Detroit Rock City

by Steve Miller

  Steve Nawara: The Electric Six toured for three years straight it seemed. We did Europe a lot. We were in Edinburgh, Scotland, and were hitting these vodka bars with some girls. We come back to the bus, and people have their drugs out, and this girl is like, “Hey, you want some ecstasy?” And I, of course, say, “Oh yeah,” and she hands it to me, and I grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and pull on it to wash down the X. And the whiskey hit my stomach in a weird way—you know how that happens? I lost the fight with it and projectile vomited, sprayed everyone in the back of the bus. These girls are covered with puke, and I look on one girl’s shoulder, and there was the hit of X I had just taken. I just reached over with a finger and pulled it off and took it again.

  Jim Diamond: I joined the Dirtbombs at the end of ’97; Mick always had this rotating cast. Tom Potter joined in ’99, and we toured a lot. Potter would run off all the time. Someone would say, “Hey, I got some speed.” We were in Melbourne at the bar owned by Bill from the Cosmic Psychos. We didn’t go on until 2 or 3 a.m., and we had to leave for the airport at seven. Tom takes off with some locals after we get done playing. I said, “Tom, don’t leave. We gotta leave here at like 5 a.m. and go back to the hotel, then go to the airport.” He’s like, “Fuck you, Diamond. I’ll be back. Fuck you. Quit telling me what to do.” And lo and behold, he doesn’t come back. I told the driver, “Go. We’re not all missing our plane because he’s not there.” So we go back to the hotel, and we’re sitting in the van, and the driver says, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Leave. We gotta go. We’re not all paying extra money to rebook our flight because we’re waiting for Tom.” I said, “I don’t know what we’re going to tell Katy,” his wife.

  Ben Blackwell: There was a saying in the band, which was “DTK”: Don’t Tell Katy.

  Chris Fuller: She grew up around drugs and was really down on them. Which made it tough for Tom.

  Jim Diamond: Right as we’re leaving—I mean the driver had the engine on and was starting to pull away—Tom gets out of a car and runs up. He was out doing drugs with someone. I wasn’t the boss of the band, but I would deal with the booking agents and the drivers and the money and all that stuff. Mick didn’t have to. We just made sure he could sit in the front seat all the time. Tom and I always called driving around Mick driving Miss Lazy. Tom came up with that one.

  Dave Feeny: Mick is a genius, but when I worked with him I’d have to pick him up for the day’s session. It would always be “My aunt has the car.” Of course, I’d say, “Sure, I’ll come get you.”

  Tom Potter: We practiced at Diamond’s studio, and most of the time I’d be giving Mick a ride home because Mick didn’t have a car. Yeah, I was driving Miss Lazy. On the route to drive Mick home we’d go up Cass Avenue and it would take us through a little drug dealer district. Driving a gunmetal gray van with a white dude driving a black dude in a van through the drug district, we’d get pulled over. A lot. We’re in a van, so the cops would pull us over, and they’d be, like, on the speaker, like, “You need to step out of the van. Put your hands behind your head. You have to back up.” So you’d get behind the van, and then they would come up, and they’d go through the glove box to make sure there wasn’t a gun or anything. “Do you have any drugs on you?” We’d be like, “No.” And they’d say, “Okay, you can go.” I think every time it happened I was actually holding.

  Mick Collins: I don’t know what they’re talking about. I had a car.

  Ben Blackwell: In 2002 we’re driving to Toledo for a show in Tom’s van, which has become kind of the de facto Dirtbombs van at this point, and we’re going southbound on 75. We get a flat tire and we don’t have a spare. So we get taken to the Detroiter Travel Plaza, and it was a process. The Sights were opening for us, and they—it was one of those things you see in movies—they were told, “Keep going. Play some more songs.” Because it’s a nearby show, I have a bunch of family there. My mom and dad are sitting, waiting in Toledo, wondering where the hell I am. We get back on the road, we’re driving down, and we drive past Toledo. No one had a map; it was just, “Oh yeah, Toledo! We know where to go.” Everyone was oblivious to it. At some point in all of this, Tom Potter’s driving, and the drummer for this show is Nick Lloyd from the Dirtys, filling in for Pat Pantano. Nick has cut up some lines of cocaine on a CD, and we’re on the freeway, we’re driving, and Tom looks back at me and says, “Safety first,” and does a line. And we’re lost. I was like, “Okay, yeah that’s funny,” you know. Fucking Potter. We finally get there and play. After the show I’m just gonna ride back with my mom and dad. I just had to grab my stuff out of the van, and my mom walks over to it with me, and I turn around and she says, “What’s this?” She pulls out a rolled up dollar bill that she finds. I’ve never done any drugs, and she knows that, so she says, “Whose is this?” and I went, “Well, it’s Potter’s.” She’s like, “What should I say to him?” She goes back, finds Tom, and she has the rolled up dollar bill in her hand. She goes up to Potter and hands him the dollar bill and says, “Safety first.” Walks away.

