dall'album "3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of..." (1992)

The song is not based on a person named Mr. Wendal at all, but it is based on some experiences that I have had in Atlanta, which is where I live, and sung to the homeless people that I had become friends with here, and just their way of looking at it. Some of them were more like hobos where they purposely were wanting to be homeless, they didn't want to play to the way society was going, and they just decided to go off another beaten path. Others were hungry, had a run of bad luck, and just couldn't survive with the competition of the real world. So they were out there. One of the people that I look to the most as the real Mr. Wendal, to me, died the year that that song came out. So he never got to hear the song and the tribute to him. We gave half of the proceeds of that song to the National Coalition For the Homeless in... (Continues)

dall'album di debutto The White Stripes del 1999.

"The Big Three" ("Le grandi tre") sono le maggiori industrie automobilistiche negli anni cinquanta e '60: Ford, Chrysler e General Motors.

Jack White ha dichiarato in alcune interviste che non crede che la musica possa essere un mezzo per messaggi politici, poi però ha scritto Icky Thump.

Nelle versioni dal vivo più recenti i White Stripes hanno cambiato alcune parole in riferimento alla guerra in Iraq: "Bush's hands are red, and I found out your baby is dead."