The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducting the White Stripes did not result in the reunion of the long-dissolved duo, as many had hoped, with Meg White remaining out of the spotlight, as she has been since they announced their split nearly 15 years ago. But if she was absent from the Hall of Fame proceedings at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theatre, her presence was very much felt in remarks from Iggy Pop, who formally inducted the pair, and especially from Jack White, who accepted on both their behalfs and even read a fable he wrote down this week about their origin story.
Following the speeches, here were also salutes offered by two twosomes: Olivia Rodrigo and Feist, who sang “We Are Going to Be Friends” as a tender duet, and Twenty One Pilots, one of the few other true duo acts in the recent history of rock, recreating “Seven Nation Army” as a bass-and-drums-only rocker.
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Speaking to his former drummer’s absence, White said: “I spoke with Meg White the other day, and she said that she’s very sorry she couldn’t make it here tonight, but she wanted me to tell you that she’s very grateful. And to all of the folks who supported her in all the years, it really means a lot to her. She also helped me write all this… I sent these things to her. She checked it for me for a lot of punctuation and corrections. She’s pretty good at that.”
He continued by sharing a random thought of Meg’s: “She said, ‘Do you remember, Jack? We used to walk around and animals, for some reason, would stare at us. They would stop and stare at us for some reason. Even at the Detroit Zoo, an elephant did the exact same thing one time.’ She just wanted me to tell you that,” he explained, to crowd laughter.
White gave props to some other iconic duos — representing non-musical disciplines — that preceded the White Stripes onto the national artistic stage.
“There was a duo of songwriters important around the time of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll called Leiber and Stoller, and they wrote a lot of songs that a lot of people probably never heard of, but they also wrote a couple that really connected with folks, like ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Stand By Me,’ and you for sure heard those songs,” White said. “There was once a duo called Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and they were a comic-book-hero writing team who came up with all kinds of heroes you’d never heard of — Slam Bradley and Dr. Occult and so forth — but they also came up with this character that really connected with people: Superman, I’m sure you heard of. And there was once a comedy duo called Abbott and Costello that I remember hearing from my father as a child that had thousands of jokes kept on white cards in a file cabinet, jokes and routines that nobody had ever heard before and they never got to perform, but they also developed a joke that for some reason really connected with people, and the routine was called ‘Who’s On First?’ I know you’ve heard that one.”
Making the connection, White added: “I myself have been in a lot of bands that you probably never heard of, but for some reason people especially connected with this one two-piece duo project that I was in called the White Stripes. We don’t know why these things connect with people, but when they do, it’s the most beautiful thing you can have.”
White read off a litany of musicians he wanted to thank as influences, including such varied names as Loretta Lynn, Fugazi, the Misfits, Jethro Tull, the Troggs, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Arthur Lee and Love, the Flat Duo Jets, Dick Dale, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, the Sonics, Pavement, Black Flag, Sleater-Kinney, the Breeders, the Cramps, Merle Haggard, the Hives, Them, the Damned, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Minor Threat and Captain Beefheart.
There were other thanks to give. “To the factories and tools and electricity and vacuum tubes, we say thank you. To the Coney Islands of Detroit and the honky-tonks of Nashville and the corner pubs of London, we say thank you. To the homeless and the powerless and the forgotten, we always say thank you.”
As advice, he offered, “To the young artists, I want to say: get your hands dirty and drop the screens and get out of your little room and get obsessed. Get obsessed with something… We all want to share in what you might create.”
And then, a parable, which he said Meg White would be hearing for the first time along with the audience.
“I was gonna send this to Meg, but I didn’t get around to it, so I thought I’d read it to you all tonight,” White began. “One time a girl climbed a tree and in that tree was a boy — her brother, she thought — and the tree looked so glorious and beautiful, but it was just an oak tree. And these two so loved the world that they brought forth a parade float, one they built in their garage behind the oak tree with their own bare hands. And the boy looked at this giant peppermint on the wheels and felt pride. Pride that it was produced in the Motor City, just like in the big factories, but it was just in their garage. He looked at the girl — his sister, he thought — and like the Little Rascals, they said, ‘Let’s put on a show.’ And they paraded this float through the Cass corridor, standing atop the peppermint pulled by white horses, or maybe it was a RedVanLines van. And many of the blocks they traveled were empty, but some had people. And some of those people cheered, and some laughed, and some even threw stones.
“And with their bare hands,” White continued, “the two started to clap and sing and make up songs. And some people kept watching and swaying and moving. And then one person even smiled. And the boy and the girl looked at each other and they also smiled and they both felt the sin of pride, but they kept on smiling. Smiling from a new freedom, knowing that they had shared and made another person feel something. And they felt the person smiling at them was a stranger. So they didn’t even know. But it wasn’t just a stranger, it was God.”
Keeping up the sibling theme to the end, he concluded: “My sister thanks you and I thank you.”
In his intro, fellow Detroit native Iggy Pop said, “The first time I saw them was in a photograph… grinning like they had some kind of fun secret, like they stole some cookies from a cookie jar. Basically I was looking at a 20th century Adam and Eve who had started a rock ‘n’ roll band… Cute ckids, they’ll probably go places,” he remembered thinking.
Pop saluted “Meg White, who is a timeless beauty. Meg White, who gave her name to the group, was a charismatic, naturally likable person. I met her once and she had the most genuine and charming smile. She gave the drum kit a good whack like Fred Below did for Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. I think it was Meg’s support that helped launch the rocket of racket that was Jack White.
“Jack could screech like an owl. He could twang like a hillbilly… I hear echoes of the Who, the Small faces, the Beatles, art-rock and country-blues in his playing. He could do it all. And the writing he is capable of was something that was not typical of the great Detroit bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s — this was more melodic, more hooky. After all, it was a new century, and the White Stripes’ music was coming from a foundation of love instead of revolution.”
In the video tribute that the Rock Hall put together for the duo, Rodrigo offered a younger generation’s appreciation of the pair — and the highest possible veneration for “Seven Nation Army” in particular: “Do you hear those seven notes? There’s no question what it is. ‘Seven Nation Army’ is the most iconic song of all time — it’s just so ingrained into who we are as humans.”
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