  Ko Melina: The Dirtbombs had three or four shows that Jim couldn’t do; he had some recording commitments. Mick gave me a tape to hear and learn and I said, “When are we going to practice?” He said, “Well, the shows are on the Fourth of July, so I guess on the Fourth of July we’ll meet you on stage.”

  Troy Gregory: I got off a plane from Los Angeles after playing a gig with the Volebeats and went right to play a Dirtbombs show at the Stick, doing all new material. He had given me the disc to listen to, but we never played it together. That was just a roadmap—everyone has the map; you just don’t know if it’s going to be freezing rain. Being a good band is dealing with chaos.

  Ben Blackwell: I’m at Jack’s house and Mick calls Jack and he’s talking about the Dirtbombs needing a drummer. Subsequently Mick has told me that he was kind of hoping Jack would play drums, but I was standing right there, and Jack said, “Oh, you should talk to my nephew Ben. He’s right here.”

  EWolf: I was drummer number four in the Dirtbombs. Mick was a furry, and that was just starting to come out when we did the Horndog Fest cover. Mick said, “See, there’s this whole scene like furry fandom, and so I’ve got this artist, and he’s this big furry, and he’s going to do the cover.” He may as well have been talking about cocaine for all I knew. How would I know it was some kind of sex costume thing? Some people dress up like Captain Kirk. Whatever.

  Eddie Sights, aka Eddie Baranek (The Sights, Ko and the Knockouts, guitarist, vocalist): The furries would come on tour with us when we toured with the Dirtbombs. We were in Ottawa at the Dominion Tavern. But the crowd was all those normal-looking white guys in their 40s with collared, tucked-in white shirts, and they would walk up to Mick and talk with him, and we would go, “What the fuck is this?” Ko and Jim, they’d be like, “Oh, it’s the furries CD, Horndog Fest.” There was a subcollective of them that would come to the Dirtbombs/Sights gigs when we played.

  Mick Collins: The art for Horndog Fest was done by a guy named Joe Rosales. It’s not totally a sexual thing, but essentially it’s a comic for media fandom offshoots for people who are into touching animals. But yes, I am into furries. And I do go to the conventions.

  Eddie Sights: The Dirtbombs were in Las Vegas playing the Shakedown. It was Potter, Diamond, Mick and Ben, and Pat Pantano, and there was always the band hotel room. Tom Potter’s like, “Well, I’m going to get my own hotel room ’cause I’m going to party.” Jim Diamond’s like, “Well, I’m an adult, so I’m going to get my own hotel room.” Ben Blackwell has his own thing. It broke down that Mick was left out in the cold. Mick’s like, “Well, uh, where’s the band hotel room?” I’m thinking, “What do you mean? You’re the leader of the band.” But out of the blue, this little nerdy white guy in glasses walks up to him and says, “Mick Collins? I’ve loved your work since Blacktop and the Gories.” This nerdy guy goes, “I can’t stay for the festival. I can’t see you play, but I’m going to buy you a hotel room because
I love you so much. You’re my idol.” And that’s Mick Collins. Shit falls in his lap because he’s so damn good in a way that people will take care of it.

  Jack White: Mick Collins should be bigger; he’s just brilliant, it boggles your mind. Detroit had all that stuff, and people said that about Brendan Benson too, especially because of the pop nature of his stuff. Brendan should be massive, and same thing as Mick. Funny thing is, even with the Gories, that was royalty to everybody in Detroit, but this is a sub-sub-genre of rock ’n’ roll. You would go across the country, and nobody knew who you were talking about, all these Detroit bands. It made me, even more so, say we have this burning, volcanic scene going on, and we’re so far away from everybody else that if it had happened in San Diego or Chicago, it would have gotten picked up and maybe ruined, and so it was a beautiful thing about it too.

