There’s absolutely no reason that modern rock icon Jack White can’t like cricket. Known for being an avid baseball fan, having been a lifelong supporter of the Detroit Tigers and donating hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the renovation of a baseball diamond in the city’s Clark Park, it isn’t exactly a leap to think he might be a fan of the British version of hitting a ball with a stick.
The former White Stripes frontman hasn’t revealed every single facet of his life outside of his musical career, and so we can’t really be sure as to whether he’s the sort of guy to own every edition of Wisden’s Almanack or have a shrine built in honour of W.G. Grace in his home. But why should any of this matter? Well, on the cover of the band’s 2003 album, Elephant, White is perched on top of a large suitcase alongside former bandmate Meg White while holding onto a white cricket bat.
While there exist multiple slightly different versions of the cover art, with both members wearing different outfits on some versions or having swapped positions, the cricket bat in Jack White’s hand remains a constant feature of the cover in all instances. The reason for its inclusion, however, is a little more vague and requires stretching your imagination to see the true intent behind the prop being used.
If you squint hard enough, and I must emphasise that you really do need to squint, you’ll see that the arrangement of the duo and the various elements of the set are configured so that they resemble an elephant, and White attests that the image can be spotted both face on and from the side. While the album artwork isn’t intended as some sort of absurdist Rorschach Test, it’s difficult to see the key components of the elephant’s head in the artwork, but if the artist says there is one, then we must accept that this was the intention.
With this in mind, the white cricket bat becomes the elephant’s tusk, and many of the other props are references to the large land mammal, with the suitcase also being known as a trunk in the US, and it specifically being a circus travel trunk being nods to the album’s titular animal. There are also peanut shells scattered across the floor, a food that is commonly enjoyed by elephants at the circus and in zoos, but the human skull in the background is a slightly confusing element that has never been addressed.
White was quoted as saying that “if you study the picture carefully, Meg and I are elephant ears in a head-on elephant. But it’s a side view of an elephant, too, with the tusks leading off either side,” and while this doesn’t exactly clear up how the elephant can be seen, he went on to add; “I wanted people to be staring at this album cover and then maybe two years later, having stared at it for the 500th time, to say, ‘Hey, it’s an elephant!’”
After having revisited the album’s cover many times in the last 21 years, it’s still impossible for me to pick out the intended image, but regardless of the fact, that doesn’t address the real elephant in the room – just where did Jack White obtain the cricket bat?
A story of the bat’s origin surfaced last year on the 20th anniversary of Elephant’s release, where a New Zealander of the name John Baker claimed that he had left the bat in Detroit while working as the White Stripes’ tour manager. He told an elaborate story to the New Zealand Herald that involved the bat having belonged to his 12-year-old cousin, who happened to be none other than future New Zealand cricketer and legend of the sport Kane Williamson and made several other outlandish claims about his time on the road with the band.
Many have taken this to be fact, spreading the story around the internet as though gospel, but considering the album was released on April 1st, it might be worth taking Baker’s claims with a little more than a pinch of salt.
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