Jack White's Lazaretto Makes Me Miss Meg White

Jack White's new album Lazaretto is much better than his solo debut Blunderbuss.  Not that Blunderbuss was bad per se:  The musicianship was excellent, the production professional, the song-writing competent and the performances impassioned.  But despite White's best efforts, it just didn't feel as vital--both in the sense of feeling necessary and of feeling alive--as any given White Stripes LP.   Even the White Stripes-esque "Sixteen Saltines" strangely feels more like Jack White performing in the style of the White Stripes than an actual White Stripes song.

And come to think of it, as much as I find Lazaretto to be more wild and playful and just plain fun--as good as the groove may be on "High Ball Stepper" and the title track--well...it still isn't as much so as the White Stripes.  In fact, what's been most revealing to me about Jack White's solo career so far is how profoundly crucial Meg White had been all along.

It was easy to dismiss her as a gimmick you see--a gimmick that hooked you onto some cool music sure, but still a gimmick nonetheless.  Serious, a two-piece garage-rock outfit composed of a brother/sister duo with a relentless red/white color scheme that turned out to be a divorced couple somehow still friends?  That was always gonna be a fascinating premise for a band, even without hearing their albums.  Come for the weirdo couple, stay for the actual songs, seemed to be the thinking.

But then as they began to flirt with genuine mainstream success, as their singles received real radio airplay, as "Seven Nation Army" joined the rarefied ranks of "We Are The Champions," "(Whoop!) There It Is," and "Enter Sandman" as songs we will hear in every American sports stadium till the end of time, Meg began to seem like a sort of prehensile tail, a left-over vestige of an earlier Indie era when Jack White still needed a hook to set himself apart.  The fact that Jack post-success promptly formed The Ranconteurs and Dead Weather--"side-projects" that were more fleshed-out and professional than his main gig--did little to ameliorate murmurings that Meg, with her childishly simple drumming, was in fact holding back Jack the musical genius.

Not that Jack ever verbally expressed so, quite the inverse in fact: even at their height he was always very vocal of the great importance Meg had on the band's sound.  But then, Jack is also a natural showman, one who tries on as many identities as he does musical styles, so it was easy to just dismiss Jack's praise of Meg as more performance art, that he was still just milking the gimmick for all it's worth, that he was in fact only being gracious and generous to his mild-mannered bandmate while he dominated the spotlight.  And in fact, given how often Jack has consciously created limitations and obstacles for himself to overcome...

 [Jack White "Hard Work" from It Might Get Loud]

...so as to really force himself to wrestle the instrument and make better music, well, it was never hard to think that Meg was likewise another self-imposed limitation on Jack, another obstacle for Jack to overcome--and one he could easily do without.

But 3 years after the band's official break up and 2 solo albums later, it's now clear that Jack White wasn't just being a showman when he emphasized Meg's importance--no, she was in fact crucial to the band's sound.   He can do without her perhaps (as shown by his solo albums' sales), but never as brilliantly or as vitally as he could with her in the White Stripes.

Again, to be clear: Meg was, at best, a very amateurish (if primal) drummer; she had no vocal chops and was not the primary song writer; nevertheless, she was also clearly not just another self-imposed obstacle for Jack to wrestle against and overcome, no--there was something about her ambiance, her aloofness, her personality, and her chemistry with Jack that enabled Jack White to make the music he did. The White Stripes were not a gimmick, but an actual complete band, it turns out.   Meg would never even have made it as some no-name, journeyman drummer without Jack, but Jack would never have made as good of music without Meg!  For whatever reason, those songs could not have existed if Jack had not made them with Meg.  She was not the hanger-on to Jack's "genius" or whatever, she really was essential to that band.  Jack was right.

Now, that being said, I will probably continue to pick up Jack White albums (at least as long as he keeps making cool music, and Lazaretto gives me high hopes for the future); but part of me worries that the ultimate effect of his solo stuff will just be to demonstrate what a lightning-in-a-bottle, irreproducible phenomenon the White Stripes really were (even if they were by some miracle to reunite, I suspect it would be less the White Stripes than 2 former members of the White Stripes performing covers of old White Stripes songs), and to at last appreciate the contributions of Meg White more than ever.

There is a larger moral here: never discount the contributions of those around you, no matter how much less "talented" or "skilled" you may perceive them to be.  Never assume that you are "self-made," or that you "never got help from anyone," or that you ever accomplished anything "all by yourself" and that "others are leaching off your genius" and other such poisonous rationalizations that cause the rich to grind on the faces of the poor, to speciously claim that they "earned" all their wealth and therefore owe the impoverished nothing (least of all the token taxes that could help alleviate the suffering of those who enabled one's material wealth), and that have allowed the powerful throughout history to justify their oppressions, for you never completely know who all has helped and enabled you along the way.  Jack White at least had the awareness and decency to acknowledge what Meg White did for him while they were together; may the rest of us learn to be likewise gracious--not condescendingly, not patronizingly, but sincerely, soberly, and truthfully.