By Matthew Ritchie, Assistant Arts Editor
It is safe to say that my Ibanez Art Core jazz guitar has too much dust on it. Its sunburst finish is lightly caked with white powder (not the good rock star kind) and its pearl finish looks even more pearl than usual. I’ve been too busy working, writing, living to touch it much in the past few months.
Working never stopped Jack White from picking up his guitar everyday. While apprenticing as an upholsterer after school every night, Jack White would spend the remainder of his time absorbing all there is to know about the electric guitar.
It is safe to say that Jack White is more the musician than I will ever be, and that’s OK, because he really loves the guitar. So much so that in high school his seven-foot-by-seven-foot bedroom had everything but a bed in it. Jamming two drum sets, a reel to reel and a number of axes, a young Jack White had to remove his bed entirely and opted for a small foam pad crammed at an angle between his two bass drums.
I don’t know how much of this story is true. This is the man who convinced an entire generation his ex-wife was actually his big sister. But mythology aside, Jack White is a downright guitar nerd.
This is what he is presented as in It Might Get Loud, a 2008 documentary focusing on three famous electric guitarists – Jimmy Page and the Edge included – that is in limited release across the country right now.
However, to say this film is merely a guitar documentary takes away from what this film really is: a love story. In no other film will you see three musicians talk so candidly and passionately about something as much as the guitarists discuss their electric guitars in It Might Get Loud.
The premise at the start of the film verges on being overtly cheesy. Three guitarists are invited together to discuss their passion for music and exchange anecdotal stories on how they gained a love and appreciation for the guitar. Jimmy Page is presented as on overtly cool guitar wizard; the Edge, a rebel rousing guitarist. Then there is White. When asked what will happen when all three guitarists get in the room together, he responds “Maybe a fist fight.”
At the start of the film, White depicts himself as some sort of stereotypical guitar god, complete with danger (i.e. fistfight). As the film progresses it is clear to see that these three guys are anything but dangerous. When it comes down to it they are all music nerds trying to express themselves through a certain instrument, an instrument that just happens to be bitchin’.
The film does a great job of showing how the artists got to be world renowned through the use of old footage and artistic interpretation of their rise to fame. By showing Jimmy Page at the haunted house they recorded Led Zeppelin 4, the Edge at the high school where U2 formed, and pictures of Jack White upholstering couches – it is easy to connect with the musicians and their varying pasts.
It Might Get Loud also really digs into the souls of the musicians by gaining intimate stories that get under their guitar hero mythology and expose something deeper. One of those moments is when Jack White, sitting alone in his Tennessee farm house, listens intently to a Son House record before slowly choking up and admitting that it is his favourite song in the whole world. The fact that a second later you see Jack White strolling along the southern countryside in a get-up straight out of the 1940s further demonstrates what this movie really conveys.
It is simple to immediately brush off It Might Get Loud as a guitar documentary before witnessing it. However, what the film really does is breakdown the mythology of these characters and shows the passion they all share for their instrument. The film evokes a kind of brotherhood through the electric guitar and it is immediately relatable to any musician.
Although starting off with some overblown cheesiness and slight pretension, it is easy to see that director Davis Guggenheim is trying to bring you into their world as opposed to allowing the viewer to merely witness them from a distance.
At the end of the film, as the set is being torn down and instruments are being packed up, the three guitarists continue to play together as a group continuing to hone their craft. Rehearsing a hit from The Band, it looks like something you and your friends would get up to on a Saturday night, minus wearing one of the Edge’s ridiculous skull caps.
Never have I felt so similar to a group of celebrities before – let alone the ones who wrote “Stairway to Heaven”, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” and “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” – than while watching It Might Get Loud.
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