Book excerpt: A White Stripes insider ponders the Detroit duo's lyrics

An anthology of lyrics from one of Detroit's signature bands has arrived.

"The White Stripes Complete Lyrics," compiling nearly 100 songs mostly written by Jack White, has been published by Third Man Books. The 305-page volume, which includes rare photos and images of White's handwritten lyrics, is available now through Third Man and will hit other retailers in coming weeks.

Ben Blackwell ― Jack White's nephew, Third Man Records co-founder and official White Stripes historian ― penned an opening essay for the book, republished here and lightly edited. (Blackwell's footnotes are presented in brackets.)

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Jack White and I have had many arguments. In the 40-plus years we’ve known each other, these disagreements have, more than anything, been about colors. So while the point in the spectrum where red can ever-so-slightly verge into the realm of pink or orange vis a vis printing White Stripes artwork has thankfully never led to us trading blows, it has found either of us exiting a room in a huff on more than one occasion.

Jack and I have only once argued about lyrics.

While transcribing the words to “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman” for the insert included in (the 2001 album) “White Blood Cells,” I typed out this line:

If I held the door open for you it wouldn’t make your day.

A quick check-in on Jack’s end had him correct me:

“It’s ‘would make your day,’” he said.

To me, that didn’t make any damn sense —

If I held the door open for you it would make your day.

Never mind the fact that the way Jack pronounces the word on the record sounds like he’s singing “wouldn’t.” [My observation here is joyously buoyed by the fact that proofreaders for this book, when listening to the song unaware of the matter and transcribing with their ears alone wrote out “wouldn’t.”]

I was more preoccupied with my perception — however specific to my underdeveloped teenage brain it may have been — that my girlfriend’s day was not made by me opening doors for her.

[In hindsight I feel like I was so hell-bent on opening doors … to cars, to buildings, whenever possible, multiple times a day … that the act lost any special meaning and just became viewed as a performative gesture. I wanted more credit than that commensurate with the action of opening a door. I wanted over-effusive praise and astonishment and to be treated like the Second Coming. I wanted the act of opening a door to make her year. I thought that ALL I needed to do was open a door. I should’ve put additional effort in literally any other aspect of being a loving, caring partner. It would be years before I understood this. This was entirely on me. It says nothing about my girlfriend at the time.]

“No … if you open the door, it makes her day,” he countered with all the matter-of-factness of a math teacher expressing the inflexibility of a simple equation.

That did not compute. I explained.

I thought the whole “harder” part of the lyrics meant that there was no acknowledgement, no appreciation, no discernible benefit to actually being a gentleman at the dawn of the 21st century. [I’d peg this as the germination of "Elephant" being dedicated to “the death of the sweetheart” as the throughline from gentleman to sweetheart is fairly direct.]

And with that being the case, why would you even bother? Of course the manners you’ve been taught will slowly die away … there’s nothing to reinforce them nor any tangible evolutionary benefit to keeping them alive.

I say this not to unimpressively insert myself into the situation. Rather to illustrate the point that lyrics, whether intended or not, can be so incredibly up for individual interpretation that even their mishearing can feel profound.

More: 7 notable Detroit references in White Stripes song lyrics

More: Revealing the White Stripes: The inside story of the early years

And while I hear the collective chorus of everyone reading here sighing “duh” in response to the thought, I still have a particular beef with this construct. The fuzzy area of interpretation still frustrates me. I want it to be clear cut black and white. No pink or red or orange. No disagreement. Straightforward. Unapologetically unable to be misconstrued or recontextualized. It’s the reason that I constantly and consistently correct people. Speaking in person. Writing online. Wherever I encounter factual errors or misrepresentations, it bugs the living s--- out of me. I get stuck on the dumbest inconsequential reading of the error … what if in 500 years this is the only recorded mention of the matter … I cannot let it go uncorrected!

The incongruity of creative artistic interpretation against cold factual truths seems to be a diametrically opposed binary that I’ve personally struggled to balance in my head for decades. As a collector and a historian and an archivist, I pride myself on factual accuracy. I also consider myself a poet. I write poems. These two concepts feel at odds with each other, not just in general, but as they exist within my being. And they crash together with glorious frustration in Jack White’s lyrics.

Around the release of “White Blood Cells,” a conversation materialized amongst a group of folks close to the band. We couldn’t help but think that the song “Expecting” was a shot at the band’s booking agent, with its “You sent me to Toledo, Toledo, Toledo” lyrics. They’d played a couple shows in Toledo by that point and, well, it’s not like anyone would ever willingly want to go there. Years later, in a casual conversation with Third Man Records co-founder Ben Swank, he said “I always thought that song was about me.” Specifically, how his girlfriend would make him go to Toledo while they were both living in Detroit … forever a 54-minute fool’s errand southbound on I-75 … even though they were both from Toledo.

Similarly, no less than three people have confided in me that they were the sole inspiration for the finger-in-your-chest lyrics in “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You’re Told)” ... a song where the mere relaying of its title caused Bob Dylan to take a sharp intake of breath, as if to say that’s a bit strong.

Upon the first time really absorbing the lyrics to “Wasting My Time,” I asked Jack if the line about idols walking next to him was specifically about Dan Kroha from the Gories. An esteemed local Detroit band that to this day provides much inspiration from their fearless and against-the-grain approach, Dan was one of the first fans and supporters of the White Stripes. At the time it felt unbelievable that he would show up to the Stripes’ gigs, let alone become a friend and confidant to both Jack and Meg. Without flourish, Jack’s response to my question was, “It’s much bigger than that.”

And therein is the simple beauty of these lyrics collected here, my frustrating inability to attribute them to something explicit and clear. Tied to the inexplicit hope of anyone who ever writes anything creatively … that any line can seem so micro-targeted to the exact specific scenario that you are currently living through and, at the same time, be bigger than all of it. So it feels foolish to even write it out here … but I have no idea what any of the White Stripes lyrics are about.

[Two exceptions: 1. “Jumble, Jumble.” Its lyrics are so basic that Jack explicitly omitted them from the "De Stijl" album art, seemingly out of embarrassment. That one is about Meg falling asleep on a couch. He told me. 2. Jack once introduced “Little Bird” as being about St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals. That tracks.]

I say that from a realm of specificity … clearly there are songs about love or about pain or about childhood … but one thing that elicits fervent respect and frustration from my perspective, is that Jack White has just about never really come out and said “song A is about person B.”

To take it even further, a bit of promotional text released with the announcement of the “Get Behind Me Satan” album in 2005 included this chestnut of diversionary embellishment …

Meg: Jack, are these songs about you?

Jack: No Meg, they’re about you.

Meg: I wish.

Jack: No you don’t. You know I don’t write about myself or my friends, let alone my sister.

In his faithful commitment to stick to his guns and be broad, throw people off the scent and distract interpretation via commentary about his own lyrics and inspirations, Jack breathes added life into his already vivid and compelling words. That so many people can see themselves within these stories, their lives and relationships paralleled to the narrative on the microphone … well, that’s a testament to their strength and to the universality of their reach.

Following my tendency to be thorough and complete in fascination of art and creativity through continuity, my commitment to THE IRREFUTABLE TRUTH has managed to open a can of lyrically entangled worms that has only complicated things, even within the realm of legalities. All just through my own fact-checking for this essay.

Fact: the lyrics to “The Union Forever” are made up entirely from lines of dialog cherry-picked from Citizen Kane.

Fact: the original mix of “The Union Forever” did not include the 33-second long “there’s is a man” a cappella interlude after the second chorus. [This original mix would finally see release on Third Man’s 2021 archival release “White Blood Cells XX.”]

Upon receiving a CD-r of the rough mixes from the Stripes’ first of two stints tracking the album at Easley-McCain Studios in Memphis, I expressly asked Jack why he didn’t include that a cappella part, the one he’d sung when performing the song originally with his bands Two-Star Tabernacle and Jack White & The Bricks. His answer was, plainly, “I forgot.”

So once back at Easley a few weeks later, Jack recorded the austere vocal interlude paired with the metronomic tapping of Meg’s sticks against the rim of her snare drum. This was a different arrangement than done with the previous bands, mainly out of necessity of not having to go and re-record the whole damn thing. But the words proved to be that much more impactful being removed from the music of the previous verses … punctuated by a crashing exclamation point on the word “five” before melting back into the rest of the pre-existing portion of the track. The snippet was seamlessly dropped into the song in the mixing process and no one would be the wiser that “The Union Forever” wasn’t actually recorded exactly the way it’s heard on the album. I felt so proud catching this omission and even more so that it led to involved action from the band. My attention to detail affected change.

Initially these “there is a man” lyrics were uncredited on “White Blood Cells” out of ignorance both youthful and blissful. Not until Roger Ebert’s “Movie Answer Man” syndicated newspaper column (telling the story of a parent’s surprise at their children unexpectedly singing along to the song during a screening of Citizen Kane) did it even become widely known in the public consciousness.

