Jack White: from a Detroit upholstery shop to Seven Nation Army | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

JACK WHITE wrote the riff that football crowds chant all over the world. Seven Nation Army won a Grammy for Best Rock Song in 2004, and it has outlived the band that made it.

He did it with very little: a guitar, a drummer and a few rules. “I need to confine myself in order to create things,” he said in 2012.

Since then he has had three solo albums go to number 1 in the US, won 12 Grammys and built a record label that helped bring vinyl back.

Early life and training

He was born John Anthony Gillis in Detroit on 9 July 1975, the youngest child in a big family.

Before music paid, furniture did. In the mid-1990s he had his own one-man upholstery business in Detroit, Third Man Upholstery. The name stuck. It’s where Third Man Records got its name.

On 21 September 1996 he married Meg White and took her surname. They divorced in 2000, but the band they started kept going.

Career chapters

1. 1997The White Stripes form in Detroit
2. 2001White Blood Cells; Third Man Records founded
3. 2003Elephant and Seven Nation Army
4. 2004Produces Loretta Lynn’s, Who’s Who number 13 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon) Van Lear Rose
5. 2005The Raconteurs form
6. 2008It Might Get Loud, with Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32 and The Edge, Who’s Who number 7
7. 2009The Dead Weather form
8. 2011The White Stripes split
9. 2012Blunderbuss, his first solo number 1
10. 2025Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
11. 2026Frozen Charlotte

The White Stripes 1997 to 2011

Jack and Meg formed The White Stripes in Detroit in 1997, Jack on guitar and vocals and Meg on drums. Early on they let people think they were brother and sister.

Their debut album came out in 1999, then De Stijl in 2000 and White Blood Cells in 2001. Elephant followed in 2003, with Seven Nation Army on it, and at the 2004 Grammys it won Best Alternative Music Album while the song won Best Rock Song. They announced their split on 2 February 2011.

Producer and side projects 2004 to 2010

In 2004 he produced Loretta Lynn’s, Who’s Who number 13 in · Ultimate Classic Country Reunion (story coming soon) Van Lear Rose, which reached number 2 on the country albums chart and won two Grammys. “She was just a genius,” he said in a 2022 tribute.

He started The Raconteurs in 2005 and The Dead Weather in 2009, wrote Another Way to Die for the Bond film Quantum of Solace, and played Elvis Presley in the film Walk Hard.

In 2008 he sat down with Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32 and The Edge, Who’s Who number 7 for It Might Get Loud, a documentary about the electric guitar directed by Davis Guggenheim. It looks at the careers and playing of all three, then brings them together on one soundstage to swap riffs and play. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008, where all three came to the screening, and Sony Pictures Classics released it in the US in August 2009.

Solo 2012 to 2026

Blunderbuss (2012), Lazaretto (2014) and Boarding House Reach (2018) all went to number 1 on the Billboard 200. Lazaretto sold about 40,000 vinyl copies in its first week, which his publicist called the biggest first-week US vinyl sales since 1991.

Frozen Charlotte, his seventh solo studio album, came out on 10 July 2026, and his North American tour opened that night at The Anthem in Washington DC.

Craft, sound and style

The bass line in Seven Nation Army isn’t a bass. It’s his guitar, through a DigiTech Whammy pedal set to drop an octave. He says he picked up the Whammy after hearing Tom Morello, Who’s Who number 22.

The White Stripes guitars

For about ten years his main guitar was a red 1964 Airline “JB Hutto”, made of Res-O-Glas for the Montgomery Ward catalogue, with two Valco single-coil pickups and no truss rod. Guitar.com says it cost US$99 new, and places it on Elephant. “This is my main guitar, that I played for like 10 years,” he told Mixdown in 2023.

