Well it’s true that we love one another…

I bought Elephant in high school, at a time in my life where I was just discovering how powerful music could be. Jack and Meg White taught me about the blues, and it was probably one of the greatest lessons of my life. While many people compared them to Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, I was fairly ignorant to all that hullabaloo. To me, those names seemed archaic, from a distant past that didn’t fit into the iPod generation. Those comparisons seemed boring, and I wasn’t about to waste my time with boring.

Yet The White Stripes were anything but boring.

They were a quirky little duo that was able to balance the old and the new. They illustrated the importance of paying respect to your musical forbearers while paving your own, creative path. It was liberating to hear them play. Meg bashed everything in sight. Jack used feedback like a puppet master, his own dancing marionette. It was visceral. It was loud.

It was flippin’ rock n’ roll.

I played the hell out of Elephant. At 16, if you had asked me to hum every fuzzy riff and over blown squealing solo on that record, I would have delightfully obliged. I could recite every word to the “Little Acorns” monologue, give you my best Jack White impersonation for “Seven Nation Army,” and was convinced that “Ball & Biscuit” was the sexiest song alive. After a while, I began to realize that every song on Elephant was special, each track a painting to a larger masterwork. They were all different, but strangely cohesive. Everything was part of something bigger, and I realized that principle held true for everything Jack White touched.

He meant for Meg and his band to be as earth shattering as they were.

That sly fox.

Though I didn’t realize it initially, The White Stripes broke out at a time where rock n’ roll needed one thing more than anything else: Fun. With radio dominated by misogynistic hip-hop and 80s revival, The White Stripes brought back sleazy, grungy, and melodic song craft. They could be tender, angry, and above all bizarre, but they injected some much-needed joy into an over-serious musical landscape. From the peppermint kitsch, to the spousal/sibling guessing, to their minimalist instrumentation, The White Stripes were about exploring the world with a lust for adventure.

Just the two of them. Jack and Meg. Meg and Jack.

As I got older I ventured further into their red/white wonderland, and I realized that The White Stripes were not only at the heart of what I admired musically, but present in some of my most cherished relationships. I think about how my neighbors hated me for singing “You’re Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)” in the shower, and how funny it was when we actually sat down and talked about it. When I hear “Jolene,” I think of an old ex-girlfriend and the way she’d squish up her face before a body shaking “JO-LEEEENE!” escaped her lips. I think about Andrew, my roommate in college, and how we had memorized “Rag & Bone” just to screw with people at awkward parties. I think about how I included “Well It’s True That We Love One Another” into a One Act I wrote, closing the play with same idea that Jack and Meg put in all of their art.

I think about all these songs, and how Jack and Meg were able to push people towards me with them. Words seem a little inadequate right about now, so all I can say is I’m grateful for what they’ve made, grateful I could partake in it.

In every White Stripes’ album booklet, Jack writes an open letter to his fans. The one for Icky Thump strikes me as his best, not only because it sums up the group’s triumphant career, but also because it’s his most profound:

“I saw an image of someone I once knew today and it made me write down my first impressions. I don’t normally tend to do that. Guess that makes me an impressionist.”

Life is like that. The White Stripes were like that. One big giant impression. We’re all impressionists if you think about it. Life moves too fast for us to recreate and preserve everything and The White Stripes understood that, painting with big broad strokes, blasts of distortion and color. They were both impossible and easy to define, mysterious and straightforward. They were about finding truth in the absurd while balancing the frailty and chaos that seemed to ooze from their lo-fi blues.

I love Jack and Meg White like a little brother.

The words seem corny when I type them out, but that’s only because it took me this long to really put them together. After all, I just have an impression of what they were about. In some ways, maybe that’s all I need.