Records that Rocked the Aughts IV: The White Stripes' Elephant

The party line on Jack White is that he's a modern-day incarnation of an old-school bluesman. And while that is certainly true, he's also a lot like Prince.

Both Prince Rogers Nelson & John Anthony Gillis (Jack's real name) hail from gritty middle-American metropoli (Minneapolis and Detroit). Both are self-mythologizing, workaholic, color-oriented, multi-instumentalist bad-ass motherf$ck%rs that play a killer guitar, know how to put on a show, have models and actresses on their dating resumes and have a hottie behind the drum kit.

And if Jack White is the White Prince, then the White Stripes' 2003 record Elephant is his and his ex-wife Meg’s Purple Rain - the album where all the raw talent and promise of earlier records gelled into a perfect tour de force wherein the artist dazzles with talent and versatility, leaving the listener breathless in his wake. The record where they hit the bull's eye.

Like all monster records (this monster being a pachyderm), Elephant starts with a killer riff. In this case, it's the fake bass of "Seven Nation Army." It's a riff so ingrained in the popular culture that at a college basketball game I attended last week at Madison Square Garden, the UConn marching band was playing it. Unlike other sports anthems, like Queen's "We Will Rock You," it actually rocks. Rocks very hard indeed.


"Seven Nation Army" is the perfect opener, but things only get better from there. There's a mighty Burt Bachrach/Dusty Springfield cover ("I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself") a quiet torch song by Meg ("In the Cold, Cold Night") and a ballad that is perfectly McCartney-esque in the gorgeous vein of "Maybe I'm Amazed": the heartfelt "I Want to be the Boy Who Warms Your Mother's Heart."


But Jack really shows what he's made of when he takes us down to the crossroads with his "Ball and a Biscuit," a blues rave-up wherein Jack makes awesome use of an octave-shifiting effects pedal. It's every bit as fierce as any lemon-squeezer Led Zeppelin laid down back in the day.


So fierce is this blues that when Bob Dylan was in Detroit in 2004 and brought Jack on stage, they played not "Isis," "One More Cup of Coffee" or "Love Sick," all songs in the Stripes' repetoire, but "Ball and a Biscuit." You can hear their version here.

A shout-out must be given to oft-dismissed drummer Meg White, who many dismiss as being the Andrew Ridgely or John Oates of the band, a lucky duck who hitched a ride with a super-talented frontman. But Meg's drums can be mighty, and her and Jack's telepathic chemistry is undeniable, as this truly amazing live clip of Son House's "Death Letter" attests:


Elephant put the White Stripes on the very top shelf of Aughts alterna-artists, along with Wilco, Beck and Radiohead. And though the Stripes continued to make White-hot music on their records Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump, and Jack did amazing work with his new bands The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, Elephant is his one start-to-finish masterpiece -- so far. And making a masterpiece? Well, that's the Hardest Button to Button.




Buy Elephant on iTunes here