  The Same Boy You’ve Always Known

  Bobby Harlow: I’ll tell you something about Jack: Jack would leave; Jack would disappear. He’d come in, and he’d do his show. He might stand around for a little while. Everyone else would get completely plowed, and Jack would be gone. In retrospect I think that’s a pretty interesting thing. That’s actually the way to do a show. When you’re drunk, you think you’re really good, but you’re not. So Jack was always sober.

  Jack White: I had little to no interest in anything but the music and the friendships, the family of it. Other than that, when everybody was doing anything else, I guess I just wasn’t interested. It was just a little bit boring to me. I also thought girls weren’t into me, so I wasn’t pursuing that. And if you’re not trying to get laid, I mean, hanging out after 3 a.m. in the bar, it’s kind of pointless almost. I also had girlfriends, too, at the time. I wasn’t really a drinker. I’ve never done drugs. I’m not anti that they did drugs; it didn’t matter to me. I just never did it.

  Tom Potter: Everybody keeps saying that Jack was checking us out, trying to get our moves. I don’t think so. I get sick of people who are, “Oh, the White Stripes were a two piece.” Our album came out before those two even started. As far as I know, he was busy listening to Rage Against the Machine. Seriously, you’d get in his car and look through his CDs in the car, and it was like Rage Against the Machine and that kind of stuff.

  Jack White: I checked out any music, and it wasn’t just obscure stuff. I would watch any documentary on television about any band—I didn’t care who they were. I would watch the stupidest hair-metal band. I was always interested in how people were doing this, because you could learn so much of what not to do from things too.

  Ben Blackwell: I went with Jack and Meg for a weekend early on. I played drums in Two Star Tabernacle, filling in for Damian in November of ’98. They had a sweet gig lined up in Chicago opening for Jeff Tweedy’s solo act at Lounge Ax. Two Star had just put out its first seven-inch, which was them and Andre Williams doing “Ramblin’ Man” by Hank Williams. Damian had broken his foot. I did a handful of practices, but I had never played a live show before. It was a Thursday night show, then the next day we had off and we just hung out in Chicago. Saturday the White Stripes played; it was their first time playing Chicago, also at the Lounge Ax. Jack wanted to stay at the rock-and-roll Days Inn. Jack knew that all the rock bands stayed there. He told us when he was in Goober and the Peas they stayed there, and they saw Oasis’s tour bus there.

  Dan Kroha: When I heard that Jack and Meg broke up and Meg was working at Memphis Smoke, I went to there when Meg was working. I don’t know why I was compelled to do this. I said, “Meg, I heard you and Jack broke up.” I said, “Keep the White Stripes going. You got something good going on. I’ve been through this before with the Gories and Doll Rods. We kept the band going. It worked out. Keep doing it.”

  Ko Melina: They got a divorce, and at that point it was the band or the marriage, and they went with the band.

  Jack White: There was a moment where she wasn’t interested anymore for sure. We had one gig booked left, and I said, “All right, well, what do you want to do? Do you want to play this show, or do you want me to cancel this?” And she said, “All right, I’ll play it.” It was the Metro Times’ Blowout in Hamtramck thing, and all of our friends came, and everybody sang along with the songs, and it was quite shocking. It was very unlike all those people. They’re all nice, kind people. But it was unlike them to emote in that way. I’d never felt something like that. It was kind of a gruff time, and it was a gruff kind of scene—jaded—and it can be harsh feeling. So it was a beautiful moment that not only did they emote to us and say, “We love what you’re doing—don’t stop,” that it affected Meg enough to keep her in the band. Sometimes Meg is very stubborn and impenetrable, but she would maybe say, “Uh-huh, thank you, uh-huh, that’s very sweet, but I’m not doing this anymore.” But it did affect her, and maybe those people talked to her too. I don’t know.

  Chris Fuller: One of the best White Stripes shows ever was at the Magic Bag shortly after Jack and Meg had broken up. Jack played a lot of piano that night, and he was staring right at Meg. It was frustration and anger.

