It Might Get Loud

What does the director of An Inconvenient Truth, an Academy Award-winning environmentally conscious film do for his next major documentary? He makes a rock-and-roll film, of course. Working with influential producer Thomas Tull, who conceived the project, director Davis Guggenheim has hit 11 on the amps with It Might Get Loud. The film brings together three icons of rock and roll, spanning almost 50 years of ear-shattering musical history. Featuring the elusive and seldom interviewed Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin; The Edge, who is the sonic architect of U2; and Jack White, the primitive blues guitar and voice of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, It Might Get Loud takes its place alongside Gimme Shelter, Hard Day’s Night, and The Last Waltz as one of the great rock-and-roll movies.

The film is superbly structured and shot in both film and HD. Expertly mixing archival footage and on-location shooting, Guggenheim takes us to the beginnings that shaped the destinies of each musician. He follows The Edge to his boyhood town of Dublin, revisiting the school where a sympathetic teacher let U2 practice before they barely knew how to pick up their instruments. As a kid in London, Jimmy Page falls in with the English “skiffle” movement and soon becomes an in-demand session player during the early British rock scene. Growing up in grim southern Detroit, Jack White breaks out of a furniture job by forming a novel two-person group with his sister Meg.

Much of the present-day footage of the musicians is pure gold: Page at the Harley Grange, the English country house where he recorded Zeppelin 4; White jamming with his young alter ego in the back of an old farmhouse; The Edge listening to old four-track tapes of his earliest songwriting ideas, caught up in reliving his early creative work.

Page is also the center of what may become the most celebrated scene in the film. An old 45 rpm single - the cool, distorted guitar masterpiece “Rumble” by Link Wray - brings a beaming smile to his face. He suddenly starts to play along, without a guitar in hand, joyfully pointing out his favorite moments along the way.

What really makes It Might Get Loud soar, though, is when the three finally meet in a large warehouse rigged with HD cameras; a soundstage; and all of the guitars, amps, and personal electronics that they have brought for the occasion. Things seem a little tentative at first. Page, The Edge, and White are stylistically different in many ways. But the result is exhilarating.  They pull out their personal guitars, spin favorite records, talk, and, of course, play loud music. Page, The Edge, and White jam on the late-period Zeppelin song “In My Time of Dying”, trading off slide guitar leads, each adding his own signature riffs. The Edge reveals the central licks to U2's first single “I will follow," a relatively simple song that Page and White attack with intensity. White, the youngster, wows the others with a custom-crafted guitar with a pull-out harmonica mic.

It Might Get Loud captures the power and artistry of the electric guitar in the hands of masters. If you have an ounce of rock and roll in your blood, this film will inspire and delight you.

                                    Thomas W. Campbell