It Might Get Loud is a documentary from director Davis Guggenheim profiling 3 of the greatest living Rock guitarists – The Edge, Jack White, and Jimmy Page.  It takes the form of cutting between a sitdown with the 3 musicians all talking to each other and the musicians each showing off important places in their musical career while giving essentially a mini biography of their life with the guitar.  It goes into many of their biggest hits and how they came up with them but also delves deep into their personalities and differing styles.

 

Now I’m a drummer, but like everyone else I appreciate the guitar and as a fan of music I really love conversations about it, especially the behind the scenes sort of reason why kind of stuff.  Also as a drummer there was actually some really interesting stuff in here, as the musicians talk they talk about their various bands and there’s obviously conversations about the rest of the band members.  For me a big highlight was seeing inside Headley Grange where Zeppelin recorded most of IV, and having Jimmy Page explain how they recorded the drums for When The Levee Breaks.  It was sort of funny because I was actually talking about that just a few weeks ago with my own band.

 

Another memorable moment comes in the sitdown portion where the various guitarists play some of their hits together or for each other.  In one part Page launches into Whole Lotta Love and Edge jumps from his seat and just stands staring in obvious amazement and wonder at a man that although it’s never said obviously had some influence on him.  Making that moment even better was the look on Jack White’s face.  White keeps a hipper than thou exterior for the whole thing and is often cracking jokes, but even he cannot help but breaking into a huge smile in this moment, even though you see he’s trying to fight it and play cool.

 

 

Another wonderful moment is the opening of the film.  It’s just Jack White putting together a guitar using a Coke bottle, some pieces of wood, and a pick up.  Then he says:

 

 

Who says you need to buy a guitar?

 

Fans of the respective bands each guitarist is a member of will also find lots to love here.  The Edge goes back to the school where U2 first formed and points out significant places, plays the original 4 track demo of Where The Streets Have No Name, discusses how he was inspired to write Sunday Bloody Sunday and shows how Elevation is basically 2 chords and the rest is all done with various effects pedals.  Jimmy Page talks about Stairway To Heaven having a speed crescendo to it and how a double necked guitar was necessary to do it live.  Jack White talks about his blues influences and how the White Stripes came to be and how he likes to impose limits to push himself.

 

I enjoyed the movie but also felt like it got dragged down in being heavily overproduced.  The meeting between the 3 men seemed heavily staged and there were too many fancy camera movements for it to feel natural.  I would have liked to just sit and listen to them interact without prompting and see what would come.  The whole thing really felt kind of pushy and stagey and often would just touch upon something for a brief moment before moving on.  So the whole movie covers a lot, the careers of 3 prominent musicians, but it felt like it only scratched the surface and never really got in deep to their respective worlds.  Guggenheim never gets beyond the public personas the guitarists wish to portray (especially with White), and I really would have liked this to be more natural.

 

That said this is still a movie that any fan of any of these people or their bands will very much enjoy.  Check it out.

 

You can get some free deleted scenes on , as well as being able to view the whole movie as well:

 

Amazon has the movie available on Blu-rayand DVD