Jack White was born John Anthony Gillis on July 9, 1975. The son of Teresa and Gorman Gillis is the youngest of ten children who were raised Catholic in the tough neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. His mother, who was also the youngest child of ten, was 45 when she had him. "So when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents," he said in an interview.

White started playing music at the age of six when he learned how to play the drum. He listened to Jimi Hendrix and The Who in his teen years, sharing his taste with childhood friend Dominic Suchyta. Together they recorded cover songs and formed a band with White's brother Eddie. Another friend Brian Muldoon introduced him to punk music. As a duo with White in the guitar, they recorded an album and called themselves The Upholsterers.

When his furniture business did not work, White landed a job as drummer for local bands and performed solo shows. He met Meg White in early 1990s at Memphis Smoke, a bar in Detroit suburb where she worked as a waitress. They got married in September 1996 and formed The White Stripes the next year. They played with local bands before signing with Italy Records in 1998 to release their first album, a self-titled set, in 1999. Their second album "De Stijl" was released on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label in June 2000 and peaked at number 38 on Billboard's Indie Albums chart.

Early in their career, the Whites said that they were siblings but a paper later obtained a copy of their marriage license and their divorce papers. White said that asking their status was irrelevant to their arts and that the bond between siblings was stronger than most. With White Stripes, White released four more studio albums until Meg suffered from acute anxiety and forced the band to go on hiatus. The band formally announced their professional split on February 2, 2011.

White performed five songs for "Cold Mountain" soundtrack and met actress Renee Zellweger on the set. They dated briefly and broke up in 2004. He later dated the model of White Stripes' music video for "Blue Orchid", Karen Elson. White married her in June 2005 in Manaus, Brazil, officiated by a shaman. Their first child was born in 2006, a girl, and the second was born a year later, a boy. The couple announced a divorce which was celebrated in a party. The couple who was married for six years remained friends and co-parents.

While White Stripes was dormant, White formed The Raconteurs in 2005 with Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler. The band was born from White's creative sessions with Benson. Their first album "Broken Boy Soldiers" was released in 2006 with "Steady, As She Goes/Store Bought Bones" as first single. They went on tour and released another album, the Grammy-nominated "Consolers of the Lonely", in 2008. After completing a U.S. tour in summer that year, the band went in vacuum due to the members' commitment to other projects.

White then began performing with The Kills' Alison Mosshart under the moniker The Dead Weather in 2009. They tagged along The Raconteurs bassist Lawrence and Queens of the Stone Age keyboardist and guitarist Dean Fertita. Like The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather also released only two albums before they went on indefinite hiatus.

White then wrote and recorded his first solo single "Fly Farm Blues" in August 2009. The single was released under his label Third Man Records but it was not made the first single of his debut solo album. It was only in January 2012 that he released "Love Interruption" as the early taste of his new album, "Blunderbuss". He released the album on April 24, 2012, debuting at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 200. It marked his first-ever chart topper.

Following the success of "Blunderbuss", which also earned several Grammy nominations including Album of the Year, Best Rock Album, and Best Rock Song for "Freedom at 21", White began working on a follow-up. He started working on a next record while touring to promote "Blunderbuss". In a February 2013 interview with Rolling Stone, he said he was working on "20 to 25 tracks." He explained of the new material, "it's definitely not one sound. It's definitely several. Like you heard in 'Blunderbuss', there're many styles there. I don't pick my style and then write a song. I just write whatever comes out of me, and whatever style it is what it is, and it becomes something later." In January 2014, he revealed that he was producing two albums. "One of them is mine," he said. He eventually announced that the new project would be called "Lazaretto" and the title track was released as the lead single. The 11-track LP is scheduled to be released on June 10 through White's own label Third Man Records in association with XL Recordings and Columbia Records.