In Davis Guggenheim's rockumentary film It Might Get Loud, we're allowed unprecedented intimate access to the creative process of three legendary guitarists: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2 and Jack White of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather.
Each musician, a self-taught beacon of influence and inspiration to legions of fans, bares himself in ways rarely seen on film in today's meticulously-conceived arena of image control and manufactured mystique. If you're a fan of music, a fan of passion or simply want to enjoy the hell out of a great movie about three legends coming together, you absolutely must see It Might Get Loud.
Jack White explains his musical beginnings:
I managed to keep a poker face on my gut-boiling enthusiasm at the press day for the film, as White, Page and Guggenheim fielded questions from the room. Despite the fact the guitar god Jimmy Page was on hand, the interesting questions seemed mainly fixed on Jack, who had some inspiring, somewhat unorthodox, answers. So, at the risk of Zeppelin-omission sacrilege, today we'll focus strictly on Jack's comments.
Jack on what he's up to now:
Jack: I've been recording a lot lately. I just opened this institution in Nashville that's this vinyl record system, so I've been producing records and listening to a lot of artists. I've been listening to all this music. I can only listen to what I'm working on, at the time. I can't listen to anything else because I don't want to copy it.
On the creative process in music:
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.
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.
On personality outweighing music in today's scene:
The lines are getting a little bit blurred. People are famous for being famous, in this decade. You have to make a choice. There are distractions, all around. There's so much media now, for a young kid to battle against, to get to something soulful. You have to make a decision, on your own, what you can take from these people, if you can dig deeper. It's nice to be able to let people dig deeper. This film is letting people dig deeper into the music, let alone the personalities. It doesn't matter what high school Jimmy or I, or The Edge, went to. But, there are things you can dig into with the music and where it comes from.
