Jimmy Page, Jack White & The Edge Get Loud

It Might Get Loud, director Davis Guggenheim’s convergence and technique dissection of three iconic guitar virtuosos from different generations – Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2 and Jack White of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather – is a music film unlike any you’ve seen, and an absolute mandate for any musician or music fan who’s been touched by the sounds of any of the three men involved.

We’re allowed unprecedented intimate access to the creative process of each guitarist as they describe their own musical development and source of innovation, digging beneath the veneer of their star personas to get to the meat of humanity that spawned such incredible music virtuosity.

Page allows the film crew to accompany him on his visit the stone halls of Headley Grange where When The Levee Breaks was composed, and digs through early session tapes of what would become some of the most famous rock songs of all time; we head to Dublin with The Edge and watch as he pulls out the original four-track rehearsals of Where The Streets Have No Name, allowing us a rare look into the rough edges of one of the biggest bands on Earth. At his home in Tennessee, White describes being inspired by the raw style of bluesman Son House before writing a song, on camera, at the drop of a hat.

The trio eventually unite for a little jam session, discussing their craft while trying each other’s songs on for size. Several songs were recorded at the time, which will likely serve as extras on the DVD when it’s released.

I managed to keep a poker face on my gut-boiling enthusiasm at the press day for the film last month, as White, Page and Guggenheim fielded questions from the room. Here’s a few highlights:

Jimmy Page on the three musicians coming together:

I’d met Jack before. We’d done an interview and, obviously, I was really aware of his work. But, what was so fascinating about this is that we are all really self-taught guitarists. We all have real interesting characteristics. It’s not like we’re part of an orchestra, where everyone has been taught the same way and there are varied areas of interpretation. With this, it’s really strong with the character of what we’ve lived, in our music, so there was a lot to receive from the characters and how it manifests through their playing. I do really believe that all guitarists have a different character that comes through, that’s a strong character, the stronger the person is.

Jack White on the creative process:

Say a listener listens to the radio and says OK, well you chose to write this song or you chose to do this or do that on purpose. Maybe they’ll see that that’s sort of an after-effect, and aftertaste of what the songwriter’s doing to begin with. They’re trying to get to an emotion or an idea, and the byproduct ends up being a rock song or a punk song or a ballad or whatever it is. But if you see how sometimes things are attacked from the beginning, what it ends up being. When Jimmy talks about the drum sound in When The Levee Breaks in the film, you can see that it wasn’t like this is what Led Zeppelin sat down and wrote out on paper, this is gonna have this ferocious drum sound that everyone’s gonna remember for eternity, then we’ll go to the riff, and the critics will love it, it’ll be great.

Jack White on the perils of Guitar Hero:

I’ve had a lot of conversations about that, over the last couple of years, and I gave up trying to understand it. I do know it’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that this is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music, and that that’s the only outlet now. You have to put it in a video game to get it in front of them. That’s a little sad. But, other than that, I don’t really know. I don’t like to tell people what format they can get things in, or say, “I’m only going to release this on vinyl and nothing else. You have to come to my world.” I don’t like to say that to people either. But, I do think there’s a loss of romance.

Jimmy Page on what moves him now in music:

There’s always music that moves me. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s within the parenthesis of rock or blues, or whatever. It’s usually far more reaching than that. It can be in many different genres. The best part of it is that, in 20 years, you can hear something that is a total surprise to you, or you wouldn’t have conceived would have been there, musically, before. That can really move you and take your attention.

Jack White on his love for the old Son House song Death Letter (a frequent White Stripes show highlight):

Someone had played it for me when I was about 18 or 19, that song. I’d already heard John The Revelator and I was in love with that, then I heard Grinnin’ In Your Face and that was just the end of it for me. I just couldn’t believe it. But by the time the Stripes had started recording, I picked Death Letter because I wanted to sing Grinnin’ In Your Face, but it was too special to me. I didn’t want to insult it. So we picked Death Letter just off the cuff, and the funny thing was that we had recorded that song in my living room, and the door was open and I was looking at Meg while we were recording, and when I finished the song Meg had a scary look on her face. And I was like, “what?,” and came to find out that there was a drunk man standing behind me who had wandered into the house.

Jack White and Jimmy Page on starting with the right instrument:

Jack: I think starting with whatever you can afford is the best thing to do. Starting with a top-of-the-line guitar won’t facilitate anything. It will be less of a struggle and, especially someone who’s young, should have a little bit of a struggle because they’ll find their own relationship with the instrument. And, all the kinks that are in the bent neck, or the out-of-tune string, or the nut that’s broken, they need to have. It has to become their own.

Jimmy: I agree with that because you’ll see if you’ve got a passion to want to play the instrument, and that is a good initiation. From my experience, once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It wasn’t a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you’re playing an instrument that is really hard.