Jack White “Entering Heaven Alive”
Because I’m not a seventh son, I find it hard to relate to his situation. And because I am actually a first son, I will probably never understand. I received all of the parental benefits of my birthright — adoration and awe. As well as all of the curses — fear and anxiety. First borns get so much — many have suggested that they get the most. But the thing that they can never have, and the thing that they often want more than anything else, is an older brother. Somebody to teach them about girls and sports and drugs and jokes and, especially, about music. Somebody to introduce them to Pink Floyd and Pavement. Somebody to discern between good Classic Rock (The Kinks, The Band) and less good Classic Rock (CSNY, The Doors). Somebody to explain Soul Music and Punk Rock and Indie Rock and Hip Hop. Somebody with wisdom but also with an unflinching willingness to humiliate you for poor taste.
So, I never had an older brother. But Jack Anothony Gillis had six. Yes, six. As well as three older sisters. Without question, this is his distinguishing trait. It’s not how he plays guitar or sings. Not how he looks like Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka seven days into steroids. Not for what he’s done with Third Man Records or the Garage Rock Revival or Detroit or Nashville. No, his super-feature is that he is the youngest of ten children — and specifically that he is the seventh son.
I know almost nothing about Jack White’s siblings. But, given that he was born in 1975, to a mother who was forty-five at the time, it’s fair to assume that he has brothers and sisters who are many, many years older than he is. Which means that he likely has brothers who were born before The Beatles appeared on “Ed Sullivan.” Brothers who remember young Elvis. Who listened to music on vinyl and cassettes and, even, eight tracks. Because Jack White son is so intensely private and so prone to misdirection, it’s hard to say anything for sure about the other six Gillis boys. But I think it’d be more than fair to posit that that a seventh son is, by definition, bequeathed some of the savvy and tenfold the independence of his older brothers. Whereas the first son must become that thing that his parents hope, wish and pray for, the seventh son can become whatever the fuck they want.
In the case of Jack White, this means that, at some point in the Eighties, you get to watch your brothers form a band called Catalyst. You inherit their drums. And their guitars. You get “Dark Side of The Moon” and “Stairway to Heaven” explained to you. And maybe one of them, or their even cooler buddies, tells you about Robert Johnson. And then, because you live in Detroit and you have so many siblings who are so much older, maybe you hook up with a guy who one of your older brothers knows a little and who is nearly twice your age and runs a furniture upholstery shop. And maybe that guy offers you an apprenticeship at that upholstery shop and, while you two work together — you and this sixteen years older friend of your brothers — he plays music by The Gories and The Dirtbombs and your life is irrevocably changed.
There’s a famous old Dale Carnegie quote that goes: “To be interesting, be interested.” The seventh son cannot not be interested. Even if he is introverted (which Jack White seems to be). Even if he is standoffish (which White has sometimes been accused of). No matter their disposition, the seventh son inherits more influences and curiosities than the average person could reasonably imagine. It’s not even a matter of choice — they are thrust upon him by sibling judgment (at best) and terror (at worst).
Jack White gets all this. He’s written this narrative and shared this story — albeit in fragments — many times over the years. He knows that he is different. The way he looks and dresses. What he sounds like. How he can go from searing electric blues to charming kiddie folk to dixie jazz just like that. The fact that his name is what it is because he chose to use the surname of his first wife who was also his bandmate and who he — for a while at least—- maintained was his sister. But more so than different, he is interested. For reasons that I can’t really explain, White maintains a personal website to catalogue his craft, design and fine art work, which includes distinct sections for (1) industrial design, (2) Interior design, (3) Furniture and upholstery, (4) Graphic design, (5) Instruments and hardware, (6) Sculpture, (7) Vinyl, (8) Film and directing and (9) Photography.
There are, of course, normal and expected levels of interested-ness and interesting-ness and there are Jack White levels. White’s levels straddle the line between interesting and weird. When I first visited the Third Man Records offices in Nashville more than a decade ago, the (then) tiny shop up front sold three inch vinyl records and shrunken heads. The staff all worse suits and thin black ties. The office featured a skate ramp slash concert venue and an instant vinyl pressing record booth that I was told was the one used by Martin Sheen in “Badlands.” In the same way that Charlie Buckets loved chocolate but not in the way that Willy Wonka did, I love records and design, but maybe not in the same way that Jack White does. In more ways than I can count and in ways that he is no doubt aware of, Jack White is our real life Willy Wonka and Third Man is his real life Chocolate Factory.
