The White Stripes

In mid-1990s Detroit, young upholstery shop owner Jack Gillis worked days repairing furniture and nights playing in country-punk bands, noise outfits, and short-lived garage groups. The city’s underground scene ran on modest infrastructure: basement shows, cassette demos, and micro-labels that pressed records in small, personal runs. Meg White entered that world quietly. Soft-spoken, reserved, and uninterested in musical theatrics, she sat behind Jack’s drum kit one afternoon and played with clarity. Jack found each strike decisive, each silence intentional. Where Jack was restless, Meg was steady; where he filled space, she left it open. The connection deepened quickly. They married in 1996 – Jack taking Meg’s last name in just another twist of tradition. By 1997, the duo was performing publicly under a new name: The White Stripes. The concept was deliberately spare, guitar, drums, voice, and their three signature colors: red, white, black. Within these limits, the band’s identity sharpened. Jack’s guitar above Meg’s patient drumming, all of which pushed against the maximalist tendencies of rock at the time. The minimalism held everything together.

As Detroit’s garage revival quickened, small labels again became pivotal in capturing the city’s musical genius. Italy Records, run by local impresario Dave Buick, became an early champion. Buick recognized the White Stripes’ aesthetic clarity and intention that gave distinction to even their roughest songs. Italy Records released the band’s first recorded piece on a small-run 7-inch single. The pair had kept their marriage private with a cover story about being siblings, a cover that remained even after Jack and Meg divorced in 2000. When the couple split, Jack assumed the band had run its course but Meg insisted they continue, an essential decision that preserved the project and carried it into the albums that would define their era.

The Stripes Emerge

“Let’s Shake Hands” was recorded quickly on basic analog gear, similar to most micro-label releases in the city. The single became the duo’s first commercially issued work, a two-song snapshot taken just as the band’s identity was crystallizing.

The A-side is a jolt of kinetic energy: Jack White’s guitar snaps and growls, the vocals ride close behind, and Meg White’s drumming supplies the gravitational center. It’s a song that feels both restless and declarative.

The B-side, “Look Me Over Closely,” was originally a mid-century torch song famously performed by Marlene Dietrich. The White Stripes cover it with rough-edged sincerity. Jack leans into the phrasing; Meg holds the rhythm with sparse restraint. The recording also shows the musical curiosity the White Stripes would repeatedly exhibit with other future homages to older American styles that many of their peers ignored.

Around 1,000 copies of the single were pressed. Sleeves were simple and distribution focused on local record shops, hand-to-hand trades, and merch tables in small Detroit venues. At the time, no one understood its future significance. It was simply a local document. Today, it stands as the origin point of a trajectory that led to their 2025 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Learn more about the Archive’s copy of this record in the ROSA Catalogue Raisonné.

by Sean Ransom, Nov. 30, 2025