting skein of 15 notes that flowed down the wires and into a trembling stylus that cut tiny grooves

and turned into a record that became a very big hit in that part of Africa, and Quote.

“Now, of course, this long-wild captivating, convoluted,”

intensely reported, and quite this heartening, Rolling Stone article, is about how we get from Solomon Linda singing that melody in 1939 to a dude from Brooklyn singing this melody in 1961. Yeah, here we have a Brooklyn duop group called The Tokens,

with our gargantuan bonkers, blockbuster in 1961. Number one pop hit, the lion sleeps tonight. That's Jay Seagull of The Tokens singing lead there. Sorry, I don't know which one of these guys is Jay Seagull. Jay might be the shortest guy this time,

just to mix things up.

“The leader of the band is always either the tallest person”

or the shortest. You're either Abraham Lincoln or you're Napoleon. This Rolling Stone article on the history of the lion sleeps tonight is like 11,000 words long. Short version, humbouet, the song by Solomon Linda in the evening birds,

sells around 100,000 copies in Africa. But Solomon Linda had sold the publishing rights for 10 shillings. Pete Seagull, the legendary New York City folk singer, Pete Seagull, here's humbouet, and Pete's band The Weavers cut their own blockbuster version of this song in the early 50s.

And The Weavers call their song Weaem Away

“because that's what Pete Seagull thinks,”

Solomon Linda in the evening birds are singing. The Tokens cover Weaem Away and add some words in an opera singer, et cetera, and they put out the lion sleeps tonight in 1961. And it tops the charts and becomes a song and a melody

that has literally always existed.

Short version, a whole bunch of white people, most of them record executives, make tens of millions of dollars off the melody of a black singer who gets practically nothing. Sorry to be blunt and/or cringe, but that's the size of it. That's the cold, hard, realist takeaway from this Rolling Stone article. But there is also a warm, fuzzy, idealist takeaway from the saga

behind the lion's sleeps tonight, someone wrote that melody. Someone sang that melody for the first time, a real-life human being saw the face of God and translated the sight of the face of God into a modest series of repeated musical notes. It's the second half of that opening Rolling Stone paragraph

that first struck me and has never stopped striking me.

Right, he just opened his mouth and added came, a haunting skein of 15 notes that flowed down the wires and into a trembling stylus that cut tiny grooves into a spinning block of beeswax, et cetera, the awestruck physical description of that act of creation. The radical and frankly unbelievable idea, that that melody did not exist. And then suddenly it existed thanks to a guy named Solomon Linda.

In the Rolling Stone article, it says quote, "It is the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa, a tune that is penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say here is a song, the whole world knows." And quote, especially as a little kid, I knew so many songs that I just assumed

the whole world had always known.

Yeah, I am not convinced that this hook has not always existed. I am pretty sure that when Adam and or Eve bit into an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and got themselves expelled from the Garden of Eden, as they were leaving, God himself taunted them by singing, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, hey, hey, good, but not so, apparently, allegedly. Apparently, this is the chorus to the 1969 hit, "Nana, hey, hey, kiss him goodbye, by a New York

city rock band called Steam." Here we have Steam on the cover of their self-titled 1970 album, Steam. I'll be honest. I could have lived with a less literal album cover depiction of the band, Steam. If you're not looking at this, don't. No, thank you. Thanks for wearing towels, fellas. I guess you're telling me, "No, no, no, no, no, hey, hey, good bye. Is a melody one person

Well, soon, pick it. Land of a thousand dances. 1966. Now, this is definitely the version of this song

I'd heard a billion times before I entered grade school, but with all due respect to Wilson picket,

that eternal melody did not first emerge from his mouth. All right, we got a slowly evolving lion sleeps tonight, type situation here, melodically. Land of a thousand dances is written in first recorded in 1962 by Chris Kenner, who is from New Orleans and I am delighted to say that you can totally tell he's from New Orleans. Twist, twister, like your sister, um, great song,

“but Chris Kenner's original does not have the crucial and eternal, no, no, no, no, part.”

That particular haunting skein of notes apparently popped out of the mouth of Frankie cannibal Garcia, lead center of the Los Angeles-based Mexican-American rock band cannibal and the headhunters. When they released their cover of Land of a thousand dances in 1966. Apparently, Frankie improvised this melody when he forgot the actual words to this song, which kind of sounds

made up that story, but it sounds made up in the cool, essential rock and roll mythology sort of way.

Yes. And then Wilson picket covers the cannibal and the headhunters cover and yeah, that's the

“version I've heard a billion times before I learned to speak. And the version that existed back when”

mastodons still roamed the earth. That was too much context. Let's do one with way less context. Gary Glitter rock and roll part two, 1972. Gary Glitter, the less you know the better. You simply do not have to hand it to him. Let's you and me agree to think of rock and roll part two as a divine pre-lapseary and authorless specter of the public domain. Which it basically is, the insidious primacy of that riff, that hook, that blunt force melody. The palpable sense,

the doo doo doo doo doo, hey, just bubbled up like lava out of the core and onto the surface of an earth that had not yet fully cooled. Bronisaurus is in velociraptors and whatnot, stopping around going, doo doo doo doo, hey, yeah, let's go with that. That is the official origin of rock and roll part two. Weirdly, we could further widen the scope here beyond the words, nah, nah, nah, nah, and hey, hey, you know, give me one solid woohoo. Logically, I know that this

is cool in the gang, cool with the K. The coolest with a K band ever emerged from New Jersey. Logically, I know that this song is called Celebration and it came out in 1980. And thus, gradually, I have to acknowledge that this song is younger than I am. I am older than the cool in the gang song, Celebration. I personally have lived in a world without, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, woohoo in it. But also, obviously, no, I haven't. The first fish or whatever that crawled up on land,

375 million years ago, the first fish celebrated his or her or its accomplishment by going, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, woohoo, obviously,

what do all these songs have in common? All these songs other than the Lions leaps tonight. By the time I'm 10 years old, all these songs, all these hooks, all these melodies feel like timeless,

“authorless, natural born occurrences. They feel like crucial elements on the periodic table.”

And I ain't never memorized the periodic table. But you bet I got all these songs memorized, internalized, personally canonized. I will remember and love and cherish all of these songs for the rest of my life. And that's because, as a wide-eyed little kid, I heard them all

to the heat is on. In all mighty 1984, jam by Glenn Fry, he of the Eagles, 1984, shit. Logically,

“I understand that I am once again older than this song. And probably most people know the heat is”

on as that one song from Beverly Hills cup, right? Not me though. This is a baseball song to me.

Specifically, it is a 1980s St. Louis Cardinals song to me. I spent most of my first 10 years of

existence and most of the 80s, living in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, and my first love, sports wise, was the mid-delayed 80s St. Louis Cardinals. John Tudor, Tony Pania, Jack Clark, Tommy Hur, Terry Pendleton, Ozzy Smith, Vince Coleman, Williamigie, Kurt Ford, Joseo Kendall off the bench. That's the Cardinals starting line up in '87. As immortalized by RBI baseball for the NES. Sorry about that. Just remembering some guys. As a kid, we'd go to Cardinals games.

“Right? My parents would take me to Cardinals games at Bush Stadium downtown. And I'd have the”

cliched, wide-eyed, absurdly nostalgia over saturated experience of walking through the stadium tunnel and emerging into the sunlight or the majestic stadium lights. The bright green grass of the outfield, the inexplicably bright brown dirt of the infield, the ecstatic roar of the crowd, the peanuts and cracker jack, the whole Cornball glory day is experience. Right? How Cornball was

this experience precisely? Every Cardinals game, when the Cardinals defense first takes the field,

Ozzy Smith's short stop, Hall of Fame, short stop. Ozzy Smith runs out and he does a backflip to start every game. This perfect expression of exuberance and athleticism and American exceptionalism.

