- Born
- Birth nameJohn Anthony Gillis
- Nicknames
- The Third Man
- Three Quid
- Height6′ 1½″ (1.87 m)
- Jack played guitar and sang in the band The White Stripes. They released six albums: their self-titled debut -- "The White Stripes", "De Stijl", "White Blood Cells", "Elephant", "Get Behind Me Satan", and "Icky Thump", before breaking up in 2011.
White also sings and plays guitar in the band The Raconteurs (alternatively known as "the Saboteurs" in Australia). They have released two albums, "Broken Boy Soldiers" and newly released "Consolers of the Lonely".
White surprised fans by starting a third band, The Dead Weather, while The White Stripes and The Raconteurs were still active. White is primarily a drummer and vocalist for "The Dead Weather", with Dean Fertita acting as guitarist. "The Dead Weather" released their debut album "Horehound" in 2009.
"The White Stripes" won three VMAs for the video for "Fell In Love With A Girl". They played two dates in Detroit in early August supported by The Strokes, and supported them when "The Strokes" played two dates in New York. He has written songs for the film Cold Mountain (2003).
White has appeared in the movies Cold Mountain (2003), Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), The Fearless Freaks (2005) and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). He was one of the subjects of the documentary It Might Get Loud (2008).
White is married to model Karen Elson and the couple has two children, Scarlet Theresa and Henry Lee.
In Rolling Stone's 2003 list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, White ranked 17th.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Faye, edited by DennistheMenace666 - Jack White was born John Anthony Gillis on 9th July 1975 into a musical, catholic family of 10 children in Detroit. He learned to play the guitar, drums and piano. He played in many bands growing up including The Go, Two Star Tabernacle. At 17 he was offered an apprenticeship at Muldoon Studio-an upholstery shop. During his time at Muldoon Studios, he formed a band with Brian Muldoon, the owner; they produced a 3-track single called The Upholsterers. Jack went on to have his own business, Third Man upholstery at about 21 years of age. Around this time he met Meg White, a bartender, and they married in 1996. On Bastille Day 1997, the story goes that Jack was practicing guitar when he sat Meg behind a drum kit and loved how she played, child-like. They formed the band there and then with Jack playing guitar and singing and Meg on drums, they named themselves The White Stripes, after Meg's favorite sweet-peppermints. With Meg's primitive drumming, their basic sound and their uniform appearance of red and white, they made an image of being innocent and child-like, also saying they were siblings. They were signed to Sympathy for the Record Industry, and in 1999 they produced a self-titled album. By this time they had ceased living together and divorced in the year their second album, De Stijl (2000) was made. The band remained intact and signed to a bigger label, V2 Records. Under this record label they made White Blood Cells and their current album, and most popular was the 2003 Elephant. Jack furthered this fame by appearing in blockbuster civil war movie Cold Mountain (2003). He also faced a few mishaps -- including a car crash in which he broke a finger and had to have screws put into his hand, which canceled many gigs.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Isis
- SpousesOlivia Jean(April 8, 2022 - present)Karen Elson(June 1, 2005 - November 26, 2013) (divorced, 2 children)Meg White(September 21, 1996 - March 24, 2000) (divorced)
- ChildrenHenry Lee White
- Frequently photographed wearing the color red
- The colours white, red and black are the trademark colours of his band The White Stripes.
- JB Hutto Montgomery Airline guitar
- Long Black Hair
- Often refers to ex-wife and band mate, Meg White, as his sister. It was revealed this was untrue when their marriage and divorce certificates were posted onto the Internet.
- Meg White was one of the bridesmaids at his wedding to Karen Elson.
- He and wife, Karen Elson, a model for Prada and Banana Republic, were married in a canoe in the Amazon River in Brazil.
- He wanted to become a priest prior to be a musician.
- In mid-2003, after filming Cold Mountain (2003), he was involved in a car accident along with passenger and co-star Renée Zellweger. Renee was unhurt, but White wound up with a broken finger which coincidentally postponed his The White Stripes tour.
- Vinyl is the only thing that's rising because I think it's the only thing that the real music lovers are attaching themselves to-because it's a tangible format that has lasted this long for a reason, because it still sounds the best, it still feels the best. There's an inherent romance to it. When you see the disc moving around, you feel connected, you got up and put the needle down, you feel connected. Just like in a movie theater when they turn the lights down and the movie comes up you feel reverential toward it. When it's digital and you can fast-forward and skip it with a mouse and click it off, you're not reverential toward the music. You're the one is control and you're pushing it around. You can imagine if you're in a movie theater and you could fast forward the movie, it would be a disaster. That's what vinyl is to music.
... All the music lovers know it, all the musicians know it, we've all been saying that no one wants it to be invisible and digital. It's great to have a portable song that you can listen to in your car, that's great, but when it comes down to it, we want to be reverential toward the art form, and the music business is in a giant mess right now, because of technology. And that's the only reason. If the technology hadn't changed we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.
... If you tell someone about a band, if they can't go on YouTube and listen to the band, they get disinterested and they'll move onto something else. You used to go travel around. I used to go really far, to another record store like 45 minutes away because they had the record that the other store didn't . You'd get up out of your seat and do something for real.
That's what this truck is about: it's about people coming here and experiencing something for real. There's a novelty aspect to it, but the best part of it is that people are coming here with their physical bodies and they're talking about music together and what bands they like and what records Third Man is putting out that they've got, and we have Third Man playing onstage. There's nothing going on here in the virtual world, this is all real. That's the thing about coming to a festival, people really want to experience music. - Younger musicians might look at someone who's quote-unquote "made it," and think well, that's it, they won the lottery now they can do whatever they want, and that means go to the Bahamas and just party all the time. But my opinion has always been if you call yourself an artist, you have a responsibility to that liberty that you've given yourself. You don't have a day job where you work 9 to 5 at a factory because your an artist? Well, okay, well then you better make some art. That doesn't mean you can sit around all day and do nothing. That's the way I treat myself, and those are the artists I respect who do that. And it doesn't have anything to do with being a workaholic or anything like that; it's about creating all the time, because that's what you can't help but do.
- No matter how much I try to write a song about characters and the interactions they're having, no matter what I do, I can never make it not come from my own experiences. As an artist you're a victim of your environment. I'd like to make up a scenario, but my writing ends up having a lot to do with with things I've felt and observed.
- [on growing up in Detroit] I think you learn how to walk down the street in a certain way. I think you just learn to have a way about yourself, a style of walking down the street, that keeps people away from you.
- Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content