Rock at its purest
Posted: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 1:23 AM by John Roderick
White Stripes
It was clear that the White Stripes should have played the mainstage. Whether or not they’ve sold enough records to be considered the big headliner is immaterial. For this kind of show they were unsurpassable and everyone knew it.
The field in front of the second stage was packed like a London Underground station during rush hour, and there was no earthly way I was going to get close enough to see the show without some major trickery. The vast majority of festival attendees were converging on the same spot at the same time. My all-access passes weren’t worth anything; every hotshot in Tennessee was trying to talk his or her way into the backstage, the side stage, the photo pit, wherever…
Somehow I fell in league with guy about my age with a similar “never say die” attitude (peace, man), and together we climbed up on a giant panel truck parked in the catering area just over the infield wall. It was the perfect vantage point, and we adopted the cavalier attitude that this was OUR truck and we were on the job. Until someone waved their keys at us and told us to get down we were sticking to our story.
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It was an incredible scene. The sun was setting on an ocean of people and we were in the crow’s nest. The White Stripes hit the stage already worked into a frenzy, and took it up from there. Jack White does the work of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and half of John Bonham, and somehow manages, at times, to surpass them all. He’s an American treasure and should be awarded a Congressional Medal of Freedom for the work he does on behalf of us huddled masses. Oh Lordy!
And although Meg White drums like she’s riding a pony, she’s the perfect compliment, the perfect foil for his raging tornado. It’s incredible, what they do. How in the heck are the electric blues so elastic, so supple, that for 50 years they’ve been the wellspring of every subsequent genre, yet the White Stripes can strip it back down to its most basic forms and still create something new? It’s unprecedented in any other art form, except maybe paintings of the Virgin Mary, which had a good run there for 1,600 years.
They saved their hit, "Seven Nation Army," for the end, and that was it. We were served.
