Their 2001 breakthrough album, White Blood Cells, brought them international fame with the single and accompanying music video for "Fell in Love with a Girl".

[1] Gillis became an altar boy, which landed him an uncredited role in the 1987 movie The Rosary Murders, filmed mainly at Most Holy Redeemer parish in southwest Detroit.

[notes 1] As a senior in high school, he met Meg White at the Memphis Smoke restaurant where she worked;[32] together, they frequented the coffee shops, local music venues, and record stores of the area.

[68][69] Of his excitement for vinyl, White explained, "We can't afford to lose the feeling of cracking open a new record and looking at large artwork and having something you can hold in your hands.

[83] The new album (again on the Third Man Records label) was titled Sea of Cowards and was released on May 7 of that year in Ireland, on May 10 in the United Kingdom, and on May 11 in the U.S.[84] In 2009, Jack White was featured in It Might Get Loud, a film in which he, Jimmy Page, and the Edge come together to discuss the electric guitar and each artist's different playing methods.

The first, called the Peacocks, was all-female and consisted of Ruby Amanfu, Carla Azar, Lillie Mae Rische, Maggie Björklund, Brooke Waggoner, and alternating bassists Bryn Davies and Catherine Popper.

[99][100] However, he performed on the inaugural episode of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion with the new host, Chris Thile, on October 15, 2016, in support of his compilation album Acoustic Recordings 1998–2016.

[103] On December 12, 2017, he released a four-minute video titled "Servings and Portions from my Boarding House Reach", which featured short sound bites of new music interspersed with white noise.

In promotion of the album, White appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon[107] and on Saturday Night Live as the musical guest, playing "Over and Over and Over" and "Connected by Love".

[118][119] It kicked off with its first concert on April 8, 2022, in Detroit, Michigan – during which White proposed to his girlfriend Olivia Jean, with the two marrying onstage – and ended on February 24, 2023, in Aspen, Colorado.

[122] On July 19, 2024, White distributed test pressings of his upcoming sixth solo studio album by secretly including copies of it with purchases made at Third Man Records locations.

[138] His performances of "Matrimonial Intentions", "Mama's Angel Child", "2 Fingers of Whiskey (with Elton John) and "On the Road Again' and "One Mic" (with Nas) appeared on Music from The American Epic Sessions: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

"[142] Using the slogan "Your Turntable's Not Dead",[21] Third Man also presses vinyl records,[68] for the artists on its label, for White's own musical ventures, as well as for third parties for hire.

[157] He also used a three-pickup Airline Town & Country (later featured in the "Steady As She Goes" music video),[160] a Harmony Rocket,[160] a 1970s-era Crestwood Astral II,[159][160] and what would become the first of three custom Gretsch Rancher Falcon acoustic guitars.

[160][165] He later added a custom Gretsch Anniversary Jr. with two cutaways, a lever-activated mute system, a built-in and retractable bullet microphone, and a light-activated theremin next to the Bigsby.

Claudette Colbert is the brunette he used while with the Stripes, Rita Hayworth is the redhead he acquired with the Raconteurs, and Veronica Lake is the blonde he added in 2010 while with the Dead Weather.

[169] White also produces a "fake" bass tone by playing the Kay Hollowbody and JB Hutto Montgomery Airline guitars through a Whammy IV set to one octave down for a very thick, low, rumbling sound, which he uses most notably on the song "Seven Nation Army".

For the White Stripes' 2007 tour, he played a custom-finish Hammond A-100 organ with a Leslie 3300 speaker, which was subsequently loaned to Bob Dylan, and currently resides at Third Man Studios.

Digital recording gives you all this freedom, all these options to change the sounds that you are putting down, and those are for the most part not good choices to have for an artist," and "Mechanics are always going to provide inherent little flaws and tiny little specks and hisses that will add to the idea of something beautiful, something romantic.

"[30] In a 2012 episode of the show, Portlandia, White made a cameo in a sketch spoofing home studio enthusiasts who prefer antique recording equipment.

[103][179] He is known for creating a mythology around his endeavors;[14] examples include his claim that the Stripes began on Bastille Day,[40] that he and Meg are the two youngest of ten siblings,[40][43][180] and that Third Man Records used to be a candy factory.

[21] These assertions came into question or were disproven, as when, in 2002, the Detroit Free Press produced copies of both a marriage license and divorce certificate for him and Meg, confirming their history as a married couple.

[181] Neither addresses the truth officially, and Jack continues to refer to Meg as his sister in interviews,[21] including in the documentary Under Great White Northern Lights, filmed in 2007.

[182] In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Jack alluded to this open secret, implying that it was intended to keep the focus on the music rather than the couple's relationship: "When you see a band that is two pieces, husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, you think, 'Oh, I see ... ' When they're brother and sister, you go, 'Oh, that's interesting.'

"[50] His collection of esoterica include Lead Belly's New York City arrest record, James Brown's Georgia driver's license from the 1980s, and a copy of the first Superman comic from June 1938.

And all those rich pricks riding in their Cybertrucks listening to their Rogan and Bannon and Alex jones podcasts are laughing all the way to the bank looking forward to their tax cuts that don't apply to the middle class.

In October 2016, upon learning that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump had used the White Stripes song Seven Nation Army in video campaign materials, the band denounced the presidential candidate[193] and began selling shirts reading "Icky Trump"—a play on the White Stripes song "Icky Thump"—through the Third Man Records website.

[204] He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of assault and battery, was fined $750 (including court costs), and was sentenced to take anger management classes.

[36][206] When asked about the email in a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, White stood by the remarks, saying, "I'll hear TV commercials where the music's ripping off sounds of mine, to the point I think it's me.

[212] It was later reported that, in response to the rider's publication, White's booking agency, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, had banned its acts from playing shows at the University of Oklahoma.