Meg White

From Stripespedia

Revision as of 18:29, 22 February 2009

An early picture of Meg with her famous (and unfortunately long gone) pigtails, sitting on her trademark peppermint drum.

Megan Martha White is the drummer, percussionist and backing (sometimes lead) vocalist of the Detroit minimalist garage blues duo The White Stripes.

History

Meg was born Megan Martha White on December 10, 1974 in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Before she was the drummer for The White Stripes, she was a bartender at Memphis Smoke, a barbeque restaurant in the Detroit, Michigan suburb of downtown Royal Oak. It has been said that bourbon is her favorite beverage. Despite various claims by the band, Meg and Jack White are not brother and sister, but are in fact ex-husband and wife. Meg met John Gillis in 1994, and they were married on September 21, 1996. Jack later took Meg's surname, but they later divorced in 2000.

Personal Life

Meg in action, playing the drums.

Meg is very shy in public, and will often usually never speak at all in interviews. Because of this, little is known about her personal life. Meg says that because of this, she relates to Bob Dylan, one of her favorite musical artists. But when she says something, Jack takes it 'into serious consideration'. She has spoken more in recent interviews, however.

Not much is known who she is dating or anything (unlike Jack). It is known that she used to date Oliver Henry (sax and guitar) from The Soledad Brothers, a band whose members were close friends with the Stripes (drummer Ben was Jack's former roommate, and guitarist Johnny taught Jack slide guitar and played slide on the first Stripes album) before the band broke up in 2006.

Meg is partially deaf in her right ear, and she usually wears a hearing aid.

She heavily smokes and drinks. She seems to prefer Camel Lights and bourbon, respectively. In fact, she says her pre-show warm up consists of "whiskey and Red Bull".

She is known for drumming barefoot or wearing socks, and only recently began to wear shoes, notably Pumas. When asked about it, she said that the years of drumming barefoot have torn up her skin.

She served as maid of honor at the wedding of Jack White and Karen Elson.

On September 11, 2007, the White Stripes were forced to cancel 18 tour dates due to Meg White's suffering from acute anxiety. The following day, said problems caused the duo to cancel the remainder of their 2007 UK tour dates as well. There have been reports, however, that the tour was cancelled due to an alleged sex tape being released on the Internet. A band spokesman has since stated that the woman in the footage is not Meg. She recovered and appeared onstage during an encore set at a Detroit show with The Raconteurs in June 2008, which was met with an enthusiastic audience.

Minimal style

Meg White's minimalistic drumming style has been the subject of much debate over the course of the eleven years she has been playing. Jack White downplays criticisms of her primal style, insisting, "I never thought 'God, I wish Neil Peart was in this band.' It's kind of funny. When people critique hip hop, they're scared to open up, for fear of being called racist. But they're not scared to open up on female musicians, out of pure sexism. Meg is the best part of this band. It never would have worked with anybody else, because it would have been too complicated... It was my doorway to playing the blues." Criticisms of her style appeared in the 2003 film "School of Rock".

Meg White herself admits, "I appreciate other kinds of drummers who play differently, but it’s not my style or what works for this band. I get [criticism] sometimes, and I go through periods where it really bothers me. But then I think about it, and I realize that this is what is really needed for this band. And I just try to have as much fun with it as possible." She has also said, “I just know the way [Jack] plays so well at this point that I always know kind of what he’s going to do. I can always sense where he’s going with things just by the mood he’s in or the attitude or how the song is going. Once in a while, he throws me for a loop, but I can usually keep him where I want him."

While Jack is the lead vocalist, Meg does sing lead vocals on five of the band's songs: "In the Cold, Cold Night" and "Well It's True That We Love One Another" (from Elephant), "Passive Manipulation" (from Get Behind Me Satan), "Who's a Big Baby?" (released on the "Blue Orchid" single), and "St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air)" (from Icky Thump).

Equipment

• Drum kits:
  • Pearl
  • Ludwig
    • Meg plays a Ludwig Maple set in either Arctic White or Red Sparkle. She is usually playing a 18x22, 9x13, 16x16, with a 5x14 snare. She has played other drums, but this is the typical setup.
  • Signature peppermint bass drum head
• Drum sticks:
  • Vater XD-Rock Wood
  • Zildjian
    • Meg used to use Zildjian ROCK sticks. According to the Vater artists page, she currently uses Vater XD-Rock Wood sticks.
• Cymbals:
  • Paiste 14" Signature Medium Hi-hats
  • Paiste 19" (I've also heard 18") Signature Power Crash
  • Paiste 22" 2002 Ride
• Other:
  • Desk bells
    • The desk bells are the bells that can be heard at the beginning of "Red Rain". They were brought on the accompanying tour for Get Behind Me Satan, and appeared on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in a performance of "Red Rain". Essentially like these, but mounted rather than loose.
  • Maracas (as heard on "My Doorbell"... among others?)
  • Bongos (as heard on "As Ugly As I Seem" and possibly "Sugar Never Tasted So Good", among others)
  • Tambourine (as heard on "Apple Blossom", "Your Southern Can...", "Well, It's True That We Love...", and live performances of "Little Room" and "Effect and Cause", among many others)
  • Felt mallets (?)
  • Cardboard box (as heard on "Hotel Yorba")
  • Electric guitar (played once on the last episode of Conan, 2/20/09; believed to be a Truetone model)
  • Other assorted instruments and hardware