“And my young heart grows three sizes every time, watching Ozzy Smith do a backflip. And soon my”

young heart grows larger than Bush Stadium itself. Ozzy Smith ready for the flip and we're ready to start the season. Here we go! The 40-year-old short stop. Ozzy Smith was still at it in 1995 when he was 40 years old. He was so much older than he's younger than that now. But despite all that other sensory overload, the lights, the crowd, the grass, the whafting, omnipresent, Bush beer, aroma, even as a little

kid, this real overwhelming life affirming sensory overload at Cardinals games is all musical for me. Right? Just this unrelenting joyous blitz of mostly wordless, ecstatic primordial riffs and hooks and melodies. So immediately central to the core of my being that I just assume and I still

assume that all these melodies have always existed. The heat is on starts playing over the Bush Stadium

loudspeaker. And I imagine a Tyrannosaurus Rex wearing sunglasses and rocking a saxophone going. The Cardinals scored 10 runs in the first inning and the loser visiting team pulls their loser starting pitcher and everyone in the stadium goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no, hey, hey, good, by which is also what a stegosaurus says before it stops and/or spikes you to death. 7th inning stretch, we do take me out to the ballgame, that song's old as hell, and then we get a bit of John

Fogerdee's center field, right? Bird, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, that's from 1985, but it's also the rare guitar-based Old Testament ass melody. Games tied in the bottom of the ninth, two outs, the cardinals got the bases loaded, and here comes pinch hitter Hoseo Kendall, and over the bush stadium loudspeaker you hear, that's right, it's the final countdown by Europe, the band, 1986, except also that's the song that started playing with all the dinosaurs looked

up and saw the meteor, hurtling toward Earth, and all the brantosaurus were like ah shit. It's sadra. The St. Louis Cardinals lose in the world series in 1985, fucked the Kansas City Royals, in 1987, fucked a Minnesota twins, but I get over it, you know, I grow up. I move away. I fall in love

of other baseball stadiums, and I encounter new eternal primordial Mount Olympus type melodies

“that are clearly younger than me, except obviously know they're not. Give me another solid. Woohoo! Woohoo!”

Blur. Song 2, 1997. Woo, it's satire. Woo, it's mocking grunge, and broish, laddish. Wo, it's common denominator, jock jam, culture. Woo, you will hear this song at every sporting event you attend for the rest of your life, and other people heard this song at every sporting

event that took place before you were born. Greek dudes throwing javelins and shit at the first

Olympic games and going woohoo! Yeah, it's the mid 90s, and we call these jock jams now. They got a whole bunch of jock jams, CDs. The meteor hits Earth, and goes y'all ready for this. And the dinosaurs weren't ready for that. I moved to Oakland in the mid 2000s. I get heavy into the Oakland A's, fuck the red socks, and the Yankees, fuck everybody pretty much,

“or really honestly, fuck the owners, and the A's got all kinds of red, mystifying, new,”

ancient jock jams. Let me ask you something. What's the song that you've heard the most in your life? You recognize this song instantly, and yet you have no idea what it's called, or who did it, or when it came out, or anything. What's the song that you've heard the most, but you know the least about? Does that make sense? Anyway, this is mine.

I have heard this song one billion times at baseball games, and yet I got no idea who or what

“or when this is. I picture a wooly mammoth downloading a pirated copy of garage band and whipping”

up this song in half an hour. I try to use the Google Voice Shazam feature where you sing a melody, and it tells you the song. And so I pick up my laptop, and I sing into it. I go do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. And Google AI goes do-do often refers to childish slang for feces, and I'm like, "Oh, shut up, Google AI. I'll tell you what's do-do. That was the German group zombie nation." With our 1999 hit, "Curn Craft 400." And I found that out the old fashioned way. By texting my

my dear friend and retired A's fan Garrett. And I sent him a voice note of me going do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do and I sent him a voice note of me going, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do,

I've got a giant sound system going. I think it's beautiful. It's implausible. It's unbelievable, honestly, and the sense that I still literally do not believe it. But yeah, fine. I think it's beautiful that all these melodies, all these riffs, all these chants, all these jock jams came from somewhere, came from someone. These melodies only feel immortal and naturally occurring. But in truth, each and every eternal stadium chant is the product of plain old human ingenuity. The melody emerges humbly, from a single humble, frail, mortal human. And then that tune penetrates so deep into the human consciousness

over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song, the whole world knows. And so, once upon a time, a long time ago, a small miracle took place in the brain of a man named Jack White. My name is Rob Harvela. This is the 38th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s coal in the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing seven nation army by the White Stripes.

Add break. Dude, I got like 500 white stripes songs. I got to play for you right now. We haven't got time for digressions and frivolities.

“We haven't got time for digressions and frivolities. Starting now.”

The white stripes are a bizarrely intriguingly, suspiciously heavily stylized, blues rock duo from Detroit, Michigan, consisting of Jack White on vocals and guitar. And his sister, Scarquote's Meg White, on drums and vocals occasionally. Adverbs. This is the White Stripes debut single, released in 1998 and called Let's Shake Hands.

Get a load of the way this band somehow gets even louder when the drums drop out for a second.

I just love it in White Stripes songs when the drums drop out when the whole bottom drops out. When everything stops musically, and it's just Jack White's ranting, yelping, temper tantrum, ass voice. I first saw the white stripes live in the year 2000 opening for the immortal punk rock band Slater Kenny. I saw the white stripes at this rad club in Columbus, Ohio called Little Brothers, RIP, and I was just mesmerized.

“Whenever a white stripe song stopped dead in its tracks, so Jack White could go, "Bah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.”

At one point in this song, let's shake hands, Jack sings the words, he yelps the words garbage can, and he sounds like he's

literally sitting in a garbage can, like Oscar the Grouch.

And I love it very much. Jack Gillis is born in Detroit in 1975 and grows up in the city's Mexican town neighborhood. He is one of ten children. He is the seventh son. That bombs me out somehow. That Jack White is actually the seventh son. That's too bad. Growing up, Jack plays in a bunch of local garage blues, country punk tight bands, often he's playing drums. He starts an upholstery business. He also reads poetry at open

“mic nights. At one such open mic night at a Detroit bar called Memphis Smoke,”

he meets a waitress named Meg White. Meg White is born in gross point farms in the suburbs,

just east of Detroit in 1974. Meg has an older sister, which makes Meg the second daughter.

Meg is and publicly, Meg remains very quiet, very shy, and preposterously cool. Jack and Meg start dating. In 1996, Jack and Meg get married. Jack takes Meg's name. He's Jack White. Now, in 1997, our love bird started a band called The White Stripes. Talking to the New Yorker 20 years later, in 2017, Jack says, quote, "We were in the attic, and I was recording something, and I asked, would you mind playing a simple beat for me?" I didn't tell her what to do.

Maybe I said a couple things. She sat down and did it. And quote, "The New Yorker also says, quote, "What she did struck him as childlike and unaffected by the wish to impress." And quote, "And then they start a band where they pretend to be brother and sister the whole time." And this dynamic, Jack, the cool, howling, super extrovert, Meg, the even cooler, near silent, super introvert, and both of them pretty childlike, if you want the truth,

the Megan Jack dynamic is splendidly intensified by the Detroit of it all. The White Stripes have an extraordinary sense of place. They sound like they came from somewhere. Now, musically, there is no shortage of regional precedent for the White Stripes. John Lee Hooker was based in Detroit. If you're drawn to the blues, the MC-5 and the Stooges both started nearby if you're drawn to the origins of punk.

