Jack: When we started the band it was just some way of getting back to childhood without it being a comedy act. It was about how kids look at things. There's a sense of humour that is deeply buried under everything. I'd kind of like it if people saw us and just half-way through the set started laughing.
Jack claims his one sin is smoking. In everything else he considers himself a perfect gentleman.
Surprisingly, Jack and Meg claim not to be close friends. Jack hinted that he wouldn't want to ruin the music he makes with her by meeting her too much socially.
'Elephant' was recorded for less than $10,000, an amazingly small amount in the music business today and due in part to The White Stripe's rejection of modern technology.
Jack chose music rather than friends as he grew-up; he was into rock & roll when everyone around him liked rap and house music. Jack didn't think he could ever be friends with such people!
The White Stripe's dependence on the number 'three' was actually inspired by Jack's experience in an upholstery shop. His boss had put three staples in a piece of fabric and Jack realised that three was the bare minimum amount. He then continued the use of 'three' even in his own upholstery shop, only with yellow, black and white as his primary colours. He sees 'three' as sticking to a set of formal rules.
Surprisingly, Jack started his music with the drums, playing from the age of 5 until 20. He only ever started the guitar so that he could have music to drum to. These days, he leaves all drumming to Meg.
Jack married his wife Karen, just three weeks after meeting her for the first time on the set for the filming of 'Blue Orchid'. Meg encouraged the marriage from the start.
Jack once claimed, rather wrongly, of course, that "A band like ours would never make it onto MTV"
'Get Behind Me Satan' took less than two weeks to record, even with five days in which no music was played.
The title of The White Stripe's latest album, 'Get Behind Me Satan' was purposefully left ambiguous so it could be read as either appealing to Satan to leave, or to help.
Jack explained the band in an interview, "My original idea for the White Stripes was to break everything down to the essentials. The band is made-up of real simple components: three musical elements - vocals, guitars and drums; and three graphic elements - the colours red, black and white. The whole framework became a great excuse for doing what I really wanted to do, which was to simply play the blues, or blues-based music."
Jack and Meg have created a band image based on the lie that they are in fact siblings. However, the truth of the matter is that Jack and Meg married in 1996, before realising that they shared a closer sibling-like relationship and so divorced, later using this pretext to seek fame. Jack retained the surname White to help the sibling image.
in 2006, the White Stripes won a legal battle in which a studio engineer claimed he was entitled to copyright ownership from the band's first two albums. However, the jury only took twenty minutes to decide that the engineer was not worthy of excess profits.
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