Arguably the most important rocker of the past 20 years was born today in 1975 in Detroit Rock City. Jack White (John Anthony Gillis) started playing drums at age six. His older brothers played in bands and Jack would soon learn to play their instruments as well. Coming from a Catholic family, Jack was on the verge of going to seminary school but the lure of music proved stronger than that of the cloth. Fearing the seminary school wouldn't let him bring his new guitar amplifier with him, Jack enrolled at Cass Tech instead (thank you, Lord).
Initially drawn to classic rock as a youth, he would soon become a devoted blues fan after being exposed to Son House and Blind Willie McTell. After high school he was introduced to punk and he would soon throw all those influences into a blender and come up with a new cocktail. He knocked around in a few local bands before he started the White Stripes in 1997 with his wife Meg White.
The White Stripes were a master class in combining mystique, image, and some damn good music. Jack and Meg presented themselves as brother and sister, held themselves to a strict color scheme, and put garage rock back on the map. They released their debut album on a small independent label in 1999 and by 2001 they were international superstars with the release of "White Blood Cells". The band would release six albums, three of them reaching the top ten on the album chart, before calling it quits in 2007.
Jack is a restless man and he wasn't done quite yet. He had started up another band in 2005 called The Raconteurs with Brendan Benson (vocals, guitar), Jack Lawrence (bass guitar), and Patrick Keeler (drums). Lawrence and Keeler were originally members of the Cincinnati band The Greenhornes. The Raconteurs have released three albums so far, with all three in the top ten, and the most recent offering, 2019s "Help Us Stranger" reaching number one.
That's quite a career for the average rocker but Jack isn't your average rocker. In 2009 he gave birth to yet another fantastic band, The Dead Weather. Composed of Alison Mosshart (The Kills) on vocals, Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar, Jack Lawrence on bass, and Jack on drums, they formed a supergroup of sorts. The Kills were touring with The Raconteurs and Jack lost his voice and asked Mosshart to fill in. They decided it sounded pretty good and decided to cut a record. They ended up releasing three albums between 2009 and 2015 and, again, all three reached the top ten.
Somehow Jack has found time to release three solo albums between 2012 and 2018 and managed to top even his three bands, with all three solo albums reaching number one on the chart. All the while he has kept his sound fresh and never allowed any of the bands to even sound remotely similar to one another.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. He also owns a record studio and label, Third Man Records, which launched in 2001. I'm exhausted just thinking about all the work this man has done over the past 20 years, but I sure am thankful he done did it.
Son House cover:
Solo:
