Technical difficulties aside, bowler hat aside, ‘Elephant’ aside, this is not a gig, it’s an event. James Berry bears witness to the centrifugal pull of the awesome ‘Stripes.
17/04/2003
An immaculately attired guitar-tech (black suit ‘n’ bowler hat ‘n’ velvet-red shirt combo – couldn’t tell you if there was a Motorhead t-shirt underneath) sits stage-right dragging nonchalantly on a cigarette, blows a mushrooming wisp of smoke into the Academy’s great cavern, it strays into the harsh white spotlight shooting from the balcony which is strikingly illuminating the taut, wired figurine of Jack White and saving him from melting into the primary-red carpet beneath. Then there’s a blissful Meg, stage-left, penetrating the column of light and taking a portion of it for herself with devil-may-care flicks of her black flowing locks and distracted, wandering arms.
Theoretically this could be a glimpse of any band, at any venue, on any night, any time over the past half a century. But really it couldn’t and it’s not. It’s here and it’s now and it’s The White Stripes. And for that 5,000 partially colour-coordinated people (not to mention the thousands upon thousands that filled the big halls preceding tonight’s UK tour climax) are very grateful. Despite there being little at surface level to tie it down specifically, against all presumed odds they have become the most unique, celebrated and definitive appraisal of rock n roll, as it exists in the theatre of our hearts, on the planet today.
And that song’s not any old song, it’s the billowing ‘Ball & Biscuit’ from their new enamoured and to-scale album ‘Elephant’. And while it’s hardly the best offering on the record it’s as adequate a demonstration of what they’re capable of as almost anything in their arsenal, especially when Jack’s let out to play with it. He jabs at big-lung distortion, slides manically, yelps, urges schizophrenia from his palpitating guitar, Robert Johnson’s nomad soul trying to set up home in his spasm-riddled frame, as Meg pins the song down with such a playful accuracy. It’s them in a nutshell.
‘Elephant’ isn’t even their best record, but that’s unimportant. It’s a White Stripes record. Live it matters even less, the songs returning to the spirit in which they were conceived, lined up like equally sized dominos, to be sent flying by their owner’s startling must-come-from-above fluidity. He is a man out on his own, a soul running wild, as capable as he’s allowed to be within reason, jumping between microphones, guitar and organ as a veteran of all he chooses to touch. The communication the pair command together remains breathtaking, cementing Meg’s part in the magic as she drifts on her own cloud, picking his thoughts and gestures from the air and holding them up on an equalising plinth.
Even technical difficulties, of which there are many tonight, can’t knock him off his sway one millimetre (hell, actually, metric may give you the wrong impression, so 0.039 of an inch then). As a squealing ‘I Think I Smell A Rat’ cuts abruptly under a dying guitar, Meg keeps things ticking over instinctively as he darts to his organ and creeps expertly from the depths with sinister old blues cover ‘St James Infirmary Blues’. Then with an utterly throbbing version of ‘Elephant’ highlight ‘The Hardest Button To Button’ all is forgotten. Not that it needs to be forgiven. We’re too far away to make out his face, but we’re sure we can hear his eyes jerking out of their sockets.
There are too many spine-rupturingly tingling moments to detail them all, but he’s carried in on the swell of applause like some returning son in an epic film opening and pushed, already at momentum, into ‘Black Math. ‘Dead Leaves and The Dirty Ground’ is shockingly electric, their cover of ‘Jolene’ proves itself the definitive one, his voice spitting rapture over its every chord, they make Brendan Benson’s excellent ‘Good To Me’ utterly their own, ‘Hotel Yorba’ is wired with static excitement and ‘7 Nation Army’ is additionally twangy and as unreservedly irresistible as expected. Yeah, it’s a set built on tradition, but that’s never your first thought. Who knows how or why exactly they’re here. One born every generation? What we do know is they’ve taken an old lump of rock and made it centre of the earth again.
Relevant sites:
http://www.whitestripes.com
James Berry for Crud Magazine© 2003