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When three guitar legends get together, It Might Get Loud

Try as I might, I just cannot play guitar.  For years I’ve fiddled with every means on cracking the magic behind those six strings, but it is still an enigma.  I can play a few songs but it just doesn’t sound like much of anything.  So it amazes me when a master takes up the instrument and pulls magic from the fretboard.  Such is the documentary film It Might Get Loud which features some of the best musicians ever to strap on the instrument.

The movie starts with Jack White taking a board, two nails, a bottle and a pick-up and making a very rudimentary guitar. He amps up his one-stringed monster like a crazed Dr. Frankenstein basking in the glow of his music creation, showing that with drive and determination, one can coax music from just about any source. 

Then we get the meat of the documentary.  On January 23, 2008, three legends of the six string get together for a cross of something between a meeting of the minds and a guitar summit.  Of the older generation, there is Jimmy Page, the revolutionary guitarist of the seminal hard rock outfit Led Zeppelin.  On board is the current rock god of the concert stage, U2’s The Edge. Our final guitar hero is young up-start Jack White, the magic-maker of The White Stripes and the Raconteurs.  Each of these musicians are of a different era but you can tell that each respects the work of the others.  They trade stories about their influences and their instruments, giving insights to how the creative process comes about.  Each brings music from their collections that have been an inspiration.  As Jack White says, he’s just here to learn their secrets and steal them.

But it is not just of one day on a sound stage.  We go into the lives of the three men.  We see The Edge trying to coax sounds from his effects head that are to match the ones he hears in his imagination.  His massive effects board is an amazing technical achievement.  Where Jimmy gets is sounds with minimal processes, The Edge uses everything at his disposal.  The way they approach the instrument are as different as two men could be.

There is concert footage, both modern and classic.  A highlight is the playing of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with the Jimmy Page on his invented double neck guitar, made so he could play all of the classic tune from ZOSO aka Zep 4.  Page goes around his estate, talking about different ways they recorded some of the most important music of the last century.  The Edge shows the audience his school hallways, where he and the band formed and played their first gigs.  He shows how some guitar chords and sounds seem rather bland before they are processed through his system.

Jack White thinks that modern music is so processed that it isn’t real anymore.  He wants to attend this guitar summit to be a sponge, taking all their knowhow and influences and crafting his own unique brand of rock.  To be honest, I didn’t know much about Mr. White before this movie, but I went right out and purchased all his music.  I wanted to experience music through his prism.  By going back to the beginning of the process, he seems to have reinvented the guitar.  Shots of his farmland home and the basic ways he makes his music is a diametrically opposite of The Edge.

The film is by David Guggenheim, the man who crafted An Inconvenient Truth.  Here we get a true sense of place and people, not just an overblown slide show.  He finds ways to tell the stories of these three titans without ever losing his focus.  This is a small canvas feel on larger than life performers.

If this concept takes off, I’d love to see it expanded.  Three bass players or three drummers or three pianists talking about their journey to musical success would be just as fascinating. It Might Get Loud is more than just a film for music aficionados and guitar freaks, it is for everyone who understands the passion behind loving something more than life itself and the creative expression.  So far, it is my favorite documentary of the year.

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