Rock & Roll Books

Fell in Love With a Band: The Story of the White Stripes

St. Martin's Griffin, 226 pp., $12.95 (paper)

Remember Dan Rather's weird, funny metaphors on election night? Imagine trying to read an entire book composed of such witticisms, but not nearly as quaint as "hotter than a Times Square Rolex" or "walking through a furnace in a gasoline suit." Instead, Detroit music writer Chris Handyside devotes his 200-plus pages on the White Stripes to weirdicisms like "Jack and Meg have designed their [metaphorical] room to include all sorts of false-bottomed drawers, trick bookcases, and secret cubbies." True, Handyside has an encyclopedic knowledge of Detroit rock history, trotting out every member of that history to populate his pages with random, marginally germane quotes, but his prose smacks of a college writer majoring in fawning hyperbole. The result is a dry treatment of a mildly engaging story, although the writer and publishers would like the public to believe that the White Stripes are the first band ever to catch on in a hurry. The biographical formula is solidly in place here, from the birth of Jack Gillis and his marriage to Megan White, to their construction of the fanciful tale of two red-and-white-clad siblings discovering instruments in their attic and creating an infectious amalgam of Delta blues, Tin Pan Alley, and punk rock. Despite his zeal for the actors in the story, Handyside fails to capture the exhilaration one feels when the lights go down onstage and Meg's tom-and-snare beat echoes into the auditorium. Absent is the thrilling mixture of fear and elation when all the house lights go out and Jack screams "Jolene" into the darkness. The White Stripes deserve better, and their fans deserve something better to drop $13 on between albums.