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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Documentary on electric guitar pulls the wrong strings
GIVE him this: documentary director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) had a nifty idea to examine the history of the electric guitar in rock music, centred on a "summit" meeting of practitioners from three distinct eras.
A gentlemanly Jimmy Page represents the '60s and '70s. U2's The Edge cops to exploiting audio technology for the band's library of the '80s, '90s and today. And an upstart Jack White (of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs) represents the most contemporary approach to the instrument, up to and including bleeding all over it in a graphic demonstration of punk esthetic.
MOVIE REVIEW
It Might Get Loud
Featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White
Cinematheque
G
2-1/2 stars out of five
Pity that the summit meeting was apparently a bust. Very little footage of this meeting is actually used, save for a climactic jam session in which the guys collaborate on a rendition of the Band's standard The Weight.
Fortunately, Guggenheim uses lots of more entertaining footage in documenting each of his subjects on their own, including Page waxing rhapsodic over an early recording of Link Wray, and White likewise smitten with an old recording of minimalist blues man Son House.
White is especially cinegenic. It was no accident he was cast as Elvis in the rock 'n' roll parody Walk Hard. The camera loves him.
But he might be better served in his own documentary. (Coming soon: a doc on the White Stripes' Canadian tour, Under Great White Northern Lights.) And Guggenheim might have better served if he weren't so enraptured of rock stars and instead sought out more articulate exemplars of the instrument, such as those versatile session musicians.
I'd be more interested in hearing stories from a Larry Carlton or a George Benson,
Oh, I forgot, they're not as famous as The Edge.
How inconvenient.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 27, 2009 D6
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