Jack White: No Name, Got Game

Former White Stripes Guitarist Earns Four Umlauts

The White Stripes were either the last great rock band of the 20th century or the first great band of the 21st. Perhaps both. I didn't have much access to new music when the White Stripes broke through in the early 2000s. The self-titled debut album was released close to the millennial cusp, in mid-1999, and breakthrough DeStijl, named after an early 20th century Dutch art and architecture movement, came out in 2000. But I heard about the buzz, and I wanted to hear them, especially as they were the hot new thing out of Detroit. I had dedicated my allegiance since Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, which added heavy guitars and raw emotion to the polished but essential sound of Motown. Levi Stubbs and the Detroit Wheels: Wouldn't that have been something? How about Norman Whitfield producing the White Stripes?

There was a new app by which many people were getting free music. It was called Napster, and one could download almost anything. The labels were calling it piracy until they could …