It Might Get Loud

Every once in a while, I come across something that I'm just dying to share with everyone I know that I think would be interested. It could be a belief, band, song, movie, place, etc. that I just feel everyone should at least be aware of, if not experience for themselves.

One such experience has been breathing down my neck for a few months now. It came highly recommended from multiple people whose opinions I respect about such things. Each time someone else mentioned it, I was almost ashamed that I had not yet gone out of my way to check it out for myself. When I dropped by a friend's house a few nights ago, this latest experience finally caught up with me. And it blew me away.

The experience in question is "It Might Get Loud." To call it a documentary about the electric guitar featuring Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of The White Stripes does not begin to do it justice. Before those of you that aren't music geeks stop reading, hear me out.

This film is one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen. From the opening scene when Jack White builds a one-string electric guitar out of little more than a block of wood and a Coke bottle and proceeds to wail on it unlike anyone I've ever heard play a proper six-string electric guitar, my jaw was on the floor for the better part of two hours.

It's not a History Channel documentary rigidly chronicling the invention and evolution of the electric guitar like some visual encyclopedia article. It's also not a VH1 "Behind the Music" episode on the bands these guitarists respectively represent. It is a well-crafted work of art created by plucking arguably the greatest living guitarist from each of the last three generations, interviewing them separately, and dropping them into a room together to see what happens. And what happens during the group segments is on par with any rock fan's wildest dreams.

They played together, but it wasn't some self-indulgent concert with pyrotechnics and ten-minute solos. It was more of a summit of generational icons discussing musical influences, their first guitars, and teaching each other some of their most memorable riffs. All of the more technical music stuff is broken-up nicely for the more casual fan with individual profiles of each guitarist detailing their lives and careers in their own words.

I'm going to leave it at that for this post, mainly because I could type another mega-post about this movie and I think it will be much more readable if I break it into segments. I'll try not to make each post a detailed review as much as I will tell a little about my experience with each guitarist's music, what impresses me with each, and why the three of them being captured on film in the same room is something I think everyone could (and possibly should) enjoy.