The White Stripes, "Hotel Yorba"
My kid came home from school the other day with this news to report:
“Brian [last name withheld] says Jack White is for babies.”
I paused, took a deep breath—in through the nose; out through the mouth—and stretched my fingers. I waited three seconds and took another breath, but such ad hoc Zen meditation as I could muster failed to quell the rush of blood into my head. Off to the races we went:
“When you go back to school tomorrow, you can tell Brian that he doesn’t know the first fuh—”
I course-corrected.
“—he doesn’t know the first thing about rock music.” Which observation was 100% accurate but probably not fair, either, because at the time Brian was in first grade.
Florian and Brian are seniors in high school now. This incident is eleven years old and should be lost to history, like any other act of casual schoolyard slander. Still, I remember it like it really was just the other day. The question I’m asking myself right now, in April 2024, is why. Is it because these eleven years slipped right out from under me—like sand through a sieve, as Bert the Chimney Sweep observed (Apple Music, Spotify)—so that just the other day my kid was playing freeze tag at Butler Elementary, but two months from now he’ll be graduating high school? Or is it that I view shots fired at Jack White as unforgivable, whatever the source, and I’ll carry a grudge against this Brian kid somewhere close to the front of my mind until my dying day?
Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both.
We played the White Stripes quite a lot for our kids when they were younger, because for all the fuzzed-out rawking blues guitar and sludgy drum stomp Jack and Meg gave us in their heyday, they also put out more than a few upbeat singalong tracks that hip preschoolers could get into. Examples include “We’re Going To Be Friends” (Apple Music, Spotify), “Apple Blossom” (Apple Music, Spotify), “My Doorbell” (Apple Music, Spotify), and “Rag & Bone” (Apple Music, Spotify). So maybe Brian wasn’t too far off in his assessment: not for babies necessarily, but certainly within reach for little kids looking to kick their street cred up a notch from, I dunno, “Hot Potato” (Apple Music, Spotify).
That’s not to knock the Wiggles at all, or that particular song, which as far as I’m concerned is right on target, however Down Under folks might choose to pronounce the word banana. One of my favorite memories of parenting was taking Lila downtown to the Orpheum Theatre to see the Wiggles. In prior years I’d seen two of rock history’s most debauched and notorious figures, Iggy Pop and Shane MacGowan, perform at the Orpheum. But on that particular Friday night in November 2010, it would be four middle-aged crooners in knock-off Star Trek shirts instead. I met up with Lila after work that night—Kate dropped her at the McDonald’s on California Street, where we had an early dinner. Lila was wearing her best party dress with a black faux-velvet top and a frilly skirt, and her thoughts were consumed by the prospect of buying a rose for Dorothy the Dinosaur, which of course we did later that night downtown.
But we weren’t going to be playing the Wiggles on the ride into day care every morning—at least not when I was driving—nor even the Barenaked Ladies’ kids album, much as I dug the Shaggy-esque dancehall break in “Pollywog in a Bog” (Apple Music, Spotify). I had my own carefully-curated playlists, drawn exclusively from my iTunes library, with songs I had good reason to believe the kids could get into. Florian was into trains: Thomas the Tank Engine, and so on. Perfect—let’s cue up “Driver 8” (Apple Music, Spotify) and “Crazy Train” (Apple Music, Spotify). Lila was a fan of The Power Puff Girls—ergo, “Buttercup (Super Girl)” by Shonen Knife. The streamer versions of this track aren’t great, so let’s go with the YouTube video:
They Might Be Giants, as I’ve noted (see “New York City”) were always a hit. “Birdhouse in Your Soul” (Apple Music, Spotify), “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” (Apple Music, Spotify) “The Mesopotamians” (Apple Music, Spotify), and so on.