Though White’s profound interestedness is a fraternal imperative, his weirdness has been intentionally cultivated. I first heard of The White Stripes in early 1999, just before their self-titled debut was released and because I worked at an online record store that was also a record label, a copy made its way into our office — on cassette, hand labeled, of course. It almost goes without saying that “The White Stripes” (the album) was arresting. That voice. That guitar. Those drums. The Robert Johnson by way of The Stones. The Dylan cover that no one had thought to cover before. The shitty sound. But, mostly, that there were just two of them. Just Jack and Meg. In 1998, I had a mental list of every two piece Rock band I could think of, and it started and ended with Flat Duo Jets. In the Spring of 1999, that list swelled to two — two very interesting, kind of weird and now only semi-unique bands.
Almost exactly two years later, while in Austin for SXSW, I ambled over to a bar on Sixth Street which I am certain does not exist any more and where a few dozen industry folks were scattered around drinking, chitting, chatting and doing a bunch of other things not related to watching the band. That band, of course, was the duo who’d I’d just been introduced to the previous Spring. Dressed in red and white. Loud, and a little sloppy — just like on that tape. And completely, staggeringly engrossing. Though plenty of people at the conference were dropping the band’s name, very few were actually listening to The White Stripes that day. By the summer of that same year, however, it seemed that The White Stripes were being heard by absolutely everyone.
In 2001, because my fledgling dotcom startup and still nascent record label didn’t pay all the bills, I added a third hustle to my resume: digital marketing at V2 Records. V2 was a “big indie” owned by Richard Branson. Their signing of The White Stripes, which coincided almost exactly with my start date, came as a massive shock to most of the music industry. It wasn’t simply the size of the deal that was reported. Nor was it the seemingly unprecedented freedom afforded to the band. It was obviously not a shocker that V2 would want to land a hot property or that they could imagine The White Stripes breaking into the mainstream. The shock was that Jack and Meg White (but especially Jack) would have the un-weirdness to sign any deal. That they’d actually negotiate a contract and expose their ambition. It confirmed that they were, in fact, not a gimmick. And, despite what we learned about their actual relationship (were married once, were never siblings), that they were also not fucking around.
While V2 was readying the reissue of “White Blood Cells” — promoting the Michel Gondry directed videos on MTV and planning for what would become “Elephant,” I stood nearby witnessing the ascent of the most unlikely Rock star I could fathom. It was hard to believe that a two piece band, inspired by The Flat Duo Jets, was the object of so much desire. It was even harder for me to square Jack White, the quiet, meticulous and oddly gigantic (six feet, two inches and thick) human with the wild, jocular, toy-like character he played on stage and on TV. But most of all, I simply could not believe the tsunami that followed them.
After The White Stripes, we got The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Hives, The Killers, The Black Keys (don’t get Jack started) and The Von Bondies (really don’t get Jack started). The “Garage Rock Revival,” which was actually more like the third sequel to the original, graced the covers of Spin, Alternative Press and NME. Nirvana (and I suppose Sonic Youth before them) had broken the indie sell-out taboo to become global superstars, but they had paid the highest imaginable price for it. The White Stripes, on the other hand, had sold up but not out. They achieved extraordinary commercial success, but not quite Nirvana level. Before Death Cab and Spoon and The National crossed over from Indie darlings to mainstream upper middle class, The White Stripes blazed the trail for a career wherein the artist could retain control, wherein the economics were fair and wherein the cost was not their soul.
“Elephant” proved to be peak White Stripes. In addition to being their most accomplished and best selling record, it’s the moment right before two very interesting people began to feel the pull of other interests. In the case of Jack, it was a second marriage, a first child, Third Man Records and The Raconteurs. In the case of Meg, it was her privacy, her wellness and the life she wanted but could not have as the most famous drummer on the planet. The final two White Stripes albums were thrilling but uneven. What had once seemed weird and interesting and fun, seemed odd and serious — like work. And so, to the surprise of almost no one, but the disappointment of most everyone, the band officially called it quits in 2011.