Here at the turn of the century, Detroit's got a fantastic, and vibrant, and hyper-local punk scene, the Gories, the dirt bombs, the Detroit Cobras, the demolition doll rods, etc. Most of those bands will cross paths with the White Stripes, and some of those bands will enjoy doing that. But the one super famous song from Detroit, that best encapsulates the White Stripes for me,

is actually Charivari, from 1981 by the electronic music duo, a number of names.

eerie, ethereal, even cooler, female voice. I can't explain it, but this basically sounds

nothing like the White Stripes, and yet to me, it explains everything about the White Stripes. It's just a thought. All right, in 1998, the White Stripes make their recording debut with two singles. Let's shake hands as the first, and Lafayette Blues is the second. Lafayette Blues has words and stuff, some words in French, which is fun to hear Jack White going "Babababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababababa" in French, but my favorite part of Lafayette Blues is just Meg's absurdly colossal kick drum right here.

Sorry. Yeah, I still hear it. Yeah, I can hear, I can feel the floor bending, the floor collapsing under Meg White's feet on the Lafayette Blues. A song that notably sounds like everybody got thrown

in the garbage can, including you, the listener. The White Stripes will never leave the garbage can.

The garbage can will simply expand to encompass the whole world. The White Stripes are going to be an ungodly huge international sensation type band very soon. But this band sounds huge even back

“when they're tiny. And even after they get huge, Jack and Meg retain their essential childlike”

innocence. They're not so humble trashiness. They're overwhelming palpable sense of two human beings in a tiny room, making a noise somehow louder than the baffled booming voice of God. All that stuff and a rolling stone about the divine and yet merely mortal creation of the lion sleeps tonight, haunting notes that flow down the wires and into a trembling stylus, a cut tiny grooves into a spinning block of beeswax. You hear all that stuff in every White Stripes song, the

awestruck physicality, the wires, the trembling stylus, the grooves cut into a spinning block of beeswax or whatever. The White Stripes are defiantly corporeal and paradoxically invulnerable. The cover of this Lafayette blue single, also the red and white peppermint swirl, heavily stylized,

“tremendously important. What do we all learn about the White Stripes immediately? The White Stripes are”

a brother and sister duo, scare quotes. The White Stripes only use and only wear the colors red, white and black. The White Stripes conceive of everything in threes. Everything revolves around the number three. Red, white and black, guitar, bass and drums, song structures, often built around three chords, three verses, three choruses, etc. Generally, the rule of three rule is a little screwier and more abstract than the other rules, but the only wear red, white and black rule is

not abstract at all. This is a band with a code, a credo, a style, a lore, a whole heavily stylized ethos. Also, they're definitely from Detroit.

The first full-length white stripes album is released in 1999 and is called The White Stripes.

Note the album cover, the red, the white, the black, the peppermint, the nothing else. This song is called The Big Three Killed My Baby. The Big Three being four general motors and Chrysler, Detroit's three dominant automobile manufacturers. The Big Three Killed My Baby,

“this song I think is about corporate power crushing loan wolf human ingenuity, the man crushing”

the little guy so on and so forth. But man, this song, once again, for me, it's all about when the drums drop out. It's about all of Jack's briefly unaccompanied by my mama, ranting and yelping. The floor beneath their feet bends and collapses, but time bends too. The rhythm is not metronomic. Yes, we are not perfectly on beat. Weirdly, Jack is cramming in as many words as possible. It's chaos. It's absurdly rough. It's enormously volatile. Holy crap, it's fantastic.

I love the sense that he's constantly trying to keep up with this song or the song's

“constantly trying to keep up with him. Meanwhile, much discourse, there will be about the”

primal, the feral, the deliberately rudimentary nature of Meg White's drumming. Me, I love discourse, but we ain't got time for discourse. All that matters here is Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum. I really dig the guitar chords, changing semi-arbitrarily here. Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, the frantic semi-malotic ascente. Even by hallowed classic garbage can, garage rock standards, this is barely a song anymore. There's barely a discernible rhythm anymore. We're just

vibing rapturously, ultraviolently. It's a question of glorious infinite musical space. Right? The freedom, musical and spiritual that Meg White creates via the bashing rudimentary, discourse free primordial, eternal nature of Meg White's drumming. And when the big three kills my baby kicks back into gear and resumes sounding like a conventional rock and roll song on the line, and I found out my baby is dead. If you were cool enough to be paying attention

to the White stripes in 1999, this is the exact moment when you realize the whole world is going to be paying attention to the White stripes real soon.

“The yeah, yeah, yeah is incredibly important there as well. Every great rock and roll band”

needs plenty of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Ideally, a whole lot of woes also. I want to disappear. Wow. Wow. This song's called "When I Hear My Name," but only the word woe really matters. Only the woe, woe, woe, woe, woe matters. The pharaoh, micro bursts of

Jack White's guitar are crucial also. Jack White's guitar riffs and solos and whatnot will get

roudier and ronchier and less micro as we go along, but even that's enough Jack White guitar god action to identify Jack White's signature guitar style as slippery. I've settled on the word slippery. There's a rubbery panic stricken sliding down the steep rain slicked roof of a very tall skyscraper. What what why don't want fuel to Jack White's guitar playing? One might describe Jack White's guitar playing as red hot or white hot. Or if you're nasty, perhaps even shit hot.

On this first white stripes album, I also really dig this song called "Screw Driver."

Where in Jack White yelps, I got a little feeling going now 11 times in a row. And he does. On their debut album, the white stripes cover Bob Dylan and Robert Johnson. They cover the blues standard St. James in firmery blues made famous by Louis Armstrong and Betty Boop. The white stripes song "Cannon" quotes from the sonhouse song "John the Revelator." Just for fun, here's a photo of blues legend's sonhouse wearing red white and black. A lot of

flagrantly doodly energy on this first record. Yes, but even if you don't get much of Meg White singing

voice at first, her presence is felt. The harmoniousness and the dissonance of her connection with

“Jack White is felt. And that connection is essential. Irreplaceable, non-negotiable. Post-white”

stripes, Jack has started a handful of other cool bands with flashier and more conventional drummers. And he's enjoyed a robust solo career as well, but the white stripes stand alone. The white stripes tower over everyone and they wouldn't be half as impressive. Were it not for Meg White not trying to impress anyone at all? Also, I don't want to be obnoxious and say that

to even hear clips from the white stripes live now. Man, I try to live. I'm going to talk about you still. Here we have the white stripes on their 2004 concert length live DVD under black pool lights recorded indeed in the English seaside town of Blackpool. The white stripes are doing a robust little seven-minute

“shit-hot micromedley of the sonhouse songs, death letter and grinning in your face. You have to”

strain your ears to hear Meg singing here, and that's how she likes it. Jack White on stage has two microphones. You can sing facing the crowd like a normal singer in a normal rock band, or he can sing into a microphone planted right next to Meg's drum kit, so he can sing right

into Meg's face, and she can sing right into his. It's such a simple idea, the second microphone,

but if the white stripes hate you just right, they can be a life-altering experience live. Watching these two quote unquote siblings sing, no matter how you try to live, they're going to talk about you still directly at each other. This conspiracy of two, but just like that garbage can they live in, it's a conspiracy of two that encompasses the whole world. All right, so look, Meg and Jack White get married in 1996. They debut live as the white

stripes in 1997. They released two singles in 1998. They put out their first album in 1999.

