Patrick Pantano
Elon Musk's best efforts to crater Twitter hasn't quite happened just yet and, as such, there are still countless people logging on every day to fire off their takes and start a new cycle of discourse about just how wrong they are. This week a big subject between music fans on Twitter has been the relative merits of The White Stripes drummer Meg White. This was started Lachlan Markay, a politics reporter at Axios, tweeted that the band would have been much better without having such a "terrible" drummer. He was met with a strong backlash, including a tweet from Questlove, and subsequently deleted the tweet before issuing an apology.
Jack White, Meg's one time partner in music, has now joined in the conversation. On Wednesday night he posted a picture of the drummer alongside the following poem:
To be born in another time,
any era but our own would’ve been fine.
100 years from now,
1000 years from now,
some other distant, different, time.
one without demons, cowards and vampires out for blood,
one with the positive inspiration to foster what is good.
an empty field where no tall red poppies are cut down,
where we could lay all day, every day, on the warm and subtle ground,
and know just what to say and what to play to conjure our own sounds.
and be one with the others all around us,
and even still the ones who came before,
and help ourselves to all their love,
and pass it on again once more.
to have bliss upon bliss upon bliss,
to be without fear, negativity or pain,
and to get up every morning, and be happy to do it all again.
III
Also joining the ranks of Meg White defenders was Karen Elson, to whom Jack White was married from 2005-2013. She wrote that she was a "fantastic drummer." Adding: "Jack also said the White Stripes would be nothing without her."
Meg White, meanwhile, has kept her trademark silence on the whole subject. Perhaps a lesson to all involved.
By now you’ve probably seen an ill-advised (and since-deleted) tweet I sent out yesterday about the White Stripes and Meg White. It was an over-the-top take on TWS and White as a drummer, and was, let's face it, just truly awful in every way. Petty, obnoxious, just plain wrong.
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) March 14, 2023