  Eddie Baranek: One of the first times I met Jack White was at the Magic Stick, and he asked me, “Can I record your band?” I was kind of weird with him because I was like, “I heard, like, you have to play guitar on the recording. Is that true?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “In that case, no.”

  Jim Diamond: I mixed the first White Stripes 45. He recorded it at home and then brought the tapes over here to mix. They had a really good look. They were more conscious of that kind of stuff than everyone else. Everyone else is walking on stage, looking like they just got done weeding the garden. People didn’t really have a look. The Dirtbombs had a look because they had a black guy and two drums. That was the look. Jack and Meg came to Ghetto to do their first album, and we had to do a lot of takes because she wasn’t a drummer. He taught her how to play the drums, but he didn’t play any of the drums—he let her. We had to do take after take after take, because she would fuck up.

  Marcie Bolen (Von Bondies, Baby Killers, guitarist, vocalist): I started dating Jack in ’99. He still played in the Go once in a while at that time, and he was still married, but they were separated. She moved out and I moved in. They had been separated for a while. We dated right when they started doing some random touring. They were traveling in a van together and going around, and he was calling me and said, “You know we play these weird small towns, and people are kind of rude to us beforehand. But after we get done playing people treat us totally different.”

  Ben Blackwell: Early on the White Stripes did three shows opening for Pavement, which would probably be the first real touring. That was in Towson, Maryland, someplace in North Carolina and the 40 Watt in Athens, Georgia. The album came out in May, and this was September. We had an album and a single on Sympathy and two singles on Italy, a smaller label.

  Larry Hardy (In the Red Records, founder): One of the big regrets of my career is that I missed the White Stripes. Jack sent me the first single with a really nice letter asking me if I wanted to work with them. I was working with the Doll Rods and Andre Williams at the time, and they both had releases where I was going to employ a publicist, and I thought, “Well, I’ll get back to him.” Mick and the Doll Rods were strongly urging me to work with Jack, and I had heard nothing but good stuff. But I just didn’t, and the next thing I knew they were with Sympathy with Long Gone John. I felt like the guy at Decca who lost the Beatles. I still have the letter from Jack. I have collectors asking me to trade them for the letter, but I don’t want that out there as a testament to my badness.

  Ko Melina: Long Gone John was doing records with all the bands in Detroit; he was really ahead of it all. He knew something.

  Dave Buick: As far as anybody outside of Detroit, Long Gone John put out a Cobras record and through Steve Shaw and myself, we got him copies of the White Stripes singles on Italy. And he just realized that they had something. I encouraged Jack to put stuff out with Sympathy because I knew it would get out the
re more. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t done that.

  Long Gone John (Sympathy for the Record Industry, founder): Later on there was a movie, It Came from Detroit, and someone said I offered these bands $5,000. It was unheard of for anyone to give someone money who didn’t have something going on.

  Rachel Nagy: Long Gone made it possible for us to even exist. I mean, if we had $5,000, we could have done this all ourselves, but he had it. He did it. The guy is kind of a scammer, but at the same time anytime we need anything, he’s there. So he’s also pretty much a peach.

  Long Gone John: I had always done records with Detroit bands. I did a single with Ron Asheton, Destroy All Monsters. I love Niagara.

  Ben Blackwell: I was working for Italy Records, trying to move records. It was fun talking to people and asking, “What’s going on there?” or “What records you got coming out?” The closest I had ever come to that before was doing phone orders with people at Sub Pop when I was still fifteen or sixteen and trying to tell them about the White Stripes. I’d say, “There’s this really good band in Detroit.” I’m just short of saying, “Should I send in a demo or something?” They said, “Oh, you know, the best a band can do is just put out their own records and tour.” That’s really cool, because the White Stripes ended up doing a single on Sub Pop basically through the power of putting out their records and touring. After De Stijl had come out was the point where Meg quit her day job. They were touring strong; there’s only two people, so it’s a lot easier when you’re playing $500 a night gigs. So when I heard that, I was kind of like, “What? Meg doesn’t need a day job? She can get by just on the band?” I knew the money from being around and seeing day sheets and knowing what their take for shows was. I was selling the merch too, so I definitely knew that. But I was a kid; I don’t think I knew in real life what a person needs to get by.