They get divorced officially, legally, in the year 2000. They become super-balkers, famous rock stars very soon thereafter. In all that time, they publicly insist that they're brother and sister. And there are three possible ways this could have gone in terms of the listening public. One, we buy it. We all believe their brother and sister. That ain't happening. Two, we don't buy it. We emphatically reject the idea that their brother and sister, because that's

you know, objectively false. But that ain't happening either. What happens is three. We all know there are divorced married couple, but we all at least subconsciously pretend to continue to believe that their brother and sister, so long as they keep pretending to be brother and sister. We join the

“white stripes and their conspiracy against us. Because of the lies appealed to us in a cool essential”

rock and roll mythology sort of way. And our reward for pretending to believe them is six straight

monster rock and roll albums. The lies immensely profitable for everybody. The second white

stripes album comes out in 2000 and is called "Destile." This song is called "You're Pretty Good Looking," a parenthesis for a girl, closed parenthesis. And yeah, that's a perfect pop song hook right there. This will still be a perfect pop song long after the year 25, 25. Yeah, this album is called this style named for the Dutch abstract art movement that started in 1917. D-E-S-T-I-J-L. The album cover. Red, white, and black, of course, is once again excellent, especially because it looks like

Jack is photobombing Meg. Meg looks like she's in a rock band and Jack looks like a janitor

“skulking around behind a rock band. This is the first white stripes album I ever heard. I remember”

weirdly vividly. I'm driving around Columbus, Ohio with the girl I was dating at the time and her cool younger brother is in the back seat. And he puts on this album. And I spend the whole drive super conscious of his reaction to my reaction. I ever have this experience. Someone cooler than you watching you listen to something cool. And you're worried you don't look cool enough while you absorb the records coolness. We get to track two called Hello Operator. And we get to Meg's

very curious what the other two people in the car are making of it. The white stripes are deceptively childlike masters of dynamics. They're reveling in and that's strategic withholding of noise. These often super tiny little pockets of near silence. The split

second caught breath before the garbage can cacophony resumes. You know the first white stripes song

I ever truly loved. And I truly love this song. The very first time I heard it. And that car with those two people little bird. And my reaction. My series of reactions to this song little bird in real time.

“Let's see. I think this is a phenomenal slide guitar riff that sounds like it's 80 years old. And”

then I hear the snorting in the car at the childlike rhyming of if you give me a look, I'm gonna get the book. And I want to preach the words, I'm gonna preach to birds. And I am conscious as I hear this snorting in the car that some of the snorting is mine. And then we get to this

next part. The split second caught breath transition between the verse and the instrumental break.

The slide guitar just hangs there for just an instant. Like somebody threw a water balloon straight

“up. And we all watched it arc through the sky and hang in the air and then fall back to earth.”

And then jack and beg both crash back in. And as ludicrous as this song little bird immediately sounds to me. And it's pure knuckle headed simplicity. It sounds absolutely magical too. And then jack white sings the line. When I get you home, this is how it goes. And I immediately think, holy shit, that is the ronciest line I have ever heard in a rock and roll song in my whole entire life.

The split second caught breath there when the slide guitar hangs in the air right before the drums

“crash back in. It's even cooler when jack white goes ah right when the drums crash back in.”

This record to style has other excellent songs. Including one called your southern can is mine where megg sings a little bit. But the first three songs are a many symphony to me. And little bird is an all timer. Maybe partly because of the brother and sister thing, because the white stripes are so brazenly playing characters. They're more or less pretended to be children. They're playing make believe. All that artifice might make it hard to connect with jack white lyrically. You don't know

if what he's saying means anything. And that's fine. You don't have to believe a rock star to worship them. But for the record, the white stripes put out hello operator, the megg white many drum solos song as a single. And the b side is a cover of dolly partens jolene. And the white stripes do jolene a lot live. And this is as sincere and impassioned and convincing as jack white has ever sounded in his life. That's the white stripes live on the under black pool lights DVD. What does

it mean? That jack white sounds the most sincere and impassioned and convincing. When he's singing, I'm begging of you. Please don't take my man into a special microphone pointed directly at his x-wife slash sister slash drummer. It means these people are super bonkers famous rock stars. Now you know my single favorite line in a white stripe song. This one's awfully convincing too.

out comes out in 2001 and is called white blood cells. On the cover Megan Jack, wearing red and white,

“are accosted by menacing paparazzi type figures dressed head to toe in black. It's a metaphor.”

It's barely a metaphor. That song is called Dead Leaves and The Dirty Ground, really fantastic dynamics in this song as well. The line and every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me and then the little squeal of feedback and then the drums kick in and

the guitar goes burn, burn, burn, burn. That's the good shit. Incredible. The white blood cells

out and comes out in July 2001. The same month is this it by the strokes comes out in Australia. The garage rock revival is a foot. Rock is back, according to Rolling Stone. The hives and the

“vines and yeah, yeah, yeah, as are all about to get huge as well. And yeah, despite being”

and fatally singular and hyper-local and weird as hell, the white stripes have inadvertently stumbled into a globe spanning, era-defining, cultural rock and roll zeitgeist. And that's nice. Also, young wacky genius film authors like Michelle Gondri are making high-concept music videos now and later compiling those videos onto cool DVDs. And that zeitgeist is going to pay off for the white stripes as well.

Does it bother me at all that Michelle Gondri's Lego-based rad video for fell in love with a

“girl also has the color's yellow black and blue in it? Not really. The only red white and black”

deal is not my deal. Fell in love with the girl features Jack White's voice at its squeakiest. Fell in love with the girl sounds like it's being played for you over the phone from a foreign country. Fell in love with the girl sounds like you and the white stripes are all crammed inside a regular sized garbage can. This band rules, man. And what the white blood cells album emphasizes is that this band's got range. Musical range and also tremendous emotional range.

If you regard the white stripes as a band that feels and conveys normal human emotions. Here we have we're going to be friends. The apotheosis of the impossibly tender usually acoustic disarmingly sweet and extra extra childlike facet of the white stripes. Featuring a video in which Meg White just sleeps on a couch. It turns out rockstardom is not that complicated. Shout out Napoleon Dynamite. It's the repeated line teacher marks our height against the wall that really

gets me here. The implication that you are watching the white stripes grow up before your eyes. I'll tell you flat out though that my favorite song on white blood cells is called

I'm finding it harder to be a gentleman because I love that title. And also my second favorite

moment and the whole white stripes canon is the pause. Right here midway between the line have a doctor come and visit us and tell us which one is sane. The caught breath here. The intensified snarl and jackwhites voice that you can feel before you hear it. The exaggerated foot tapping of Meg's kick drum. This single line is a small masterpiece of dramatic tension. These ten seconds are all the white stripes really needed to get into the rock and roll hall of fame.

But that's only my second favorite span of ten seconds in a white stripe song. My all-time

favorite span of ten seconds in a white stripe song appears on their fourth album, which is released

This isn't my favorite part yet. Ball and Biscuit is a seven minute bonkers garage blues song

“that starts with jackwhite declaring that he's the seventh son. And yeah is it weird if I'm”

bummed out to learn that jackwhite is actually the seventh son in his family. It really disappoints me that he's not lying in this song. I liked this song just slightly better when I thought he was lying. Is that weird? Half of Ball and Biscuit consists of these chill yet sassy 12 bar blues verses. And the other half is jackwhite playing guitar solos that I would characterize as red hot, white hot, and shit hot slippery. I will also continue to characterize jackwhites

guitar style as slippery. I love the way jackwhite says yeah right before he plays a lot of slippery

“shit hot guitar. Those are the two parts in ball and biscuit. There's the relatively quiet”

verses to this song where jackwhite calmly says stuff like read it in the newspapers, ask your girlfriends and see if they know I love that line. And then there's the parts where jackwhite plays insanely loud, braiding, ultra distorted shit hot guitar. And my all-time favorite 10 seconds and the whole white stripes catalog is a transition between those two parts. You play me just this part of Ball and Biscuit and I can bench press a car. It's the way jack mumbles yeah I'm gonna

think of one or two things to say about it slightly off mic as the guitar revs up like burn on on on on on on and then the explosion. That's as good as it gets. I listen to ball and biscuit and I feel like I can juggle five forward toruses. One time I interviewed for a job at Google the Google Google dot com. I forgot what the job was but I was not remotely qualified and thusly I was a no danger of getting this job. I read all this stuff before hand about how

scary and intimidating interviews at Google are like they ask you all kinds of abstract genius programmer, galaxy brain questions like why are manhole covers round and how many quarters can you fit into an army helicopter and whatnot. So I do my research and I show up for my Google

“interview in a shirt and tie. That's how solid my Google Intel was. That's how well I read the room.”

