1997-2011Jack WhiteGuitar, vocals
Meg WhiteDrums
For years, Jack and Meg told people they were brother and sister, concocting elaborate stories about how they grew up together the youngest of 10 children, with Meg learning to play on Jack's drum kit. They were actually married. Jack's real last name was Gillis, but he took her last name when they wed in 1996. The brother-sister story was very believable because they look so much alike.
They're from Detroit, but got noticed in the UK long before they broke out in America, even though they didn't tour there. This was due to press coverage in British music magazines like Mojo, which loved their first two albums. Their songs consistently charted much higher in the UK.
They started catching on nationally with their third album,
White Blood Cells, and the single "
Fell In Love With A Girl," which came with a wildly innovate video built with Legos. Their next album,
Elephant, was their first on a major label. Issued in 2003, it expanded their audience considerably, thanks in no small part to the song "
Seven Nation Army."
Jack has a keen design aesthetic and developed a striking visual look based on the peppermint candies Meg loves. They stuck to the colors red, black and white in their outfits and visuals. Jack feels these are the colors of "anger and innocence."
The couple considered calling themselves the Peppermints, but because their last name was White, they went for The White Stripes. "It revolved around this childish idea, the ideas kids have," said Jack White, "because they are so much better than adult ideas, right?"
Jack likes to use dilapidated equipment, like an old guitar the Montgomery Ward department store used to sell and a beat-up amplifier. He feels it makes him more creative and distinguishes his sound from the slick production so common in modern music.
Meg and Jack separated in 1999 and almost broke up the band just as they were gaining some momentum. The turning point was a gig they had booked on March 13, 1999 as part of the Metro Times Blowout concert series in Detroit. They were splitsville by then, but Meg agreed to play and found that she could share the stage with Jack even though they weren't a couple. Their divorce was finalized in 2000.
The Detroit Free Press was the first publication to break the story that Jack and Meg were married. They did so in March 2001 after finding their marriage certificate.
Jack did pretty much everything except play drums in The White Stripes, but in his first band - the brilliantly named Goober And The Peas - he was the drummer. He taught Meg how to play.
Jack grew up in West Detroit, Meg grew up in Grosse Point, a wealthy suburb.
Jack and Meg had a smoking habit, but Jack won't do drugs and stays clear of alcohol.
The band formed just as the internet was being widely adopted, and although they maintained an informative website, they lived very much in the analog, 3-D world, staying away from computers as much as possible in their professional and personal lives.
Meg worked as a bartender at a restaurant called Memphis Smoke in Royal Oak, Michigan, which is where she and Jack met. She worked there until the group released their second album, De Stijl.
Jack acted in the movie Cold Mountain and dated one of its stars, Renee Zellweger. They met in 2002 while filming the movie in Romania and broke up in 2004. He was her date to the Oscars that year, where she won for Best Supporting Actress.
Meg is a very private person, so little is known about her, especially in the years after the band broke up. When they did press, Jack did almost all the talking.
Their album Elephant was released on vinyl before it came out on CD. This helped keep it from getting pirated.
In 2005, Jack married Karen Elson, the model who appeared in the Stripes' "
Blue Orchid" video (she's the one who isn't Jack or Meg). He and Elson got divorced in 2013.
On December 1, 2005 they became the first musical act to perform on Comedy Central's
The Daily Show, hosted at the time by Jon Stewart. They played "
The Denial Twist" and "
The Hardest Button To Button."
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Suggestion credit:
Kevin - Linden, NJ
They appeared as themselves on the 2006 episode of
The Simpsons, "Jazzy And The Pussycats." Their bit is part of a cutaway sequence where Bart plays the drums to "
The Hardest Button To Button" and is teleported to the beat just like in the video. When he bumps into Jack and Meg, there's trouble; The White Stripes end up floating down a river on pile of garbage.
Jack White loves upholstery. He worked as an apprentice starting in 1991 when he was 15 and opened up his own shop, Third Man Upholstery, in Detroit in 1996 before forming The White Stripes. This was the first time he used the "Third Man" name, taken from both the 1949 film The Third Man and the fact that he was the third upholsterer in the area. He later named his record company Third Man Records.
When they broke up in February 2011, the band didn't give a concrete explanation for why. "The reason is not due to artistic differences or lack of wanting to continue, nor any health issues as both Meg and Jack are feeling fine and in good health," their statement said in part, although they acknowledged that they wanted to "preserve what is beautiful and special about the band and have it stay that way."
They made the 2009 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for a stunt on July 16, 2007, when they played the "shortest music concert ever" - one note at St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada. They played a real concert later that night.
Jack White described the day that Meg White first played the drums. "She sat at the drums and sort of played like a child, because she never played drums before," he said in a 2005 US TV interview. "And it seemed to be something that was really interesting right off the bat. I was just obsessed with it. And I didn't want it to change, I didn't want her to practice. I wanted it to stay childlike."
"I couldn't drum like that if I wanted to," White added. "And I'd never played with a drama like that."
In 2009, Meg White married Jackson Smith, son of Patti and Fred "Sonic" Smith. Their wedding was held in Jack White's backyard in Tennessee. They divorced in 2013.
The White Stripes made their TV debut on May 28, 2000 when
they performed "
Apple Blossom" and "Death Letter" live on Detroit Public TV's
Backstage Pass.
They have a segment in the 2003 movie Coffee And Cigarettes called "Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil," where Jack's contraption shoots off beams of electricity before sputtering out. Meg diagnoses the problem ("the spark gaps are too far apart on your spark coil vibrator") and Jack wheels it out on his red wagon.
It's Meg's only acting role in a film.
In 1998, Jack White was in three different bands: The White Stripes, The Go, and Two Star Tabernacle. The Go got a deal with Sub Pop Records but White opted out, deciding instead to focus on The White Stripes. He played on that group's debut album, Whatcha Doin', released on Sub Pop on 1999.