But standing above all of these beloved songs in my memory is the White Stripes’ “Hotel Yorba” (Apple Music, Spotify), if only because in the span of three months, and by sheer luck, I was able to record these clips of Florian and Lila singing—or trying to sing—that song. The Virgo in me is annoyed that Substack won’t support me placing them side by side. So here they are, seriatim, with Flo first …
… and Lila second.
These videos date from August and November 2011—so about a year before Brian from Butler Elementary declared Jack White for babies. When they gave these performances, the kids were five- and four-years-old, respectively. I like to think that their verbal skills were at least average for children of their age, but even so they weren’t quite able to master the lyrics. So in addition to making me smile and cry and smile and cry again, every time I watch them, these videos also helpfully supply definitive proof that Jack White is most certainly not for babies. Even preschoolers can’t lock all the words down.
And here’s something pretty cool: the White Stripes’ “Let’s Build a Home” (Apple Music, Spotify), on their second record De Stijl, opens with an audio clip of a little boy singing into a tape for his parents. For years I’ve wondered if that was in fact a young Jack White talking. Just now I took the matter up with Google, and it turns out that yes: that’s him. I love that Jack grew up to record a song that my kids so gleefully sang into their father’s cell phone, in turn. Could be someday one of these two, Florian or Lila, lays down a composition of their own to tape, just to keep that cycle going.
Let’s shift gears now and talk about how Jack White—and let’s not forget Meg—are for adults. For starters, you can’t kick off a football game without playing “Seven Nation Army” (Apple Music, Spotify). This was the first White Stripes track I ever heard. I was clerking in the federal district courthouse in Boston back in 2003, and the judge’s assistant Gail had WFNX playing at her desk. The song came on and she called me over to listen. I remember thinking at the time that the guitar riff needed more than seven notes. That’s a great start, but there has to be more to it. I kept this criticism to myself, and it’s a good thing I did. Twenty years later, the “Seven Nation Army” riff is as embedded in the culture as Keith Richards’ riff from “Satisfaction” (Apple Music, Spotify)—and even more economical.
Along with the Hives and the Vines, the White Stripes were one of the Big Three garage bands my gang and I were all abuzz over. But I don’t have six Hives or Vines albums. I do have six White Stripes albums: five on CD and one bought from iTunes, back when that was a thing. Two years ago, that sweet little girl shown above in the backseat of my Prius was a full-blown teenager prowling around Harvard Square with her friends. She texted me to say they had records at Newbury Comics. I knew this already: I work right across the street and swing by there to browse about twice a week. But rather than rain on her parade, I told her to pick out some vinyl for me, and I would pay her back. She brought home My Sister Thanks You and I Thank You: The White Stripes’ Greatest Hits.
Nailed it.
At some point I was so into the White Stripes that I audio-captured their live concert video, Under Blackpool Lights, on my laptop, cut the resulting omnibus .wav file up into song-sized .mp3s, and loaded them on my iPod so I could play them separately from the video. That’s as much hacking as this English Lit major with a J.D. degree has in him, and I was inspired to do it because someway somehow I needed to be able to hear Jack sing his unbelievable live arrangement of “Jolene” (Apple Music, Spotify) while I was out running. That song packs the kind of punch that will power your legs up Heartbreak Hill, or in my case, Clifton Street. Some interesting gender-bending here, Jack stepping in Dolly Parton’s shoes. But play that song and tell me he doesn’t close the sale. Sheer desperation, chest cracked open, with his bleeding heart on full display before the stunned Lancashire crowd.
It’s important to note what Meg brings here. She’s not Neal Peart, or Keith Moon, or even Blondie’s Clem Burke. But she is exactly what this band needed. Minimalist and heavy. The strokes aren’t many, but every last one of them lands with urgency, like an axe hacking into a tree or Godzilla tromping up the beach. I bought two of Jack’s solo albums, after the dissolution of the White Stripes, but I think I’ve actually listened to only one of them. I don’t feel any compulsion to see him live, since the breakup. It’s not that he’s any less of a songwriter, guitar hero, or compelling character. I saw him play with his band on SNL a few years ago, and it was a fun watch. But it’s not genius, not stunning—not like it was when he and Sister Meg found the formula and rocked us all harder than plate tectonics.