Everyone around me is a genius wearing footy pajamas and it turns out the only question they ask me is why are you wearing a tie and I'm like I don't I'd see you later end of interview but I'll tell you what. I'll tell you my one triumphant moment from this whole experience. I fly in a northern California into the San Francisco airport. I get a rental car. I get into my rental

car. I like the third floor of an airport parking garage and I turn the ignition and the car

radio set to a rock and roll station with the volume way up and the second the car turns on. There it is. And dude, I could have bench pressed my rental car while I was driving it. I felt in invincible. I felt like I had summoned this song with the awesome power of my mind. Shoutout live 105 out of San Francisco. I'm pretty sure that was the radio station and I said

out loud. I'm going to fucking nail this and I threw my rental car into gear and I drove it straight

off the third floor of the parking garage and I flew all the way to Google's campus like back

to the future and I put on a tie and I bifed the bejesus out of that interview. Have we ever figured out what it is exactly about this riff? This specific haunting skein of notes. Of all the red, crazy white hot shit Jack White has ever played on his guitar. Why is Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum,

but add Meg White's kick drum. Let's add Meg White exasperatedly tapping her foot. Crucial detail.

“You don't hear enough about Meg's part of 7 Nation Army.”

And you don't hear enough about Meg's part of 7 Nation Army because nowadays you don't really hear any part of 7 Nation Army other than Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, except now it goes, oh, and it sounds like this. That's from a Michigan Notre Dame college football game in 2011. I live in Columbus, Ohio and some Ohio State fans hate Michigan so much that they will kill you for even using the letter M

in written correspondence but I'm pretty sure Michigan did this first so there's thousands of videos like this. Every stadium does this now. Every sport. Oh, there was a brief period. A brief period that I do believe lasted years when 7 Nation Army was just another great white stripe song. A modest hit white stripe song. This is the first white stripes song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and it peaked that number 76. That's it. 7 Nation

Army was not always ginormous. You ubiquitous, inevitable. But here in 2026, 7 Nation Army has 2.1

billion Spotify plays, which is nearly 1.8 billion more plays than the next most played white stripe song fell in love with a girl with 318 million and it's tempting at first to react by attempting to honor by attempting to rescue the rest of 7 Nation Army, meaning the rest of the song after the first 8 seconds. I respect the central lyrical image here. The petulant and yes, very childlike declaration, a 7 Nation Army couldn't hold me back. But my personal favorite line

is a tie. Here you pick. You got two choices. That's your first choice. I'm going to which at all. Why is he going there? What's he doing there? I got no idea. It's way too late in the game for me to actually figure out what this song is about. Here's your other choice for the best line.

“That ain't what you want to hear, but that's what I'll do. What's he doing? What's he going to”

do? Why don't you want to hear it? It doesn't matter. It's a great line regardless. Let's preserve the mistake. In interviews now, Jack White gets asked a lot about 7 Nation Army, about how he feels about the complete global stadium chant takeover of 7 Nation Army. The way you hear, at every sporting event anywhere in the world now, even if usually that's the only part of the song you hear, and Jack inevitably responds to these questions with a remarkably non-rock star level

of humility. It's not mine anymore. I mean, it becomes folk music when things like that happen, it becomes something that the more people don't know where it came from, the happier I am, you know, more just becomes, yeah, ubiquitous. I'm sure many people are chanting the melody, have no idea what the song is or where it came from or why or whatever. It doesn't matter anymore.

And that's just amazing. That's Jack White and the Conan O'Brien needs a friend podcast. In 2022,

“I don't know why Jack's hair is the color of berry blue, cool aid in this clip. What is that?”

Turquoise? It's nice. The dude wore nothing but red, white, or black for like 15 years. Let's let him cook. This is what Jack says all the time now. 7 Nation Army is a folk song now. It's public domain. It's not his song anymore. And incredibly, it's mostly not a song with words anymore. Talking to the Texas music publication, Buddy Magazine, and 2025, Jack says quote, "What's interesting to me about it is when people saying queens, we will rock you at a stadium,

they're chanting the words we will rock you in English, but they're chanting the melody of 7 Nation Army, they're chanting a melody. When do you hear people chanting a melody? That's very

it's magical, but it's also absolutely confounding. If you happen to live through the white

“stripes phenomenon in real time, I read hundreds of thousands of words about Jack and Meg in music”

magazines and on the internet. In the 2000s, the white stripes were colossal and fascinating and utterly baffling. Why are they still pretending to be brother and sister? Why am I still pretending to believe it? And most importantly, tell me what is going on here exactly. I'm through the world, it's no longer there is no longer there is no more. Okay, after the elephant album, the white stripes put out two more red and increasingly weird records.

Get behind me Satan in 2005, Ikki Thump in 2007. In 2009, the white stripes star in a full-length documentary called "Under Great White Northern Lights." Directed by Emmett Maloy and

“chronicling the band's whimsical and delightful 2007 tour of Canada, the movies in black and white,”

obviously. This is how the movie ends. Meg and Jack sitting at a piano. Jack singing a white stripe song called "White Moon." He's still rhyming bird with word. I respected. And Meg just sits next to Jack silently, crying. End of movie. Also, end of band pretty much. Shortly after this footage is shot, the white stripes cancel the rest of their tour. Publicly announcing, quote, "Meg white is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel

at this time." End quote. They finally announced their breakup in 2011. With a statement reading

in part, "It is for a myriad of reasons, but mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way." End quote. Jack goes on to make a bunch of records with a bunch of different people. Meg disappears. In 2025, the white stripes are inducted into the rock and roll Hall of Fame. Jack gives a lovely gracious speech. Meg ain't there. Jack thanked his sister and reads her a poem he wrote. And it trips me out to think about how much time I spent. Not so long ago,

trying to figure out why Meg was crying in that scene. Trying to decipher the precise personal

dynamic between these two people. And of course, I really don't want to know the truth and I never did.

I've always preferred the lie, the mythology. Sometimes I worry that seven nation army is eventually going to crowd out everything else the white stripes ever did. That one day, we'll all completely forget where and who seven nation army came from. But maybe that is amazing and beautiful and ideal. Maybe that's the goal. Maybe that's the highest compliment a piece of music can ever receive. That one day you wake up and it just doesn't feel like a song that one person wrote.

We are so blessed to be joined once again by Chuck Klosterman, the best to ever do it. In my opinion, Chuck's latest book is called "Football." Chuck, thank you so much for being here. Well, thanks for having me on. I don't know if I would say you're blessed, but okay.

“I think that is the compliment. I guess we'll find out. Yes.”

Okay, so when you first heard the white stripes, you know, in the late '90s, with the early 2000s, did they make sense in the context of like the new rock revolution, you know, the strokes and the hives, you know, all of that going on? Did the white stripes sort of fit into that

for you or were they always their own singular weird thing? I didn't connect those two sort of

worlds until I started working at Spin. When I first heard the white stripes that seemed very different from what was happening with like, say the strokes or the hives, as you say, like those bands do more, I mean, we're to say this about the strokes, but like in some ways more polished, like it's like what was the the white stripes seeing more you know, they were obviously been Western, but also kind of like kind of scratchier and just a different thing. I mean, it gets now

to put them all kind of together under the same umbrella, but that's not what I thought at first.

Sure. And you, of course, wrote a cover story for Spin, you know, I think in 2002, and I just sort of wondering, like, what is it like to be in a room with these two people in a

“tape recorder, right? Are they really easy to interview? Are they very difficult? Are they intimidating?”