Facts

• Meg came up with the name "The White Stripes", inspired by her love of peppermints, an object which would later become somewhat of a motif for the group, appearing on Meg's bass drum, among other things. Other names in question included "Bazooka", "The Peppermints", and "Soda Powder".
• Meg White plays percussion on the Soledad Brother's "I'm So Glad" off of their album, Voice Of Treason.
• A GeoCities website, The White Stripes Conspiracy Reader, suggests that Meg is actually a robot, a theory that some fans claim to accept as fact. Presented in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, the website alleges the real Meg died in a car wreck and was replaced by the Megbot, a lifelike robot created by Jack; he purportedly decided to cover up the truth and carried on with the band as usual. The site supports its claims with "evidence" from photos, lyrics, videos, and other media. Its popularity in the White Stripes fan community has become an in-joke among them and also with the band, who have alluded to it in interviews (Jack will offer to "reveal a secret," then state that Meg is actually an anroid; in return, she will usually reply in an annoyed voice, "Dammit, Jack!").
• Animals are something of a motif in photography of Meg. Among those photographed alongside her are a snake, rabbits, rats (the Hotel Yorba video and various other pictures), and raccoons (the 7 inch cover of the Denial Twist single).
• Like Jack, Meg has claimed to be a taxidermy hobbyist, but says she owns just a few subjects (including a white mouse), while Jack owns many.
• Meg usually plays the organ on live performances of the song "In the Cold Cold Night", though it was Jack who provided the accompaniment for the Elephant version.
• Meg appeared with Jack in a scene in the Jim Jarmusch film "Coffee and Cigarettes" in 2003. * Meg loves vintage items, and fills her house with 1950's era furniture.
• Meg broke her arm slipping on ice in 2003, which resulted in the White Stripes having to cancel several concerts.

Quotes

• (On her relationship with Jack) "We've never had problems. We love each other, understand each other, and get past anything."
• (When asked what she did with her first royalty check) "I was able to afford a car that didn't break down every five minutes."
• "We never really cared about all the things that other people cared about, you know? Like, people recognizing me on the street never interested me. I've always been kind of suspicious of the world, anyway, so it's pretty easy for me to live in my own little world."
• (When asked if she misses having a bassist in the band) "Actually I don't. I've never played with a bass player before, so I wouldn't even know. It wouldn't feel like it's missing, I just think it's normal... I prefer it that way so I only have to concentrate on Jack."
• (On deciding to end the Elephant tour when they did) "We were like a moth right next to the flame. It's like, do any more and you go down. We were so tired. One final lap, and then have a rest."
• "I wasn't brought up with any religion, actually."
• "Apparently, there's a little red demon dwarf that haunts the city, and before every major bad thing that's happened, it's appeared to somebody. Last time, he appeared in a Cadillac."
• "Because you can be lazy if you don't know the truth."
• (On director Michel Gondry) "Every second is mapped out and he has this total childish fascination with color and shapes and sequences."
• "Everything else outside me seems far, far away."
• "I don't want to know about my biggest idols. I don't want to read their autobiographies, I don't want to find out what they're really like."
• "I got more used to my own voice, but still it's hard for me to listen to my own voice, or hear the recordings."
• "I have to have the cotton candy shipped in."
• "I met Drew Barrymore in New York and she said she liked the band. That was really cool. I grew up on her."
• "I've never been much into picking things apart."
• "It's cool to meet your idols. It's a good opportunity to travel. Those kinds of things are good."
• "It's hard to get that real good feeling about festivals sometimes."
• "It's pretty sad when you have to choose between the lesser of two evils."
• "It's the emotion of it that hits me, more than anything technical."
• "Jack, the only trick I ever played on you was never tricking you at all."
• "Maybe I'm a little more confident than I used to be, but not much."
• "That's what my Dad always told me, on the ballot, they should always have a third choice, like none of the above, then if enough people picked that, they'd have to get new candidates."
• "The only things that are a little bit newer are the CD burners, but we hid them under the table, so basically we had the feeling we were somewhere completely different, in another time.
• "There's nothing I'm doing these days that I ever thought I was gonna do."
• "The Cuban sandwich is my favorite."
• "You know, when I hear music, I just hear the whole thing."

External Links

• Meg White on Wikipedia
• Meg White on IMDB
• Meg White on Drummerworld
• Meg White on Drum Solo Artist
• Meg interviews Jack for Amazon in time of the release of Get Behind Me Satan