By that point, Jack had started another band (The Dead Weather) and had begun recording his solo debut. He was, alongside Dave Grohl and Dave Matthews, the most famous, contemporary American Rock Star. But unlike the Daves, who pride themselves on their relatability, Jack White went in the opposite direction. Or maybe he never went anywhere at all. Maybe he was always fully the seventh son and maybe the seventh son is so interested and so interesting that it presents as arresting or — yes — weird. Maybe the seventh son is necessarily diffuse and mercurial like Bob Dylan but also affected and halting like Jonathan Richman. Or maybe the seventh son is more like David Byrne, always among others but actually always playing by themself. That’s the sort of Rock Star that White had become — not chummy like the Daves. Irrepressible, but more so inaccessible, halting, odd.
Willy Wonka succeeds because it is slightly more fun than it is weird, which is saying a lot because he is really fucking weird. But the older Jack White got, the more ambitious and canonical he became, the less I was able to detect his Wonka-ness. It was all dystopian Nashville and Steampunk Blues and Art with a capital “A” and Design with a capital “D.” I have nothing against any one of those things. But without the fun — without “Sugar Never Tasted So Good” and “Hello Operator” and “We’re Gonna Be Friends” and "Well It's True That We Love One Another" — White’s music veered from strangely astounding towards astoundingly strange.
Well, for me at least. I did not care much for “Blunderbuss” or “Lazaretto.” And I only barely checked in with “Boarding House Reach.” Meanwhile, White continued to do precisely what he wanted to do and his superstardom, such as it was, did not seem particularly impacted. It was evident that he was still making art at a high level. In fact, he was making quite a lot of art at quite a high level. Nothing would change those titanic first four White Stripes albums. He’d had some dustups with peers, rivals and ex-wives. But, he’d avoided Johnny Depp’s wonkaness. Moreover, the Third Man empire blossomed. White’s company was responsible for numerous wonderful records and wonderful artifacts. But, more than anything else and more than any one person, Jack White was responsible for the resurgent interest in vinyl records.
Over the years I have purchased a smattering of records from Third Man, but amazingly none of them were Jack White records. Nor were they the Dead Weather or Raconteur records. Years passed — nearly a decade — before I even considered the matter. But then, in early 2022, it was reported that White would be releasing not one, but two albums in the coming months. They were initially planned as simultaneous releases, but between the dearth of vinyl pressing plants and pandemic supply chain issues, White opted to release the twin records three months apart.
While double or even triple albums are not all that uncommon, double but separate and simultaneous releases are much rarer birds. Moby Grape (sort of) tried it back in 1968 with “Wow/Grape Jam.” Guns N’ Roses overcommitted to the bit in 1991 with “Use Your Illusion” volumes one and two. Bruce kind of botched it a year later with “Lucky Town” and “Human Touch.” Taylor did it in 2020 with “folklore” and “evermore.” There are a bunch of other examples, but way fewer than you might think. Twin releases require both fecundity and clamor. I certainly understood that Jack White was wildly imaginative and that his cult was loyal, but in 2022 I did wonder how deep each of those wells ran.
The first of the two albums, which arrived in April of 2022, was “Fear of the Dawn.” It was described as the more “typical” of the two records -- loud, electric, curious about Jazz and Hip Hop, but really a big ole Rock record. The second, set for July, entitled “Entering Heaven Alive” was presented as the stripped down, folkier companion. For whatever reason —perhaps because of my affection for those naked, quieter White Stripes songs — I found myself more than a little curious about that one — the second one. Curious enough that in July of 2022, for the first time in more than a decade, I drove to my local record store and bought a brand new Jack White record.
The thing about twin albums is that they are frequently overambitious and underedited. They are the products of hubris or gluttony or an artist high on their own product. But the allure of success — of birthing not one but two distinct masterpieces is a gambit that has seduced many of our greats. “Fear of the Dawn” and “Entering Heaven Alive” however, might be exceptions to the rules. They present much more like products of COVID — of pent up creativity and a supply chain inefficiencies. Further, and according to White himself, they were solutions to a challenge that has existed since the invention of the LP — the challenge album sequencing. No matter how mightily he tried, there was simply no permutation of those twenty-three tracks that sounded right to the seventh son. And so, rather than regret a patchwork quilt, he cut the fabric right down the middle — loud stuff first, more subdued next.