Are they more laid back than you expect? Like, what is just the vibe being in a room with these two people? Well, I wouldn't put them on the easy edge of the spectrum, because we don't many doesn't really talk at all. I mean, as we're going to drive to answer them as briefly as possible. And Jack, you know, really interesting and, you know, it's intelligent, but, you know, he has at least at the time, he had this sort of interesting amount of the court is the

word. I suppose some people might say the same thing about me, which is that if you ever ask him a question,

his first reaction is to always start by saying not really. The first thing I would love

the question is, like, hmm, right? I was asking him about the song, a little bird. Okay, the song that was you know, the song. And yeah, and, and I sort of said, like, well, you know, it really sounds like, like, let's definitely almost agree, like a Jimmy Page story, whatever, he made a thing, was to say, like, oh, no, that had nothing to do with it. I wasn't really influenced by what's up, like, all the back of his conscience, we're trying to go against what

let's definitely done. And almost, later, if I had asked the question differently, if I had said, like, oh, you know, the kind of, you know, reminds me of Led Zeppelin, but of course, that's not possible, you know, he would have been like, absolutely was. That was me. He, all his sense of the journalist is

always that the guy is trying to fuck his life up. He's really, it's very defensive. Or, you know,

because this was 20 years ago, he might be totally different now. But he just, he seemed to naturally want to disagree with any assertion about his group. He doesn't say, he always seemed to me very combative, just reading the interviews just the back and forth. It just seemed very strained and very difficult. Like, do you personally enjoy that kind of interview, like, a combative, like, trying to get something out of somebody who doesn't want to give it to you? Is that like a

challenge that you enjoy just as an interviewer? Well, when I was younger, I think I did. I don't think I wouldn't know. I mean, it's just, I, I, I, I think of these things differently, where I used to really believe that it was important to have like creative tension with the person you were interviewing with. And because I kind of come out of a newspaper background where that's normal,

“now I don't know if I agree with that as much. I feel like you have to be more responsive to kind”

of the persona or vibe or energy that the other person is bringing. All that, and Matt, maybe would have been for with them, particularly that may have been better. But I, I mean, I, you know, it was, it was still, that was still during the period where sort of like the mythology they had created, created was kind of falling apart now. I mean, they were, or at least falling apart, like a weird way to say it because it almost makes it sound like, like, you know, they're,

they were kind of collapsing at self. It was just like they had, I think what had happened like a lot of bands that they had sort of began with this idea that we kind of create this a liar that that we're being a brother, sister, or whatever, and we're really weird and all these things. And it will be able to exist sort of in its own world because the world is going to stay small. And then

it was rapidly getting bigger. I think, you know, when I did the cover story, it was the first time

they had done the cover story for like a major magazine. I mean, they then the cover of the theater, I guess, and you count that. But like this was the kind of first time that was going on.

“So I think that was maybe to them also, like it was meaningful for them. I remember they're being”

like a small controversy after the issue came out for reasons that are completely unknown. I don't know why we did this. The cover from the magazine, there's a monkey on Jacklight's shoulder. Which of course, justifiably, I didn't know they were doing this, but just to show it. I think that he thought that we were implying that he was on heroin, and that this was the monkey on his backer. Oh my god. Well, I can't think of any other reason why there would be a monkey there.

Although at the same time, he must have recognized there was a monkey there during the shoot. So I buy it, but that's I do recall that being an issue after it came out. So they were doing a photo shoot, and the photographer was like, hey, we got this monkey. Do you mind posing with the monkey, and he did it, but then after we got the connotation. It wasn't completely misremembering this. I was there was a monkey. The cover, you know, yeah.

Wow. Okay. I'm going to have to investigate that I do not remember the monkey at all,

There is a very funny part of that interview where you are like, you're trying to get him to answer the question like, why are you pretending to be brother and sister? And there's this very entertaining back and forth. And as you say, like, he's very combative and dismissive of the question, but like, as you're asking them, why are you pretending to be brother and sister? Do you know the answer? Do you sort of understand that this is like a fairly ingenious sort of backstory lie that's

going to create a lot of interest in them? Like, are you asking a question there that you already know the answer? Well, I think everyone knew what's there. And then plus it was strange in the sense that the way Maggie used to work. You know, I was doing this interview and you know,

it was, it would be like over a month before it would come out. Anyways, so like, you're always

dealing with the past in the present. But it was a very first very first time that the white drugs were in spin to my knowledge was prior to this when I was still living in Akron. And it was like a small story, like just kind of a front of the magazine story about them. And I think that directly said like they were brother and sister because at the time it was like, well, the press

“release as it just put it in there. It's not the only thing, you know. I don't think that there”

was certainly any sense that this band was going to become famous enough that something like that would somehow come back to be, I kind of hot them. I'm not sure really hot in them. I think people did find it somewhat charming. But there was all these, you know, you know, it almost immediately is replaced by like a different question. So they're not brother and sister, but they're divorced and they're working together. And he took her name and there was just like the other one there. So it

wasn't as though the the the the the the the the the the the the first question is gone and there's like six more new questions in place of it. Exactly. Yeah. And as you've mentioned, like Meg does not talk, you know, she does not really answer even direct questions like being so close to them like did that give you any insight into the Jack and Meg dynamic both offstage and on. I think that they're did not dynamic is pretty mysterious still. I, I, I, I, I, there was no sense that she really enjoyed

me and this band. I'm not saying it. It was no sense of it though. Like she didn't seem but she didn't use didn't take advantage of it in any way. Like she didn't do comedies or celebrity because of it, she seemed to to like almost like receive more. I know at one point I remember there was like a weird like I guess it was like then the early there was just a woman who looked like her that was sort of in this weird sex tape. And that went around and it wasn't her but it was exactly

I've been going on, you know, and it was she, I think she's like what did I get into? It was also like a complete sense that it's like this is his fan and like he caught her play drums to do this and these are his ideas and it didn't really seem like she had like her role in this band was

incredibly critical and yet she didn't seem to have a lot of agency and an either. You know what I'm

saying? It's like like she's really important but I don't think there was ever any kind of belief

“that well I bet they're doing this now because Meg wants it but that's how that's not really how it”

works, you know? Like when she would play live she seemed relatively happy. She looked very cool when she was playing live and there's a lot of people up there so of course that's going to move the drummer into a higher profile position than normal and the way the stage was aligned and kind of saw her in profile. As far as the dynamic between them I would say y'all got hanging out with them to not give you a sense like oh like I like if if someone had come up to me instead like

do you think they're closer than people perceived or do you think that there's you know more distance. I would be like I don't know. They did not give that indication. I would have maybe liked to interview them separately. But we're not really willing to do that. They didn't want to do that you know and it was you couldn't really force them like they're not a band you could force to do something. You couldn't you know no. You know I've read plenty of Jack interviews where he

“talks about how important mega and keeping in mind that he disagrees with the premise of any”

question he's asked. Like I've said he says over and over again like mega is incredibly important. Her ideas, her taste, she's very exacting. She's not going to do just anything in terms of like

songwriting in terms of like the decisions the band makes. Like Jack is always very careful to say like

no mega is absolutely crucial. You know her personality is driving this band every bit as much as I am. I mean that's what I mean. I don't know if he believes that I totally understand why he would say that.

it could work. But if it but you know it is interesting that he has male of good music since

“being with the wife stripes none of it is as good as the wife stripes material for an entire record.”

