Jack White and the one song that “meant everything” but he was never able to match: “That was it for me”
Music can hit us in all kinds of ways, and old-school blues is the genre that had the most profound effect on a young Jack White.
As modern music’s pre-eminent interpreter of the genre, White has become the biggest voice in communicating the bridge that rock and roll has to the blues. It is not only an important function, but also a celebrated mode of artistry as White provides a new bedrock for a new generation of musicians.
Of course, like any true musician, White wasn’t just affected by one sound or one band. But there were certainly some which spoke to him more directly than others. While classic rock and punk had filtered into his life by the time he was a teenager, it was only after someone played White the songs of Son House that he truly found his own direction in music.
“By the time I was about 18, somebody had played me Son House,” White explained in the documentary It Might Get Loud. We all have those moments. As the needle drops or your finger presses play, the first notes of the rest of your life hit your ears. “That was it for me. This spoke to me in a thousand different ways. I didn’t know that you could do that.” White specifically cited the a cappella song ‘Grinnin’ in Your Face’ as an inspiration, a track that White continues to call his favourite song of all time.
“It’s just singing and clapping, and it meant everything. Everything about rock and roll, everything about expression and creativity and art. One man against the world in one song,” as White characterised it. As White began to think about how he could get away with playing something as bold as ‘Grinnin’ in Your Face’, he realised that he and his bandmate, Meg White, would need to put up some distractions in order to hide the fact that they were just trying to copy Son House.
“I started to look for ways to get away with it and not be some sort of white-boy blues band,” White said. It wasn;t going to be accepted that the group would be able to deliver a carbon copy of the blues in the new century. They needed to freshen things up, and that started with stage direction. “We went and played an open mic night. Meg didn’t really want to do it. I was pushing her. If I put her behind the drums, maybe something interesting would happen. She just played like a little caveman and a little child. We started to form everything around Meg.”
“We saw a bag of peppermint candies. I said, ‘Well, that should be on your bass drum. We should paint that on your bass drum.’ By this time, I had found a red guitar,” White added. Soon, all the pieces began coming together. “This red guitar and the peppermint candy have dictated the aesthetic of the band. The White Stripes became the big way to get away with it. By having a brother and sister band that was red, white and black [as] the complete aesthetic, and it was very childish, and we presented ourselves in a very childish manner. Almost like cartoon characters.”
But while those ideas would present themselves as key aspects of what made The White Stripes stick out alongside the leather-clad garage rock revival, the truth is, at the centre of it all, White was still trying to copy that one song. “It was a lot of distractions to keep people away from what was really going on, which was that we were really just trying to play [‘Grinnin’ in Your Face’]. Still are,” White concludes.
Watch White discuss ‘Grinnin’ in Your Face’ in the documentary down below.
