The White Stripes Play Us a Little Number

Jack and Meg White celebrate a decade playing together as The White Stripes by releasing yet another stellar album, Icky Thump, and taking the music of the American South to the far corners of the globe. They also prove that, contrary to pulp wisdom, two people can be a crowd… pleaser.

The bevy of light fixtures dangling from the ceiling of TC1—the largest studio in West London’s BBC Television Centre—contains at least 200 units. I know this because each fixture is sequentially numbered and those numbers are visible from the floor beneath. Granted, there’s plenty of studio to light: 10,250 sq. feet. That last number means huge.

The show being lit this particular evening is Later with Jools Holland, a popular British late-night music program that airs weekly on BBC2. The number of years it’s been on the air is 15. Each episode of Later features five or six acts. The bands set up their gear in different spots around the studio’s perimeter and take turns each playing one number. The total number of numbers each band plays for the taping is three. And the number three brings me to the featured act taking part in this evening’s taping: The White Stripes.

In the 10 years they’ve been playing together as a two-piece, Jack White (vocals/guitar/keyboards) and Meg White (drums) have achieved global notoriety, a pair of Grammys (for 2003’s Elephant) and multi-platinum sales for their stripped-bare, less-is-infinitely-more aesthetic. Between Jack’s penchant for detonating megatonic blues riffs and Meg’s tastefully insistent drumming, the pair manages to unleash a mighty ruckus that defies their self-imposed personnel limitations. And Jack White happens to have this obsession with the number three.

The band’s fastidiously observed color scheme has three parts—red, white and black (according to Jack, “the most powerful color combination of all time, from a Coca-Cola can to a Nazi banner”). When credited in the band’s liner notes or writing on the band’s website, Jack’s name frequently appears “Jack White III” (considering he took Meg’s surname when they were married briefly in the late ’90s, the “III” here is purely ornamental). Jack named his production company and label imprint Third Man, after Carol Reed’s film classic The Third Man. “Little Red Shoes,” a song Jack wrote for Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose album clocks in at 3:33. Playing as a two-piece means each song has three dominant sounds: guitar, drums, vocals. Occasionally: piano, drums, vocals.

However, during tonight’s production—amid swooping crane cameras, dry-ice haze and dramatic spotlights—the universe’s precious equilibrium will be upended for several minutes. While stretching his arms wide and introducing “the fabulous, the sensational, the one and the only…WHITE STRIPES,” host (and founding member of Squeeze) Jools Holland steps briskly onto the band’s elaborate, peppermint-patterned set and camps out behind a flaming-red Wurlitzer piano. Meg bangs out the drum intro to “My Doorbell” and Holland’s fingers go skittering down the keyboard into a greasy blues figure. finally, Jack enters the mix with a funky bass-guitar riff and the spitfire syllables of his opening lyric. There you have it: drums, keys, bass, voice. A fearsome foursome, to be sure.

The White Stripes are willing to break their own rules, but only when the breach in protocol sounds this good. After the song ends, Jack gives Holland a grinning side-hug and the scattered pockets of studio audience clap till their palms turn from white to red.