From there, lawyers got involved and credits were eventually updated to include one Pepe Guizar, a songwriter from the turn-of-the-century nicknamed “the musical painter of Mexico.” To this day, his estate still gets paid 50% on all uses of “The Union Forever.”

The problem is, I’m not sure how it even got there. Guizar has only ever been credited as writing the music. Originally titled “A Poco No,” the song was likely first noticed by “Kane” writer/director/producer Orson Welles via its inclusion in the 1938 film “Noches de Gloria.” There seems to be no doubt or argument that the words to the song (specific to the characters and setting of the film) were penned by RKO Radio Pictures in-house lyricist Herman Ruby. These words are the only element present on the song featured in the film that Jack interpolates into “The Union Forever.” Guizar’s “A Poco No” melody, not to mention his lyrics (which are not featured in “Kane”), are nowhere to be found in White’s song.

But no matter how deep I dig … I can’t find any instance of Ruby having any proper credit for this song. Essentially considered ephemeral in the context of a film from the first half of the 20th century, there’s not even consensus on the title of the song, colloquially referred to as “Good Old Charlie Kane” or “Oh Mister Kane.” Sometimes it’s simply listed as “Charlie Kane.” Outside of the film itself, I cannot find evidence of the song ever being issued anywhere … never once on a release of the score or soundtrack or a “Music From…” “Citizen Kane.”

[The case has been made to me that this whole fiasco around “The Union Forever” may be better off just letting sleeping dogs lie. As there’s a verifiable injustice here, attempted to have been corrected once already, it feels disingenuous to ignore. Best case scenario … no one even controls “Oh Mister Kane” and it’s an abandoned work free and clear to include and interpolate anywhere without question. Worst case, the wrong party has been paid undue royalties for nearly 20 years and those rightfully due their monies expect to be properly paid regardless. … We have tried, again and again.]

And in the confusing world of song publishing, there is no extant proof or documentation that this “Kane” song was ever registered to declare Ruby’s authorship and rights ascribed to it. Or Guizar’s even, for that matter. This all feels important. It feels like it NEEDS to be shared. Facts and truth are necessary.

So it would be foolish for me to not also point out that the opening lyrics to “The Union Forever” (“It can’t be love, for there is no true love”) are wholesale lifted from another song featured in “Citizen Kane,” and no one seems to acknowledge that truth.

In the aftermath of the original revelation in the Ebert column, the initial press reports about “The Union Forever” in 2003 all seemed focused on the cribbing of the song “In A Mizz.” Jack spoke about “Mizz” as the impetus to writing “The Union Forever” in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2001. [Though the quote is from 2001, Rolling Stone did not print it until 2003. In this instance Jack refers to the song by the wrong title which only muddies the waters even further. “There’s a song in the film, ‘It Can’t Be Love Because There Is No True Love’ at a party they have in the Everglades. I was trying to play it on guitar and I went through the film and started writing down things that might rhyme and make sense together.”]

Written by Charlie Barnet and Haven Johnson in 1939, “In A Mizz” would see release as a 78 rpm on Bluebird before members of Cee Pee Johnson’s band with Alton Redd on vocals were filmed covering the song for inclusion in” Citizen Kane.”

The point to all of this is … even with the best of intentions, with all the prestige and respect and importance conferred upon two songs being featured in (and one with lyrics specifically written for) the most celebrated film of all time … intent and authorship and credit are still largely subjective and subjected to the whim of interpretation. All to say that in the end, words written for a pinpointed, precise purpose (while still being poignant and personal), will always have the potential to be rediscovered, reinterpreted and reborn many moons later.

So what happened with “Oh Mister Kane” (and, to an extent, “In A Mizz”) is what I’ve come to expect will happen to any one of the songs written by Jack White for the White Stripes. In what feels like an affront to half of my existence (that rational, fact-obsessed robot), it’s what I HOPE will happen, even if just once. Despite all best efforts, authorship will melt away, misattribution will overtake and long after our corporeal existence has atomized to dust, all that will be left is a couple of lines that transcend.

In life … the facts are there. The truth is attainable. It might be buried underneath 80-some years of confusion and unintended obfuscation, but if you put in the work you can find it. There’s a beauty to that. But there’s hardly any romance there.

I don’t know if the impetus for “I’m Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman” is something real or an imagined figment. I hope Jack will take that one to the grave. But that girlfriend who I was hoping to impress with my door opening some 22 years ago? She’s my wife now. These days I don’t open her door nearly as much as I used to. But when I do, it easily makes her day.

© 2023 Ben Blackwell. Excerpted from "The White Stripes Complete Lyrics."

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: White Stripes insider reflects on the Detroit duo's lyrics in new book