What is the relationship between Meg and Jack White?
The backstory of The White Stripes is relatively straightforward. However, everything changed when Jack and Meg White started attracting attention from the press. Once they gained a certain level of notoriety, the duo began playing with public perceptions, turning it into something of a game. One of the biggest mysteries surrounding the band was, of course, the true nature of their relationship.
The White Stripes formed in Detroit in 1997. While Jack White, formerly Jack Gillis, had played in bands before and toured as a professional drummer, Meg had never performed before. The duo crossed paths in a coffee shop where Meg was a barista and Jack was a regular customer, usually there to read books and try to impress said barista.
Yes, he was flirting with her because, no, she was not his sister. Meg and Jack White were a couple.
After dating for a few years, the pair got married in 1996. Jack took his wife’s surname, making him the Jack White we know him as today. Soon after the wedding bells, then came the cymbal crashes as Meg White began to learn the drums, and the married couple started their band.
They played their first-ever show the following year at Gold Dollar bar in Detroit, embedding themselves in Michigan’s underground music scene. Their reputation quickly grew beyond their circle, and by 1999, they had a record deal offer to allow them to make their self-titled debut album.
Featuring tracks like ‘Do’ and ‘The Big Three Killed The Baby’, the record captures their earliest songs and the start of their collaborative relationship, which was inseparable from their romantic one. “I still feel we’ve never topped our first album,” Jack White said in 2003, “It’s the most raw, the most powerful, and the most Detroit-sounding record we’ve made.”
The rest, as they say, was history. The duo quickly climbed to the top and became one of the leading outfits in rock. The public, however, had no idea of the relationship drama that was going on behind the scenes, which is exactly what the band wanted.
Why did Meg and Jack White pretend to be siblings?
Almost immediately, as the band started, the duo had their signatures. There was the red, black and white colour scheme, their obsession with the number three, and, initially, their refusal to be interviewed separately. Another pillar of the group was their ongoing lie that they were siblings, not a couple. They even took it so far as Jack White introducing the drummer as his “big sister” on stage.
It’s a strange lie to tell when it comes to your spouse. Denying your relationship to instead plead familial ties definitely raises an eyebrow and feels a little uncomfortable. But for Jack White, the reasoning was clear. “When you see a band that is two pieces, husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, you think, ‘Oh, I see…’ When they’re brother and sister, you go, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’” he said. “You care more about the music, not the relationship—whether they’re trying to save their relationship by being in a band.”
Especially as Meg White has always had to face up to sexist judgements of her ability, doubting her worth as a drummer, the sibling lie feels designed to protect her from further critique. It kept her from being the ‘girlfriend’ or the ‘wife’. She could simply be the iconic Meg White.
Why did The White Stripes break up?
The White Stripes breakup is just as complex as its origin, once again thanks to the band’s attempts to play with the truth.
Really, the group had been on the rocks before they properly began. Jack and Meg White secretly divorced in 2000 before they achieved the height of their fame. Jack White assumed that was it for the band and asked some local musicians to play with him at their remaining booked shows. On the day of their first gig, Meg showed up and said that, despite the split, the group should keep going. So they did, giving the world their biggest hits after their romantic relationship was over.
Everything was going smoothly. Then, in 2001, proof of their marriage and divorce leaked. With more eyes on the band and more mouths contemplating their relationship, pressure was packed onto the divorced duo to try and keep it together.
They held it together long into the 2010s when the news of their split came in a long-winded and roundabout way. In 2007, the group went on hiatus, citing Meg White’s anxiety around touring and performing as the reason. During that time, Jack White launched some side projects while Meg totally disappeared from the public eye.
It always seemed to be the singer that was gunning for the group to continue. Between 2007 and 2011, when they announced their split, he kept teasing fans that new music was coming, that they were recording and might do a tour. Instead, they delivered pretty much everything, but nothing materialised. Meg stayed silent, clearly reluctant.
That had always been the way, according to Jack, who described Meg from the start as “very uninterested”.
He said, “So we would finish a mix of a song, and I’d say, ‘Wow! That’s pretty good!’ I’d look around, and Meg would just be sitting there, and the engineer would just be sitting there.”
He continued, “So it’d be sorta like, ‘OK… Let’s just move on to the next one.’ It was just me by myself. But it was the best thing for me. It taught me a lot about trusting my gut.”
He did, however, defend White’s talent as he said, “She was the antithesis of a modern drummer. So childlike and incredible and inspiring. All the not-talking didn’t matter, because onstage? Nothing I do will top that.”
Some argue that Meg White was never as bothered about the band as her husband was, while others have suggested that from the start, she hated the sibling lie and the roles she was forced to play, making her anxious when it came to performing or public appearances even worse. As she’s all but vanished from the music industry since 2011, we’ll never know.
The official line that they’d split came in February 2011 as a statement chalked the separation up to “a myriad of reasons … mostly to preserve what is beautiful and special about the band”.