If you can hear a piano fall, you can hear me coming down the hall. (Apple Music, Spotify).
When I think of the White Stripes, the first word that comes to mind is artifice. Others that would loom large in the word cloud are calculated and schtick. Consider the red, white, and black color scheme—or more critically, that you never once caught them outside of it. There’s the brother/ sister conceit, too, and Jack’s put-on voice when he sings the blues. Generally speaking, I deplore vocal affectations. I had to fight, and scratch, and struggle just to get to the doorstep of liking Amy Winehouse. And Eddie Vedder can kiss right off. But Jack White? As you were, friend. No complaints, no notes.
On these and other matters of showmanship, the White Stripes are quintessentially American, drawing deeply from 100+ years of vaudeville huckster tradition. No surprise at all, then, that when I saw them live for the first time, in Providence in 2005, Jack strode into the venue dressed like he’d stepped right off a paddle-wheel steamboat. He had on a white suit and a flat-brimmed white hat, with death’s head makeup on his face. Down the center aisle he walked, through the madding crowd, and up the side steps to the stage. He opened the show playing “St. James Infirmary Blues” (Apple Music, Spotify) on the venue’s organ.1 In the wake of that show, Jack complained to journalists that fans of the band were getting harder and harder to impress, and he and Meg were having to dig ever deeper into their bag of tricks to elicit responses from his crowds. He held up the Providence gig as an example, recalling the crowd’s tepid reaction to the white suit getup and organ jam. This was a surprise to me, because I was floored. There’s a sucker born every minute, P.T. Barnum said, and that sucker is me.
And I’m fine with this. Words like artifice, calculation, and schtick might suggest skepticism, but that’s not what I’m aiming to say here. Authenticity can be overrated—especially among garage bands, which were a dime a dozen at the turn of the century. By my estimation, only the Hives (see “Dead Quote Olympics”) and the White Stripes ever crafted band-specific formulas compelling enough to stand them out from the pack. This makes some sense, given the basic music structures of the genre: what are you going to add to this to be distinctive and interesting? And if part of your program is to play the blues, then you would do well to find ways to embrace the inauthenticity of that project, too. Fail in these matters, and you’re the Black Keys, or the aforementioned Vines.
Succeed, though, and the world is your oyster. No sensible person will complain about the liberties you took with that Son House cover (Apple Music, Spotify), your appeals to John the Revelator (Apple Music, Spotify), or your presumption in self-identifying not just as the Third Man but as the Seventh Son (Apple Music, Spotify). We won’t wryly note that you’re Two of the Whitest People Ever ripping these bluesy riffs and spinning these bluesy yarns. We’ll just rock right along with you, admiring the act.
I was reflecting earlier today on Jack’s complaint about that show in Providence, and it occurred to me that we were lucky to have the White Stripes as long as we did. Novelty is a double-edged sword, after all. It does great work grabbing the public’s attention, but it won’t hold it for long. What’s fresh and new turns tired and stale in a hurry. It was a real achievement that the White Stripes continued to expand and evolve their sound and look and ethos over the course of 14 years, while staying largely true to the foundational contrivances that caught our eyes and ears in the first place. Talent, genius, and “it” factor helped, too, along with a knack for writing songs that any discriminating listener aged 3 to 103 could love and rock out to.
I’m lucky to have a family full of those listeners. Thank you, Jack and Meg, for playing some small part in making my kids as downright cool as they are today. And thanks, too, for writing the song that features in these home videos I go back to time and again, when I’m visited by a need to remember Lila and Florian as they once were—and to see how with your encouragement they smiled and danced and sang, bringing me so much joy.
No extant video, alas, but here on YouTube you can at least hear what that opening sounded like.