You'll be sure of it in pieces. Like if you put a single single's collection of like the work he has done it's very, very good. But one striped records or for a whole variety of reasons. Or like kind of more compelling there's just something really you know people use words like chemistry and they're kind of meaningless. But that is there's real chemistry there you know and the way they interact was you know the fact that you knew nothing about with their relationship

their interior relationship actually was like it sort of made every small little detail when they would look at each other a bigger deal. Right right you're trying to you're trying to read them close read them for clues. You know it is getting something that might not be there but maybe it is there but yeah you're just you're trying so hard to figure out the deal with these people like that

“always colored the way that I heard the music you know it was always even the simplest song”

you know lyrically or musically or just directly like there's something mysterious about it just because it's these two incredibly mysterious people who are making it like we're going to be friends you know it's not a song that needs to be decoded but you can't help or I can't help but like try and view it through the prism of what this might say about the Megan Jack relationship you know what I mean

yeah I guess but yeah I guess I always assumed that I was never going to learn anything about

their actual relationship through their music because the only people the way strives seem to be interested in are small children and the elder ones. Everything that they do is like it's like gives our real and true and authentic and then old people live through what was what mattered most it's like they just don't care and the people they care about least were like people their age the people of the age listening to their music guys you know so so I never like there's

I I'm trying to think of the situation where like I listened to a white striped song

“but you say like say like the hardest button to but I think in a lot of bands you would be like oh”

I wonder if he's talking about me I never thought of that family like I know yeah I I

you think there was ever a time where I heard something and I was like this is the skeleton key to unlock this relationship you know it's I they didn't really operate in that way even a lot of ways it was like they were a low-drama band but they that that they did like the anything that was sort of like a controversial about them was kind of projected upon them it didn't seem like a lot of things were coming from them that created this sense of

sort of like like I'm trying to I mean can you think of anything where it was like you suspected that something that came like from the white striped camp was like this is like a strategic play or something or this is a way to move them like it into a higher profile position I didn't think that I didn't think that either like the thing I thought of immediately is when he beat the crap out of the Von Bondes guy right you know like apart from being sort of

generally pugnacious in interviews and sort of feuding with the black keys and all this kind of thing I do think they were relatively low-drama with the noted exception of like visceral ugly bar fight that was him that really yeah that's true yeah I guess yes I suppose beating a guy up in public it's not really qualified to be low-drama a bitch but you know it wasn't it wasn't just though like that happened because the guy had a weird relationship

with me then it wasn't like it wasn't though like when the idea that the white stripes were going to stop playing together I don't think people I didn't think it was like oh I guess this relationship is just got too difficult to to sustain or whatever it's like they just sort of made a decision to do it you know and it's like so like I guess at you right it's I mean I see when I said that we're kind of low-drama you kind of to be weird I guess he is sort of a dramatic

person but the band's yes yeah no I agree completely with that I know we'll put that in the Jack White solo category the bar fight is canonically a Jack White solo situation so I yeah I agree

with that I this sort of brings us to seven nation army right I I I wonder first of all the first time

you heard this song the first time you heard that riff did you have any inkling that this was going to be the one like this was going to be you know far and away now they're big a song like this is their legacy did you have any sense coming off seven nation army in real time

sounded like right it was like you're implemented so the initial thinking was that well either he's

playing bass there's gonna be a third member of the band hour or it also then then you know it

then it was sort of like okay so now so there was kind of this interesting coolness of just having these three things just like voice drums guitar okay now they could you know I've made a conventional loop at a bass play up you know a bassist or over bass playing well in terms of it's not it's not bass it's a guitar and it's playing it through this special way but then it was like why not these are bass like you like you wanted to something that sounds like a bass but he wanted to prove you

don't need a bass to do it we know those are the main things I remember thinking about that song when it was you know they were just like you know it was it was I thought you know a pretty

“you're a good race it was kind of a heavier song and I think that there were a lot of people who all you know”

the white strikes materials kind of split between like they're kind of heavy rock and material and things that seem like really fragile and like sort of kind of drifting into almost country music and stuff like

that so I think people were always happy when there was like a harder rock and song like that you know even

though the tempo was not that fast but yeah right well now that you've got you've got a whole book called football you know about the larger culture and the future of football and seven nation army is a football song it's a sports culture song broadly it's a jock jam as we used to say and I'm curious like how do you think it changes the song you know now that it's been absorbed into the football model if changes of the song I mean I I'm not I don't know if it does it I think just kind of just businesses

the song from you know it's sort of you know original existence or not what's this other thing obviously it means this other thing and but again you know it's not the song that has been adopted by like all these soccer programs it's just this riff okay so it's like it's kind of like the smoke on the water rips or whatever like the and rips it's it's like these things are familiar but those even are kind of voiced from the song you know it's like obviously

literally there's no connection between what the song is about and why people like to chant it at you know Penn State football games or whatever it's the ability to sort of replicate the riff

“verbally and it's real familiar and simple and and so I mean I I think it would be interesting”

of course for like check why it must be a very interesting thing you know but I don't know if like it's I mean it can only be good for the song that I mean it's hard to look at that and be like you know it would be one thing if someone wrote you know a real say a real personal song about something that had happened to them in their life that was a transformative event and it has like sort of maybe a personal meaning and a political meaning and all these things and then it was

suddenly became like you know the theme song like for the you know for the NBA or whatever then it would be like well it's maybe if cheap in the message but this isn't like that I mean like so if I love the song is his like when he was seven years old and misinterpreting the phrase Salvation Army right like you know so so the very core of the meaning can't you can't like deconstruct a song whose premise is that we once didn't understand what this phrase meant to

whatever yeah because when Jack White is interviewed about it now like he says like it feels like folk music now it doesn't feel like our song anymore and I'm cognizant of the fact that people when people hear it lots of people don't know it's our song lots of people don't know it's a song out there's just a humility and a letting go of control that I did not associate with Jack White

in the era when he was being interviewed by spin magazine you know what I'm saying like he always

seemed he's let go of this song in a way that is uncharacteristic of him or at my understanding of him like just the idea of having control of everything having control of your image really caring about how you're being written about and being talked about like that it's just there's a cool dissonance for me and now disson he wrote being condensed to a seven second riff and just being spread out into a world that may not even know it's a white stripe song at all it's just like it's

an odd sort of journey for the song to take where it's not really his song anymore in his view but in a way that my reflect just his maturation process because I'm not just for him or just for

“musicians I think it's almost for all artistic people that when you are younger you do sort of want”

to control not just the music you make or the art you make but you want to control the reception of it too and that changes over time one time I was interviewing Steven King he was being like

booksellers association somehow I'm not kidding me but yeah so so in your post sure okay so

“you know I'm kind of interviewing him on stage you would ever know how I got to do this but I've”

doing it and at one point I asked him a question like you know if you could have like one aspect of something you wrote sort of live on or whatever if it's like if it's a future there was only one understanding of your work you know what would be and what he said was something that is really

stuck with me which is that he first talking about you know the urban legend of like the the guy

with the hook hand and that the couple is out driving their car and like they didn't like they they find out yes yes like no one knows who wrote that story no one knows who they were that came from and he said that his sort of dream would be to have something he writes become that kind of story that in some future world that there is like something that he came up with is now something that has no author in a way it's just sort of understood by everyone like my favorite short story is like

the lady and the tiger okay which is something that you know you've read like an eighth or ninth grade I'm sure many people listen to this podcast or remember reading that story he's go nobody remembers the guy who wrote that was getting Frank stopped it right but like it's this but he's this short little story that this guy did that will kind of just sort of almost as a placeholder for unclear endings to stories and he is removed from it now he came up with it and now it just exists to everyone

and that has kind of happened with this song or songs of this nature and maybe a young person you know I remember Prince for example Prince hated when people covered his songs but I would be strange to be even if he had given the rights it would be hated I wonder if he had grown

“older if he might have changed his deal on this I think that maybe there was a time in his life”

a Jack White would have somehow been annoyed that his song was being like reappropriated for this other thing culture that he doesn't relate to a writer but it's different now now I think he probably is a more mature understanding of how these things work yeah you've talked about the idea of songs that will endure beyond the artist you know and that it's a short list you know like staring at heaven all I want for Christmas is you and like seven nation army is in that category

are there any other songs you can think of that are in that category that are contemporary or after the white stripes like what is a song have to do to endure beyond the artist and like how rare is that I mean I think it is pretty rare I mean there are a lot of canonical artists we don't have that like like it is it is um it is hard to imagine say in the future that there will ever be Madonna song that is remembered more than Madonna her stuff like she is right the huge songs

but they will always be the or perished swift for example great maybe the clears are never

right now where it's impossible to imagine her having any of her songs be more meaningful that her existence you know I when you said I mean when you said contemporary are you do you really mean contemporary like like within the last five or ten years because that's becoming more and more difficult I think I mean the chances that happening are actually probably going down oh of course they are yes so I mean anybody after the white stripes or during the white stripes like obviously the

strokes don't have a song like anything in the twenty first century let's say well I mean a song like calling maybe possibly because it could be well what always has to happen with this is the song

has to end up being taking on the meaning of a second thing like okay this white stripes example

now it's this other thing okay it's it's um we're like you know let that that there it's very easy to imagine a young person who is familiar with that and doesn't even know it's a song that was on the rockfire right it just takes it's a chant you know it's in from the past but a musical chant

