It Might Get Loud

Movie Documentary about the music summit between Jimmy Page, the Edge and Jack White.

This was a Christmas present from my wife that I had been eagerly awaiting. The movie is about a meeting between three famous guitarists from different generations; Jimmy Page from Zeppelin, the Edge from U2 and Jack White from White Stripes/Racanteurs. The premise is that the three would meet and discuss playing the guitar and their philosophy of music and play together.

If you like any of the three bands you will love the movie. I like all three so I had a hard on for the whole thing. The movie seperated the three and showed you where they came from as artists, their musical tastes and how they got to the point where they are now. I am a big U2 fan but one thing I found interesting was the choice of the Edge as part of the three. Both Jimmy Page and Jack White are blues guitarists where the Edge is a reformed punk guitarist who works hard with Synthesizers to get the most out of his sound. An interesting contrast to me was in one scene the Edge showed how the guitar from one song was nothing more then him playing two string and having it produced so it sounds like its a much bigger sound. The other was Jack White playing live, he was playing so hard that he hands were bleeding all over the guitar. I guess it shows how one gives his blood through precision and perfection to detail and the other literally plays till he bleeds.

I was also amazed by how good Jimmy Page looked and sounded. They filmed a segment in the house where Zeppelin recorded Led Zeppelin 4 and Jimmy told a story about how they needed to have Bonzo playing in the two story living room because how loud he played. You could see on his face that the memory was like yesterday. The movie did a good job of giving you an insight to what playing meant to them and their passion for the purity of the music they want to put out.

They had segments with the men sitting together talking about music and playing part of each others songs. I didnt dig this as much because it didnt seem they had enough time to find common ground to explore. Also when they played together, I believe they were playing In My Time of Dying, where Jack White and Jimmy got to the point where the song opens up and you felt they were about to tear the shit out of the song they stopped playing. I would have loved if they kept going.

Its well worth watching, from a selfish fans point of view I just wanted more.