The White Stripes changed everything. Granted, it’s unlikely that anyone beyond a pocket of Detroit hipsters witnessed the duo’s debut show at the Gold Dollar bar on August 14, 1997. Likewise, the following year’s 1,000-unit run of first single Let’s Shake Hands was ample to satisfy demand. Few would have advised White to quit his day job as a furniture upholsterer.
It wasn’t until 2001’s White Blood Cells that the wider world snapped to attention. In an era of boys next door, White was a rock star like they used to make them. Eyeballs popped on stalks at his raven-haired, colour-coded charisma. Jaws dropped at his visceral speedball of old-time Delta motifs and spit-and-sawdust modern attitude.
In the years since that breakout, White hasn’t squandered his platform, raising sunken treasure with his Third Man label and pinballing between solo albums and side-projects of varying merit. For such a prolific talent, some missteps are inevitable (there are some who have never forgiven him for burying The White Stripes in 2011).
And yet, when reflecting on White’s two-decade hot-streak, it’s hard to argue with the position of Jimmy Page. “Jack White is somebody who is extraordinary in his visionary thinking,” noted the Led Zeppelin man in issue 20 of The Blues. “He might explain that he’s here [in modern times], but he’s actually four stops further on down the road. He thinks so far ahead you only can only marvel.”
