Songs of a Different Stripe

Songs I am butchering this week:

• "Little Ghost"


• "You've Got Her in Your Pocket"


• "Happy Birthday"

Two of these are by the White Stripes—can you guess which ones? We recently watched The White Stripes: Under the Great White Northern Lights (2009), a rockumentary by Emmett Malloy about this controversial duo's 2007 Canadian tour. If you have any affinity for their music at all, you'll enjoy this 90-minute glimpse into their life on the road. The majority of the film showcases the songs played at various gigs, at venues that range from tiny bars and outdoor courtyards to giant concert halls.

It's fun, and it's disturbing. The alleged brother-and-sister team (Jack White on guitar and vocals; Meg White on drums) has an excellent back and forth on stage, where little nods of the head and juts of the guitar neck serve as shorthand to keep them in sync. But off-stage, the duo barely makes eye contact. The film partially explains this by highlighting Meg White's reserved personality throughout, both in direct interviews and in stolen moments. No matter the situation, she's quiet and reserved—so quiet, in fact, that all of her comments are subtitled.

With outgoing, talkative Jack as the frontman, the pairing with Meg is odd, and it makes for some uncomfortable moments. It's hard to know what's really going on with these two—who were actually once married to each other, although Malloy sticks with Jack's brother-and-sister explanation—and there are several points in the film where I wondered why Meg sticks with it. It seems like unending purgatory for her. Then again, it's hard to say. To paraphrase one of Jack's comments in the film: Nothing is what it seems with the White Stripes.

So, the film inspired me to learn a couple of tunes. This is a challenge, of course, because so many of their songs are made for the electric guitar and just don't translate that well to acoustic. I stumbled upon a nice arrangement of "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," which has a haunting, lilting melody with terribly misogynistic lyrics. Of course, I can't help but wonder now if Meg is the one in the pocket with "no way out"?

To make up for my betrayal of womankind by playing that song at all, I'm also working on "Little Ghost," which is a fun, fast-paced tale about a romance between a boy and his girl ghost. The line "The moment that I met her/I did not expect a specter" is only one of the reasons I love the White Stripes. My guitar-playing friends have pooh-poohed their guitar arrangements, but I defy them to dis their lyrics!