The slide guitar was a Kay hollowbody archtop with one DeArmond pickup and nothing but an on and off switch. It was tobacco sunburst until 2001, when he covered it in Kraft paper. The sources disagree on its age: Guitar.com says mid to late 1950s, and its Elephant review says early 1960s. That’s the guitar on Seven Nation Army, in open A. He’s had it since he was 20, and it was still on stage in 2024. His tech, Dan Mancini, has kept it going for about 25 years, once patching the binding with old console knobs from the BBC’s Maida Vale studios.

There were stranger ones. A 1970s Crestwood Astral II, a Japanese plywood hollowbody, played slide in open E on I Fought Piranhas. A Gretsch Anniversary Jr he calls the “Green Machine” was cut into a double cutaway and fitted with a Bigsby, a mute and a light-activated theremin he works with his wrist.

Six Ten, a Twin and two pedals

The main amp was a Silvertone 1485 “Six Ten”, a head with a 6x10 cabinet. Mixdown has it on the first three albums, and Guitar.com on Elephant. He didn’t use its reverb or tremolo. For reverb there was a Fender Twin Reverb alongside it.

He has said his only two pedals were a DigiTech Whammy and an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi, and both are on Seven Nation Army, with the Whammy set an octave down. Guitar.com’s two articles list them in a different order, so the order is still open.

Elephant itself was made in just over two weeks at Liam Watson’s Toe Rag Studio in London, on equipment from before 1963. The liner notes say no computers were used.

The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather and the solo years

Around 2007 he got a 1957 Gretsch White Penguin. With The Dead Weather he played a Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird he named “Billy-Bo”, through a Fender ’65 Twin Reverb reissue. “No Silvertone, like in the White Stripes,” he told Mixdown.

On the 2024 No Name tour, Premier Guitar found his Fender Jack White TripleCaster Telecaster: a bridge humbucker of his own, a P-90 style JW-90 in the middle and a Cunife Wide-Range humbucker at the neck, made with Tim Shaw, plus a Bigsby B5, a Hipshot Xtender for dropping to D, and a kill switch on the lower bout. His stage guitars carry a B-bender too, which he’s used since the Raconteurs’ 2019 tour. There was also a sparkle-blue Jazzmaster that Mancini fitted with Tim Shaw Firebird pickups and the insides of an Electro-Harmonix Pitchfork, built into the body. The Tele is strung .010 to .046, the Jazzmaster .011 to .049.

The amp was his Fender Pano Verb: 70 watts from two 6L6 and two 6V6 valves, one 15-inch and one 10-inch Jensen speaker, spring reverb, tremolo and a built-in boost, inspired mostly by his 1964 Vibroverb. “We found the best of the old, with the best of the new,” he told Guitar Player. The pedals filled two boards he calls “burger and drink” and “fries and milkshake”, with a Whammy and a rehoused Big Muff still on them.

Attack first

He names one guitarist as the one he learned most from: Dexter Romweber of Flat Duo Jets, for “the wild abandon of how he attacked his guitar”. Cheap old instruments, open tunings and slide did the rest. Matt Bellamy of Muse says he does “pretty busy solos” in every song.

Stories people still tell

1. Found at the Corner Hotel.

   In January 2002, on The White Stripes’ Australian tour, he came up with the Seven Nation Army riff at a soundcheck at the Corner Hotel in Richmond, Melbourne. “I was sound-checking at the Corner Hotel in Australia when that came out,” he said. He has said he first thought of saving it for a Bond theme.

2. Iggy leads the chant.

   At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Los Angeles on 8 November 2025, Iggy Pop inducted The White Stripes and got the crowd singing the riff. Jack accepted; Meg didn’t attend.

3. Third Man.

   Third Man Records started in Detroit in 2001, opened in Nashville in March 2009, and came home to Detroit’s Cass Corridor in November 2015.

Legacy

Seven Nation Army is a stadium chant now, sung by people who have never heard of The White Stripes. Lazaretto’s vinyl numbers and Third Man made him a public face of the vinyl comeback.

His advice to young people at the Hall of Fame: “get your hands dirty and drop the screens”.