It Might Get Loud is about the allure, the mystery and the expression of the guitar. Bringing three very distinct, yet very different guitarists, Jimmy Page (The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin), Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs) and The Edge (U2) together on one stage, filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) captures their love and sometimes pain with their chosen profession. And a profession or expression rather, that almost seems to have chosen them.
Filled with conversation, clips, old music, original music, concert footage and meaningful, historic locations, the movie takes us on a journey that's not like any rock documentary I've ever seen. Since I've been touting this movie for some time now (as evidence of my recent walk down Jimmy Page lane love fest), I was thrilled to talk to Guggenheim about the players, the process and how all of this came together.
KM: I'm sure people have asked you ad nauseam, why you chose these three guitarists, and I think I know some of the answer -- their styles are different, their backgrounds are different and they're from different generations but, of course, they are each artists.
DG: That's a question that haunts me and yes, I'm asked it every single time. Maybe you can again help me come up with an answer (laughs). I wanted Jimi Hendrix, but he wasn't available (laughs)...Like you said, I'm more interested in their differences. How different they were, different generations, different types of music, different locations. I was not interested in three musicians who were the same.
KM: Yes, they were disparate in style, etc., but they all shared a driving force to create. And they all came from places where artistic endeavors were not encouraged as much. I love that how, in spite of how much music has changed, how recording has changed (and contrasting the recording differences of the more computer-oriented The Edge vs. the old, classic equipment of Jack White) but all it really is -- you just have to pick up a guitar.
DG: Yes. It's the same with filmmaking. It's never about the equipment, it's about the storytelling. And film parallels music. It's like, if there was no such thing as a guitar, musicians would be expressing themselves one way or the other. It's that spirit or that attitude or that passion that they bring to it that will always come through. Even if you make a guitar on a two by four, like Jack does [in the documentary, White creates a simple guitar using a slab of wood.
KM: What struck me about Jimmy Page was, he seemed so much this charming English gentleman, and still so mysterious. And yet so content. There was something so gentle and calming and blissful that got to me deeply. For someone who's been around the block for such a long time, he didn't appear tainted. He had depth, but he was light. And he also had this almost mystical quality to him.
DG: I know what you mean. What's wonderful about Jimmy is how young he is. His spirit is so young. He still has such a sparkle in his eye. You could easily expect someone else being burnt out or tired or being jaded, kind of like puffed up. He wasn't like, re-hashing the myth, reinforcing, "Here I am, a rock god." There was none of that. That's a testament to him. I wasn't hiding anything. That's how he is.
KM: I like how this isn't a standard rock documentary. We just follow along. You don't get the Behind the Music or the typical "and then this happened" approach. It's about the music, the art, the influence the mystery.
DG: Here's the thing. There's a lot that the film is not. It doesn't cover every song in every catalog. It doesn't even cover the history of each band. It doesn't even get a full biography of their lives right. There's nothing encyclopedic about this movie, it doesn't cover all the bases, it doesn't try to be accurate, it doesn't get times and dates. What it is, is -- it tries to capture what's in their heads at that moment of their lives; where they are. Which was a totally different thing to try for. If they talk about a certain song, they talk about that song. If they don't talk about any other song, they don't talk about any other song. There's no ex girlfriends, there's no ex band mates, there's no lead singers, there's no rock historians. It's funny because people don't even notice it. It's different. Jimmy Page tells his own story.
KM: How did you structure the movie? Did they choose all of the songs, was it all off-the-cuff?
DG: It was a very organic process. Sitting down with them, I would do these long interviews. Two days each, no camera crews, just sitting in the room talking. And from that conversation, which really had no direction at all, feelings about the guitar, about music, about writing -- 90 percent what's in the movie is out of those conversations. All I said was...on the sound stage, "I'm not going to tell you what to talk about, or what to play." And knowing that if they came up with this on their own, it would be more meaningful, more feeling, more real. And for the first couple hours, it was not very good, and I was like, I just made a huge mistake. They were chatting idly, how many kids do you have, that kind of stuff...boring... And then it all changed when Jimmy picked up the guitar and played "Whole Lotta' Love." And then it was like a throw-down, it was like, "OK, here's what I do." And it made me realize something that I didn't sort of get, which was, talking is not what these guys do. Words are not the way they communicate. They can use words if they have to, but picking up the guitar and making the sound the way they want to make it is the way they talk, the way they communicate.
KM: And yet as unique and legendary as they all are, and confident about their style and different showmanship, they seemed to be genuinely fascinated with one another. Interested, open.
DG: As musicians, they have to kind of go into a strange and unfriendly room with a person that they don't know. It is a very intimate thing to write a song together. Every time they go into a studio there's another situation. And as musicians, that's what they have to do, they have to be open and listen and be improvisational. Three directors, might be extremely different, they'd be like, "why am I sitting in this chair and not that chair?" "Where's the light?" "Where are you shooting from?" These guys sit down and they're like open, they're like, "what do you have to offer me?"
KM: One of my favorite scenes in the movie, one of my favorite scenes in a movie this year, is Jimmy Page listening to his old 45 of Link Wray's "Rumble." His joy, his beaming smile, his absolute love for Link Wray, to this day. And that he was air-guitaring along. And god bless you for showing a clip of Link Wray, just to introduce those viewers who don't know to his genius as well.
DG: It all comes out of Jimmy, if he wasn't passionate about it, I wouldn't have done it. I think of the two million who air guitared to Jimmy Page in their own room with their stereo and here's Jimmy Page and he's air guitaring too. To see the rock star have a rock star, to be a fan to another rock star.
KM: What was a moment in the movie that was most meaningful to you?
DG: There's one that's especially meaningful to me, and you'll like this because you're so focused on Jimmy [Guggenheim read my piece on Jimmy Page and Zeppelin before our interview, which was most appreciated]. I was flying over to film him and I was reading one of the books about him and he was talking about "light and shade." It was like all over, this meaning about him, light and shade, light and shade. And he went to art school and it sort of sounds like an art term. And I was like, what is light and shade? What does that mean? And again, not using words, he just picked up the guitar and he played "Ramble On." And he plays it for five minutes in one shot and every time I watch that, I want to see it again. Because that's Jimmy right there. There's no fancy cutting, there's no one else in the band. It's just him, playing by himself and yet it's so powerful. And you go, I'm not going to tell you what light and shade means, but he just did.
From my interview at my MSN Blog, The Hitlist.
"It Might Get Loud" opens Friday, Aug. 14
Read more Kim Morgan at her main site Sunset Gun and her photo and video page, Pretty Poison.