The White Stripes

The White Stripes

MUSIC OF A DIFFERENT STRIPE

Jack White Explains the Trigonometry Behind His Band's Elemental Sound
Four years ago, the White Stripes began skipping sonic stones across the increasingly placid waters of the rock underground. Anyone who put money on the minimalist Motown duo becoming the next big thing in rock 'n' roll would have hit the jackpot, as Jack and Meg White have beaten the odds to become the decade's most unlikely superstars. Although they may have outgrown sweatbox clubs, the Whites haven't outgrown the wide-eyed wonder -- and no-frills bashing -- that made their three indie albums such a breath of fresh air. Despite being given carte blanche by their new label, V2, when going in to record disc No. 4, the White Stripes stuck to what they know best, and recorded Elephant in a frozen-in-time studio in just ten days -- the length of time most modern bands need to assemble their computer equipment. Every bit of that urgency is captured on disc -- for reasons Jack White explained at a recent roundtable session.

Question: Did you have specific ideas in mind when recording Elephant: replicating White Blood Cells or doing something completely different?

Jack White: We just wanted to bring the songs in and make them work. We never premeditate much when it comes to recording. I think if we went in and said, We want to make a country record or a soul record, it would just sort of fail. It's a limitation I don't like. I like some limitations, like confining ourselves with time and money, but when we bring the songs together and force the songs into the box that we live in, we never say, This won't fit on this record. That way, an album doesn't sound like one big song.

Q: Are there any tricks to working with the limitations you're talking about?

JW: We did this in ten days, which is the longest we've ever spent on a record. I like to be uncomfortable. I don't like the idea of studios that are nicely heated, with cappuccino machines and video games to play between takes and all that jazz. You should be forced into working when you're working. It's really hard to find a studio that's devoid of that evil computer technology. That sort of destroys creativity. Here, we used an eight-track machine with just compression and reverb. Other times, we wanted to mix analog and edit tape with razor blades, and an engineer would say, Oh, I can do it on the computer in two seconds. We'd get into a lot of arguments that way, but if that stuff isn't even there, there's no option for argument.

Q: The minimalist aesthetic extends to the band's look as well.

JW: We decided to live in this box. When we started the band, we decided to envelop ourselves in this thing that revolved around the number three. It's like kids in school who are forced to wear uniforms, that way there's no sense of competition with the people around you. It forces you to work. I think when you see a White Stripes show, after a couple of songs, you don't even think about that anymore -- which shows you how meaningless it all is.

Q: Did mainstream recognition bring on any added pressure?

JW: We had all this thrust upon us. When all this happened, we'd done three albums on our own, a lot of 45s, and been touring for years. We had no manager, no lawyer, no publicist; it was just two people doing what they wanted to do, and we had to decide to jump in head first and either let it work for us or let it destroy us. We said no so much to so many things, so many magazine covers, TV things. Every once in a while we said yes because of such an overbearing response from the media, but we don't live for that. It's out of our hands and we can't control it, whereas we can control everything creative that we do. So [attention is] not our favorite thing.

Q: Elephant seems to have a little more punch than White Blood Cells. Was that the intent going in?

JW: When I first walked in, I thought it was going to be a quieter record, but right after we got into the studio, we wrote the song "Ball and Biscuit," and that made us go back and make some of the other songs more powerful.

Q: You tend to come up with some offbeat cover songs. Does that mean you have a huge record collection to draw from?

JW: I really don't consider myself a huge collector. That can infiltrate on the creativity, where everything has to have a reference to some old thing. It's the same as getting involved in guitars and amps and becoming such a gear-head that you forget about the expression. Like, I love Blind Willie McTell -- really love him -- but I often listen to music and not know who it is. I don't want to become like a mathematician about it.

Q: So does it feel like all the work has paid off?

JW: It feels like we've always been there, from day one. We chose not to grow and evolve and take part in excess. It's still unaffected, even though there might be a different perception of it since the mainstream has started paying attention where there used to be ten people at a show in Milwaukee. The idea was always bringing it down to the number three: storytelling, rhythm, and melody; guitar, drums, and vocals; red, white, and black. To me, the number three is perfection.

Q: So what's the next step for the White Stripes?

JW: We always get asked how long this can go on, and our response is always that it's not something that's going to last forever. We're not going to be doing this 20 years from now, probably. When you have aspirations to last forever, you fail. We've seen bands that we love do something coherent and meaningful and then become redundant and caricatures of themselves. What we have is so of the moment, so childish in a way…I find myself really bored with rock 'n' roll a lot of the time, because it's so easy. It's not enough for me to just repeat myself over and over.

April 7, 2003