Seattle Subsonic

It Might Get Loud

September 2nd, 2009

Had a chance to see the new guitar documentary It Might Get Loud over at the Egyptian Theatre last night. I’ll start off by saying that, as a white male rock music fan between the ages of 16 and 60, I enjoyed the film. And if the above is your demographic, chances are you’ll like this movie, too. That’s not meant as a disparaging remark (or a slight to the ladies), I just think it has its proper audience: Led Zeppelin geeks, U2 geeks, Jack White geeks, and guitar geeks. I fall somewhere in the middle of that quartet as a definite Led Zep geek, a partial Jack White Geek, and a partial guitar geek. I’ll admit it was nice to get acquainted with the Edge, his history and his intriguing techniques, but I haven’t really listened to much U2 since high school (War and The Joshua Tree, predictably).

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The film stars Jimmy Page, Jack White, and the Edge and was produced/directed by Davis Guggenheim, probably most notable for the Oscar-worthy An Inconvenient Truth. Despite what you may be anticipating, very little of the film takes place in the circle of couches hinted at in the trailer. Much of it takes place in the respective home/studio of each super-guitarist, followed by rare and familiar footage of each (Page playing ‘skiffle‘ as a schoolboy was priceless), and finally the conversational/jam session aspect among the trio. Guggenheim attempts—and succeeds, mostly—to show how each guitarist, demi-gods to successive generations, found and honed their inescapably signature sounds.

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There were a few goose-bump-inducing moments early on in the movie when each player was “introduced”. The first was White building an electric guitar out of a weathered piece of 2×4, some nails, wire, and a coke bottle. He takes the stogie from teeth and says, “Who says you need to buy a guitar?” Another was Page playing “Ramble On” in his courtyard (btw, he makes A LOT of old man faces while playing these days). Watching him charm that celebrated tune, sans band, was an absolute treat. Another was hearing a present-day Edge play the intro to “Where The Streets Have No Name” several times over, before the riff finally segues into some arena footage of U2 performing in front of 100,000 bouncing people. (side note: I was surprised at how epic this image seemed, and at the wave of emotion sweeping through my entire body. For U2! THAT is what the guitar does.)

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I found myself more entranced with the eccentric, enigmatic White than either Page or the Edge. He’s the youngest of ten children, he picked up the guitar because his upholstering mentor-cum-drummer needed a bandmate, he referred to the initial red-and-white incarnation of he and Meg as “cartoon characters”, and the equipment he uses is, well, shit. Guggenheim highlights a guitar White bloodied during one frenetic performance. He talks about “creating a struggle”. There’s a really endearing scene near the beginning where he instructively plays the piano for a similarly dressed 9 year old boy (described only in age) who’s eager to learn.

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I could go on, but that would count as spoilers. See it if you’re a fan of these musicians, or guitars in general. If not, it’s probably not your bag. Page did confirm however, in somewhat cliché fashion, what fans have outright assumed all these years: that “Stairway to Heaven” is, in fact, modeled after an orgasm.