The film starts with Jack White making a one-string slide guitar out of a few blocks of wood, an old Coke bottle and a pickup. Running it through a distortion pedal and a guitar amp, he ends up coming out with a sound that’s like an angry cat being set on fire.
Point made, he looks back up at the camera and says “Who says you need a guitar?”
Nice.
Three Blokes with Guitars
It Might Get Loud is a 2008 documentary that sees The Edge from U2, Jimmy Page from Led Zepplin and Jack White from The White Stripes/The Raconteurs getting together to discuss the electric guitar.
If you’re not a guitarist, the premise can sound a little dull, but stick with it because there are enough moments where you get a glimpse of what these guys are really like that it makes the journey worthwhile for anyone who has an interest in popular music.
Make no mistake, though, a frank chat it is not. From the fake living room on a studio lot to the nostalgic visits to the musician’s schools, there’s a lot about this film that is contrived. It could have been a lot more cringeworthy but thankfully some judicious editing prevents it from descending to far into unrestrained hero worship – The Edge asking Jimmy Page about his ‘mythological’ status is about as painful as it gets.
Gear Vs Passion
I’m not much of a gear junkie – in fact, I’ve spent the last few weeks selling all of my stuff as I prepare to take a travel guitar and a Mac around the world – so it was never going to be easy to warm to The Edge and his focus on effects.
I find his huge, 30-odd button pedal board absurdly comical and there’s a moment in his studio that is reminiscent of the Bill Bailey sketch in Part Troll where Bailey is playing a pretty accurate pastiche of a U2 song and the power to his effects pedal goes off, revealing the actual part that he’s playing to be hilariously bad.
Ironically, it’s not too far off the truth as in this film The Edge actually does turn off his FX unit and we get to hear what he really is playing. It turns out that the huge wall of sound he was producing is just two chords and a ridiculously simple rhythm.
Although I respect the clinical dedication to getting to that sound as well as the uniqueness of it, I much prefer Jack White’s conclusion that “it’s all about attitude”.
Of course, it’s nice to have your beliefs confirmed by someone who you respect and who is very successful, but the idea is very important – that music is, first and foremost, about what you feel.
It’s about finding your voice and using that voice to connect to other people. It’s not about how much you know, it’s about what you do with what little you do know. If you’re not playing with every inch of your being – if you’re not channeling all of your emotional power into your music – then chances are you’re only ever going to sound average or, worse, just plain dull.
White says that he wants music to be a struggle, that he wants to fight with it, and that’s something that resonates with me a lot more than the gear and technical ability focused approach of many musicians.
Raw Music
He then plays us his favourite record, which turns out to be Son House’s ‘Grinnin’ In Your Face’. This bare recording features House singing accompanied only by the sound of his own clapping.
This is a nicely placed contrast to The Edge – when you strip everything else away, what are you really left with? With The Edge, you’re left with something that even he admits you can’t really play on an acoustic guitar.
In contrast there is House playing a song where he doesn’t have even that – just his raw, emotion-laden voice. It’s a powerful moment.
I guess part of the problem is that it’s not a straight, like for like comparison. White, it seems, is a songwriter first, playing guitar only because a moment in his life demanded that someone had to.
Page, for all the wonderful music that he has made in the past, seems a little out of his depth throughout the whole thing.
White claims that he has tricked the other two and that he is secretly going to learn everything he can but I can’t help feeling that it’s the other way around.
It Might Get Loud, Sony Pictures Classic (2008).
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