“Entering Heaven Alive” is the subdued stuff. Eleven tracks. Forty minutes. Its chassis sounds like it was built in the early twentieth century, probably in the South, perhaps from parts found in an old Baptist church that had lost its way. Acoustic guitar. Upright bass. Piano. Violin. There’s a threadbare humility to the sound but contrasts sharply with the writing and arrangements, which are more complex and contemporary. To be clear, nothing here sounds even remotely like music made in the twenty-first century. But when White adds Mellotron, Hammond organ, Wurlitzer piano and (of course, electric guitar) the album teeters between Roaring Twenties and mid to late Sixties. It’s a tension that White has been pressing for decades, mixing, matching, cutting and pasting Delta Blues with Garage Rock. But on “Entering Heaven Alive,” the tension is greater and the palette less expected. It’s a little Dixie, sorta Beatnik, kinda Tin Pan Alley, and occasionally Proggy — in an English Folk Rock way. It sounds like nothing else in the world, except that it sounds exactly like a Jack White record.
In that it was recorded at his own studio and in his hometown, in that he plays most of the instruments on the record and in that his wife occasionally accompanies him, “Entering Heaven Alone” bears the markings of a highly domestic and personal album. It is both of those things, but it’s also a deeply existential album, obsessed with love, death and legacy. Sonically, it lacks the leaden weight of previous his solo records, and certainly the heaviness of The White Stripes when they get heavy. And if it’s ambitious, it is in the way that marriage, family, resolutions and faith are ambitious and not in the way that twin albums from iconic Rock stars are.
The highs on this record — and there are several — are lovely and comfortable, rather than thunderous and staggering. But they are wonderful nonetheless. White has an extraordinary knack for proverbs — for lyrical phrases in search of the center point between Old Testament and Steampunk. In lesser hands, “Please God Don’t Tell Anyone,” which I think is a prequel to “A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall,” would be absolutely cloying. It’s a Country Waltz full of Southern Baptist confessions:
Well, my boy started screaming, so I started stealing
My daughter was crying, so I started lying
My baby was sobbing, so I started robbing with a gun
On a screen, typed out like that, White’s words appear almost childlike. But he sells it because his voice, which doesn’t always get the credit that his guitars do, is so vulnerable and — when it needs to be — beautiful. The cold terror of the song’s subject is betrayed by the warmth of the playing and the singing. At his best, that’s the trick that Jack White can pull off — radiating off-kilter violence alongside an endearing, almost childlike beauty. He’s cold but he’s also cuddly.
Of course, he does many other things well. His flair for melody is elite, and frequently overlooked given all of his other schtick. For instance, “A Tree on Fire From Within” succeeds not because it provides such a startling image and credible proverb (it does and it does), but because its bass is a lovely church for the piano’s equally lovely steeple. It’s a beautifully made thing, religious in the way later Beatles were — loose but still hymnal.
Because the album is devoid of computers and because it was recorded in one room, and significantly by one man, “Entering Heaven Alone” holds together musically and thematically. But for all of its olde tyme southern charm, the album is nearly as obsessed with late Sixties England — the land of The Beatles, but also the land of The Moody Blues and Fairport Convention. Unfortunately, White’s interestedness only carries him so far. The flaccid mellotron on “If I Die Tomorrow” undercuts the sharpness of his singing. The complex arrangements and meter don’t always fit the simplicity of his sentiment. For the same reason that his vocals worked with Meg’s steady, heavy hands, they don’t work quite so well when everything around him is inconstant.
When the English Folk thing fails and the Prog stuff fails and the Beatnik Jazz tone poem bit fails, however, Jack White can always go home. Which is exactly where he ends up on “Love is Selfish.” A pert little hook. Bluesy, but in a childlike way. Barely any bass, but obviously more than he had with Meg. His heart sounds heavier. His playing more wizened. He sings:
Love is such a selfish thing
It's always crying, "Me, me, me"
What a strange and true idea. Who else would sing such a thing? Who else would play that so mad and so broken? Who else would sound like that? Like a man child. Like the seventh son.