Most writers can only dream of a copyright like this one. Maybe it should have won for Best Paranoid Blues Song.” The third verse could be something from a hundred years ago. To me, the song was a blues at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But I never set out to write an expose on myself. In the end, it started to become a metaphor for things I was going through. It came from a frustration of watching my friends do this to each other. It was about gossip, the spreading of lies and the other person’s reaction to it. White recounted in greater detail to Rolling Stone’s David Fricke where the lyrics came from: “Seven Nation Army started out about two specific people I knew in Detroit. It’s about me, Meg and the people we’re dating.’” ‘He feels so bad he has to leave town, but you get so lonely you come back,’ said White. He had grand plans: ‘I thought if I ever got asked to write the next James Bond theme, that would be the riff for it.’ He devised a storyline in which a protagonist discovers that his friends are talking about him behind his back. White plugged in an octave pedal and wound his six-string down to a low twang. ‘I played the riff again and it sounded interesting,’ he said. “White stumbled upon the riff while warming up his hollowbody guitar. In a 2010 interview with Robert Webb of The Independent, White explained how the guitar line came first. White, and drummer/ex-wife Meg White, recorded the song for their 2003 album Elephant, with the “Seven Nation Army” title inspired by White’s misunderstanding of the name of the Salvation Army as a child.
But we probably never would have heard that guitar line if Jack White hadn’t added some words to it and created a song. There’s no disputing that the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” is better known for its iconic guitar line than its lyrics.
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