This was the perfect time and place to see The White Stripes. They had just started to break through, but not so much that on a wet but sunny afternoon at Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, you couldn’t get close enough to see them.
The White Stripes hail, like Alice Cooper and Eminem, from Detroit. Jack and Meg White met in the mid-90’s, married and formed a band. What set them apart was not only what they played, but how they presented. This was a band with a mythos.
Jack claimed they were brother and sister throughout the band’s existence, which created an ongoing fog of confusion, given that their marriage licence was public record. Alongside that, they maintained a strict colour scheme of red, white and black, and in their early records a very rigid block style of art ala Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl movement - a clue being that ‘De Stijl’ was the name of their second album.
It was the third album, ‘White Blood Cells’, which did the business. In 2001 the video for ‘Hotel Yorba’ appeared - everything you needed to know about the band condensed into 2 minutes. It was blues, it was lo-fi, it had a teenage awkwardness and a sense of humour. The single did well and all the music press embraced the band as the new great hope of guitar music in the year that ‘Bob The Builder’ had two number-one singles.
I rushed out and bought the albums and played ‘White Blood Cells’ to death. While mostly blues, there was also punk, spoken word and a bit of psychedelia. At the time this sounded like the future of Americana and a return to musical craftsmanship. The guitar and drums sound is very scratchy at times and it’s interesting that the band’s biggest hit came a few years later when he dropped the guitar an octave to sound like a bass guitar. Meg White got a lot of criticism for very basic drumming, but it worked in the context of the music. That said, a bit of Bill Ward / Ginger Baker jazz-metal drumming would have been awesome.
At Glastonbury, it was a cracking day. The Coral and The Vines had already played the best sets I ever saw from either band. White Stripes were the third band on my essentials list and the couple were utterly captivating. They did storming versions of ‘Death Letter’ and er, ‘Jolene’ among a bunch of random covers and a good sampling of all the albums. Much of it is on YouTube and a damn sight better than their headlining set a few years later (which I missed).
I never saw them play again. The next album was a disappointment and the gigs were too large. But this one time was a blinder.
Videos
The BBC were there so there's lots on the web...