Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge Say Guitar Heroes Are Here to Stay
Jack White, Jimmy Page, and The Edge in a publicity still from It Might Get Loud. Photo by Eric Lee, 2008, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
The new documentary It Might Get Loud, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, is a love letter to the guitar. Director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) managed to enlist possibly the most iconic guitar players of three generations—Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White—for what Page calls “an abstract, almost metaphysical” exploration of the instrument’s power. If the climactic “summit,” in which the trio gather at a soundstage to play together, inevitably falls short of the stratospheric expectations, the film does feature such priceless scenes as Page air-guitaring to a favorite Link Wray single, White hammering together a one-string “diddley bow” on his porch and making a joyful racket, and Edge demonstrating just how simple his playing is when the effects are all taken away.