The White Stripes

There is a lie at the centre of The White Stripes and it was not a passing misunderstanding: they kept it up for years. Jack and Meg White said they were brother and sister —Jack went as far as describing them as the two youngest in a family of ten— when in fact they had married on 21 September 1996 and divorced in March 2000. The press exposed it in 2001 with the marriage papers in plain sight, and they carried on insisting. The trick of invented kinship had precedents in rock —the Ramones shared a stage surname without being family— but the Ramones never asked to be believed. And underneath that invention there is another fact that is almost never told: the band's surname was not his. Jack was born John Anthony Gillis and took Meg's surname when they married, not the other way round. The White Stripes was named after the drummer.

Detroit, three colours and her surname

The band formed in Detroit in 1997, with Jack White on guitar and vocals and Meg White on drums. Nothing else: there was no bassist in fourteen years of records. That absence was not poverty, it was a rule, just like the red, white and black uniform they never abandoned and which they applied to the clothes, the covers, the amplifiers and the stage.

The surname came from the marriage. John Anthony Gillis married Megan Martha White in September 1996 and took hers, an uncommon decision that hardly any report of the time recorded clearly. By the time the group started playing, his stage name was already hers, and he kept it after the divorce, after the band's break-up and to this day.

Meg played in a deliberately spare manner: big hits, little ornamentation, the pulse ahead of the technique. It was the most disputed thing about the duo and also the engine of their sound, because it forced the guitar to occupy all the space normally filled by a bass and a second guitarist. Jack always defended it in those terms: without those drums, the blues they were after did not sound like 1930 but like a modern studio.

Siblings, they said

The official version was that they were brother and sister, the youngest in a large Detroit family, and they repeated it in interviews during the early years. In 2001, with the band already on the international radar, the marriage certificate and the divorce certificate came to light. The story collapsed in public and with documents.

What they did next is the interesting part: they did not correct it. They went on maintaining the kinship in later interviews and took years to address the matter head-on. It was not a carefully kept ambiguity or a trail of clues for fans: it was a false claim defended after it had been disproved, and it is worth naming it that way. The mystery that surrounds it in popular memory is a kindly reconstruction of something considerably simpler.

The riff that was not a bass

White Blood Cells, from 2001, took them out of the garage circuit. A good deal of the credit went to the video for "Fell in Love with a Girl", which Michel Gondry put together in Lego bricks: a piece that MTV played to exhaustion and that gave a face to a band which until then was a Detroit curiosity.

The big leap came with Elephant, from 2003, and with "Seven Nation Army". Here there is a mistake that is repeated everywhere, including in the song's own myth: that low riff is not played by a bass. Jack recorded it with a Kay Hollowbody semi-hollow guitar run through a DigiTech Whammy pedal that drops the signal an octave. In a band that prided itself on having no bassist, the most famous line of the century sounds like a bass without being one.

The riff became a stadium chant by an indirect route. In October 2003, Club Brugge fans who travelled to Milan for the Champions League chanted it in the stands, the habit spread through European football and from there to the world. Today it is sung by crowds who would not be able to say whose it is, and that says more about the song than any chart position.

Breaking their own rule

The duo's bravest record is the one that usually stays out of the summary. Get Behind Me Satan, released on 7 June 2005, does not continue the electric rawness of Elephant: it dismantles it. The piano is placed at the centre, in come the marimba, the timpani and the mandolin, and the distorted guitar almost disappears. They were given the Grammy for best alternative music album in 2006.

That is the most interesting reading of their career, and it is the opposite of the usual one. The White Stripes were not admirable for respecting their rules, but for breaking the main one at the moment of maximum commercial pressure, when repeating Elephant was the obvious and the profitable thing to do. Icky Thump, from 2007, went back to the guitars and also won the Grammy in that category, but the risk had already been taken.

The ending was quiet. The last concert was on 20 February 2009, on Conan O'Brien's programme, and the break-up was announced on 2 February 2011. Meg withdrew from music entirely, went back to living in Detroit and has made no public statements since 2011. Jack ruled out a reunion without qualification in Guitar World in March 2024: "absolutely no chance". In March 2026 some changes to the band's website set off rumours that nobody confirmed.

What to remember

On 8 November 2025, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, The White Stripes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were introduced by Iggy Pop, another son of Detroit. Meg did not attend, and Jack said he had spoken to her on the telephone. The scene sums the matter up well: half the band receiving an award for the two of them, with the absent one's surname written on the plaque.

Two people, three colours and no bassist were enough to put electric blues back on the radio alongside The Strokes and the rest of the early-2000s garage scene. But the duo were not interesting for their minimalism, which ended up being a comfortable trademark, but for two things that the minimalism covers up: a sustained lie that invented its own legend, and the courage to disobey themselves in 2005 when nobody was asking them to.

---

Sources

The White Stripes were an American garage rock and blues duo formed in Detroit, Michigan, in 1997, made up of Jack White (guitar and vocals) and Meg White (drums), with no bassist throughout their career. Jack White was born John Anthony Gillis on 9 July 1975; he married Megan Martha White on 21 September 1996, took her surname and kept it after the divorce, granted in March 2000. During their early years the duo publicly claimed to be brother and sister; the existence of the marriage and the divorce became public in 2001 from civil records, and the band continued to maintain the kinship version in later interviews. Their discography comprises "The White Stripes" (1999), "De Stijl" (2000), "White Blood Cells" (2001), "Elephant" (2003), "Get Behind Me Satan" (7 June 2005) and "Icky Thump" (2007). The video for "Fell in Love with a Girl" was directed by Michel Gondry with Lego brick animation. The riff of "Seven Nation Army" was not recorded with a bass: Jack White used a Kay Hollowbody guitar through a DigiTech Whammy pedal set one octave below. The use of the riff as a football chant originated among fans of the Belgian side Club Brugge during a Champions League match in Milan, in October 2003. "Get Behind Me Satan" departed from the duo's electric format and incorporated piano, marimba, timpani and mandolin, and won the Grammy for best alternative music album in 2006; "Icky Thump" won the same award in 2008. The duo's last concert was on 20 February 2009 on Conan O'Brien's programme, and the break-up was announced on 2 February 2011. Meg White withdrew from musical activity, lives in Detroit and has made no public statements since 2011. In March 2024 Jack White ruled out a reunion in statements to Guitar World. The rumours that arose in March 2026 from changes to the official website have not been confirmed. The duo were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 8 November 2025, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, introduced by Iggy Pop; Meg White did not attend the ceremony. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Guitar World, Rolling Stone and other coverage.