by Andrew Bast
Studying rock guitar is an oxymoron. That's strange, because there's formal education for just about every other popular kind of music. If you want to play, say, double bass in a classical orchestra, there are scores of advanced programs offering master's degrees that lead to apprenticeships and auditions. The same is true even with an improvisational genre like jazz: in the past few decades, a growing number of advanced programs have been training budding musicians in theory, composition, and performance. Yes, a few "school of rock"-type places have been popping up, but there's an unavoidable prerequisite: you have to be a teenager.
That makes the new documentary It Might Get Loud perhaps the closest thing to a master class in rock guitar around. The film is a mashup of the techniques, styles, and inner drives of three of the most influential players of the past 50 years. The filmmakers interviewed Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, the Edge of U2, and Jack White of the White Stripes in their hometowns and then sat them down on a soundstage with their rigs and axes. The result? At a time when fake plastic-guitar videogames like Rock Band are flying off the shelves, and especially on a weekend when the music world mourns the passing of the legendary Les Paul, this film is a solemn study of one of the country's most influential instruments, and the rare magic of which it's capable.
It Might Get Loud offers no staid scale patterns or intricate alternative fingering techniques, but it's instructional nonetheless. In one scene, the Edge explains how and why he began playing "pared down" chords by leaving out notes, lending U2 much of its distinctive sound. Or Jimmy Page, alone with a chipped Les Paul, plays through two verses and choruses of "Ramble On," illustrating that the key to the music is being able to move from the "whisper to the thunder."
The other great accomplishment of the film is that it surprises us with why they play. At first such a point may seem quaint, but anyone who has spent time with rock bands knows how little musicians talk about it. They just do it. But here we have Jack White, hunched over, his face torn with anguish, listening to the Delta bluesman Son House sing the a cappella tune "Grinnin' in Your Face." Page, in his record room, plays a dramatic air guitar to Link Wray's tremolo-laced "Rumble." And the Edge, after pulling a box of BASF cassette tapes out of storage and playing one on a small four-track recorder, is visibly taken aback when he hears original rough demos of "Where the Streets Have No Name." (Bono can be heard calling out the awkward time signature in the background.) In all these scenes, each man is totally disarmed by the music he's hearing─and though that kind of overwhelmed feeling could never be formally taught, the film puts it all onscreen, implicitly arguing that there is a core, existential devotion at the heart of the best guitar playing.
Fear not, the movie isn't entirely educational. Much of it is simply a guitar lover's dream, almost to the point of a fetish. Cameras scour every element of a rig: cords, effects pedals, strings, straps, cases, microphones—there is even a long, tightly focused shot of the two mother-of-pearl dot inlays at the 12th fret of Page's Stratocaster. And yes, there are the guitars themselves: Page's Les Pauls and Danelectros. The Edge's first Gibson Explorer, as well as what seems to be his everyday SG. Telecasters. Page's red double neck that he used for live versions of "Stairway to Heaven." One sequence follows White's massive overhaul of a shiny Gretsch, which he customized with a harmonica microphone connected a recoiling cord so, onstage, he could simply reach down to yank it up from the guitar to his mouth.
For all the sincerity and introspection of It Might Get Loud, by its end you're left with a haunting generational echo. Throughout, White remains the youthful rebel─the loudest, the least inclined to reform to standards. ("I never wanted to play guitar, ever. Everybody plays the guitar. What's the point?") The Edge, whose roots lie in the late-1970s punk era, obsesses over electronic processing and manipulation of his guitar's sound. (During a concert, he'll use 23 different presets to change with every song.) And Page, who came of age playing skiffle and then as a studio musician in London, still pounds rock-blues through his axe like it's 1969. (When he breaks into the legendary riff from "Whole Lotta Love," White and the Edge crumble in awe.) Ultimately, though, one's left wondering where the guitar is heading.
Interestingly, almost every time one of the three puts music on, he lays vinyl down on a turntable. No iPods—it's disarming to watch. Seeing as music sales peaked in 1999, and songs are now sold in large part individually online, one has to wonder about the sanctity of the musical culture that produced these three artists. In one of the final scenes, Page is walking away, and as he closes the white door of a big, old British brick house, he says in a voice-over that he's thinking of a time when the guitar has faded away as a musical touchstone, and "we're just trying to keep that day far, far out of sight." Let their efforts flourish.