“it's like a I mean maybe in a sense that's why when you say like you're surprised that that”

he seems kind of open to this I mean maybe he recognizes the chant they know he sees that kind of the way the world is changing and that it is increasingly unlikely that this will happen that that you can have a song that will like but like matter more than the person who who creates it which if you really get down to it probably is the fundamental goal right to you know I mean for anyone making anything it's like like here you you you couldn't create something and hope that it

brings attention to yourself but I think if you're really an artist you're hoping the thing you create kind of is is is greater than yourself I mean that's why for the song has more value than just your celebrity you know right just to wrap up you sort of said you know this is all of

seeing and this is and you know this metric doesn't work for everybody but just looking at Spotify plays

“like 7 Asian Army has like 2 billion plus you know and the next one down you know I think fell in”

love with a girl has like 300 million like it there's just such a huge gap now between 7 Asian

Army and everything else and I just wonder is it even slightly destabilizing to the rest of the white stripes catalog when one song gets so big is there like a zero something where we don't pay enough attention we don't appreciate enough all the other white stripes songs all the records you know everything else they've done as 7 Asian Army gets bigger and bigger or does is it just a rising tide lived so I mean you're you're completely right that will I mean destabilizing is a great

word to use for it you know as as the years go by and if someone brings up say thin Lizzy the

one that they will bring up anything else sort of the boys are back and town gets smaller and

“smaller and smaller to the point where it would be I think that it will become difficult for people”

to even sort of imagine them man having other songs you know and like but they'll know that they're the songs they want to know they are for the white stripes I mean okay this is true but like you know you mentioned you know you mentioned earlier with the strokes we use that sort of the example of a hives what have they done what have they created that will put them in this position you know where the conversation can even happen where someone's like well will this song change the way

the strokes I remember or will this song change the way that you remember I don't know if they have any songs that could do that like they have like the strokes it was sound that could do that like the sound of the book yeah but that's it but if you're talking about a look then you're really talking about things outside of music right right you know it's so so is like if if it were to happen that the that they're that that this song that seven Asian army becomes

like the totality of the white stripes Marin that will still probably put them ahead of 99.9% of their peers you know but they will actually nothing that that if somebody is just interested enough in the song to reinvestigate what they do you know or you know so I like I I don't do I mean there wasn't you know if if it was in the past of this if we were still like in the 90s I do think that there would be this idea that maybe like oh this is a problem though right

it's a problem it's a selling out fake kind but it's like a sell to get your will but you didn't even do it exactly you mean the thing with it and it was like you were your you know your this thing

“that you did is now sort of being taken from you. Oh I did yes and I think that is like culture”

sort of has been just splintered so much so I don't I don't think that fear exists in the same way I also don't think that it is you know because we're sort of albums matter less now and singles matter more I mean if if the entire elephant record had become this thing like you know that that people just kept like the whole thing mattered to people going forward ever that that might be a little different but you know I I think that in some ways as I was like the best possible outcome

yeah sure also the money is probably pretty good so that's that will suit any legacy also I mean it I bearably yeah I don't think you know you don't get a royalty if people chant it a soccer stadium yeah I don't know how that works but I I'm I'm sure he's doing all right for him so yeah yeah that's being what it is like are the songwriter credits on what stretch record are these 50 50 or he get them all I mean that's a very good question that's a very good

question I don't know that off hands I don't I don't know that off hand I mean certainly lyrically I don't think I think at a bare minimum it would say music jack and mag lyrics jack for the vast majority at least but that's I'm gonna I need to look this up now but I'm going to guess it's just him I think it's possibly just him and certainly lyrically it's just him but

I don't know that for fact it's also you know the royalties on stuff like this is always confusing like

you know you'll see something it'll be like all music by band hailing and then you'll find out that contract really that's not how it is at all of course he's all right so it like it

but he obviously like if she needed money it would be extremely easy for her jack to play Coachella or do any of these things you know that she doesn't seem to need that right she doesn't seem to have any like they're they're they're feeling cool with them but like neither one of them ever expresses a desire to like reform this idea and I'm sure it would probably happen at some point

but it is it's never like this thing hanging around the way it is would say like the myths are like

what it was with real place my understanding of it is he he sort of made it clear without throwing her under the bus that it's her that she doesn't want to do it anymore and he respects that like I I thought they would have reunited by now I thought the Coachella thing would have happened they were inducted in the rock and roll hall of fame you know like and that's like a corny thing maybe they played here he showed up I don't know if he played but he showed up gave an

“acceptance speech thank mag she went nowhere near it she did not go I don't I think if they were”

going to reform they would have done it by now and I think it's her decision ultimately to not do it

and he's basically I always got the vibe from him that he would have kept the band going you know

and he would have reunited by now if she wanted to but it's her decision and she won't well it would have been you know it's it's I hear again I don't know the answer to this but it's easy to imagine the early stages of this where it's like we should do this I think it's interesting the way the two of us are together I know we're not married but like you know this kind of the simple drumming the riffing that you're doing these lyrics you know and then she'd be

like well okay it's like you know we'll play these small clubs here and there and I just don't want to be like a hassle and they'd be like I don't know it won't be a hassle no it's just like it would have just increasingly become a hassle over time great big hassle yeah yeah I get it but what else it was interesting is it would be like you know I always wonder what would happen I have Jack White you know because he has these different incarnations you know we'll be with

a rocket tours they'll do it like like why did he came out with like just a drummer but it

“wasn't hurt I wonder what the reaction beat yeah I don't know if people I think people would”

be kind of into that and kind of revolt by that like there's a huge warm feeling toward Meg I think is absolutely I think the longer that she's out of this spotlight the more we come to appreciate it like as we're saying like he's had a great solo career other projects nothing approach is the white stripes that dynamic is crucial and I don't think you replicate that dynamic just by putting another drummer what she did that would be my while making new records and what would be

okay what would be more troubling if he doesn't got a drummer or a different female drum oh god would be yeah you got this guy drummer which would seem just some people suggest that always she couldn't do it he had to get this you know he'd get Stuart Copeland in the room and if it was another female drum then the perception would be like he somehow replaced her like that would be worse you know reaction to another female would be worse the reaction to Stuart Copeland would be just

well I get you I get you yeah but what if it was what if it was a female drummer but with like the skill set of like she'll eat or something like that again not she'll eat specifically but I know all right you just never again being a true person band wouldn't be literally

“impossible for him to do that I think it would be not impossible but improbable and probably”

unwise there's no way even if people accepted that and didn't like run him out of town everything that bands hypothetically did would be viewed in direct relationship to the white stripes it would be compared to the point where this band would be meaningless it would just be held up to the old thing and just not be of any use to him as like a new project that's my sense of it what if it was pad carnit wow yeah sure sure I'll go for that I would like the smashing pumpkins

and pavement touring together exactly the only play like crypto events like you the only play corporate events jack white and pack carnie I I would I wouldn't go see them but I would follow their careers their new their new project avidly that would be fascinating and terrible but fascinating yes

Chuck it's wonderful to talk to you as always. Chuck's new book is called football it's incredible

Chuck Closterman. Thanks to our producers Chris Sutton just in sales in Olivia Creary

“additional production by Kevin Pooleer animations and graphics by Chris Calaton”

additional art by Matt James special thanks to Cole Kushner and thanks so much to you for listening

and now let's all go listen to seven nation army by the white stripes. See you next week [Music]