Ball and Biscuit

"Ball and Biscuit" is a song by The White Stripes which is featured on the album.

Running at 7:19 in length, making it by far the duo's longest studio recording, the song is mainly a blues jam in which Jack White makes memorably heavy usage of an octave pedal while soloing on guitar. The song's main feature is the three extremely heavy and distorted-sounding solos, unique to any other White Stripes song, which are thus improvised with each live performance. They can be said to best demonstrate Jack White's talent with playing the guitar, at least among his studio recordings. They are, not to mention, by far the longest and most in-depth solos he performs with the Stripes, who otherwise make very brief use of solos and improvisation in the studio, and thus the song is a rarity in the White Stripes catalogue.

Ball & Biscuit starts out with a bluesy guitar riff, and Meg White keeping a simple pace on the drums. Spoken vocals are introduced to us soon after. The lyrics show an arrogance, with lines like "It's quite possible that I'm your third man girl, but it's a fact that I'm the seventh son" and "Right now you could care less about me, but soon enough you will care by the time I'm done". The guitar solos make a lot of use of an octave pedal, giving unnaturally high tones, and a lot of fuzz is created in the background riff. It was said to be entirely written in the studio while recording the studio album "Elephant," and the solos mostly improvised there on the spot.

The title, "Ball and Biscuit", comes from the slang for a type of microphone used during the recording of the album.

The origin of the line "It's quite possible that I'm your third man girl, but it's a fact that I'm the seventh son" can easily be worked out, Third Man being the name of Jack's record label, and Jack being the seventh son of his parents.

Jack White performed this song live on stage with Bob Dylan on March 17, 2004 at the State Theater in Detroit, Michigan.

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