The White Stripes: The White Stripes [THIRD MAN/LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This Third Man pressing brings the duo's debut home to the label Jack White runs today. The album is certified gold in the UK, and Jack has called it the most raw, most powerful and most Detroit-sounding record they ever made.

This edition

• Poster included

About the album

The budget was somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000, the drummer played barefoot, and most of the vocals went down on a 1953 Revere reel-to-reel. Jack and Meg White cut their debut in four to six days in January 1999, mostly with Jim Diamond at Ghetto Recorders in Detroit, with a handful of songs recorded in their own living room. Sympathy for the Record Industry put it out, and they dedicated it to the bluesman Son House.

Jack wanted it to sound like a live album, so a 1950s RCA microphone, a Japanese-made Crestwood Astral II guitar and a DigiTech Whammy pedal did a lot of the heavy lifting, and a donated Electrodyne console handled the mix. "Jimmy the Exploder" kicks the door in, "The Big Three Killed My Baby" was the single, and "Cannon," "Astro," "Screwdriver" and "I Fought Piranhas" show how much noise two people can make. "St. James Infirmary" gets the stomp treatment, and, contrary to popular belief, Jack modelled his singing on Paul McCartney rather than Robert Plant.

XL and V2 later brought it to bigger audiences in the UK and US, and those early fans had the jump on everybody. The whole thing cost less than a decent used car, and it still sounds as if it could knock one over.

Also at Kops: more The White Stripes on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Third Man Records (cat# TMR042), a reissue of the 1999 album.