'It Might Get Loud': The Redemption of Jimmy Page

What happens to an artist whose creative peak has long past? That is the question which looms like a sustained E chord over the new documentary It Might Get Loud, a strange and wonderful cinematic ode to the electric guitar by director Davis Guggenheim. whose previous credits include An Inconvenient Truth (don’t hold that against him).

It Might Get Loud’s central conceit is simple and elegant in principle, but surprisingly messy and complex on screen: Take three eminent guitarists of differing styles and generations, interview them individually, get them to open up about their relationship with their instrument and then, for the film’s climax, throw them together on a sound-stage surrounded by guitars and see what happens.

Guggenheim’s choice of guitarists is a surprising one that somehow makes sense; Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs (in his 30’s), The Edge of U2 (in his 40’s), and Jimmy Page of The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin (in his 60’s).

The three musicians’ contrasting philosophies make for a fascinating musical study, as well as some unintentionally amusing moments: Page in one scene is shown lovingly caressing his Les Paul, comparing it to a woman, deserving of reverence and respect; White, meanwhile, sees his guitar as essentially an antagonist, a thing to be fought and conquered, and is shown repeatedly doing just that, bloodying his hands in nightly battle with his red and white axes. In another scene, Edge is shown talking about the impetus for both the formation of U2 and his own notoriously minimalist playing style – in the 70’s, he says, rock got too big and self-indulgent, with the kind of endless guitar and drum solos parodied to such great effect in This Is Spinal Tap. Of course Edge knows, but is too polite to mention, that Led Zeppelin was both prime instigator and practitioner of the grandiosity he laments.

Another fascinating juxtaposition: Edge makes a fetish of technology, explaining in great detail the many and varied pedals, amps, dials, and diodes required to transform his limited number of plucked notes into the soaring U2 anthems we know and love. Meanwhile, White is sneeringly suspicious of digital technology, and carefully guards his soul and music from its polluting effects by choosing for his instruments old, cheap, barely tunable creatures of wood and plastic.

The personalities of the three men are likewise contrapuntal: White practically stoops under the weight of the chip on his shoulder; Edge is calm, almost serene, even as he discusses the frustration of the compositional process. And Page…Page seems unsettled, even haunted. But more on that in a moment.

The highlight of the film, of course, is the much heralded “summit,” when the three men come together on a Los Angeles sound stage. The meeting is initially awkward, but soon they are loosening up, showing one another their songs, talking about the music they made and which made them. At one point, Page stands and starts playing the riff to “Whole Lotta Love,” to White and Edge’s giddy delight. Edge tries, with limited success, to teach Page to play “I Will Follow” (“Are you sure about that chord?” Page asks). White plays “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” for his elders, whose faces betray admiration and affection for their younger colleague. And when the three of them jam on “In My Time of Dying”…well, magic as only music can make.

It Might Get Loud is filled with such lovely moments. Guggenheim’s triumph is finding ways to illuminate not only the minds of these men, but the music which animates them: White surrounded by misty mountains builds a guitar out of a board, nails, wire, and a coke bottle; Edge travels to the school where he first met his band-mates some 30 years ago, pointing out the billboard where the notice for musicians was first posted; Page explains his “light and shade” compositional philosophy at home by picking up his guitar and playing a lilting and lonely “Ramble On.”

For those who know “Ramble On,” propelled on record byJohn Paul Jones’ slippery bass line and John Bonham’s ticking percussion, Page’s ad hoc rendition here is shocking – indeed, at first it is barely recognizable. But there it is, stripped down to the bare chords, revealing itself to be that rarest of God’s creatures – more beautiful naked than ornamented.

And here the comparison between Page on the one hand and Jack White and The Edge on the other falls away – the two younger guitarists, as accomplished and skilled as they are, are not, in fact, Jimmy Page’s peers; their music when stripped down seems less, not more.

Edge and White have something else in common: They both have ongoing musical concerns. White has at least three bands he heads, The White Stripes, The Dead Weather, and The Raconteurs, as well as a flourishing producing career (check out his exquisite production on Loretta Lynn’s fantastic Van Lear Rose). Edge and U2, meanwhile, have just released their most creatively, if not commercially, successful album in a decade, and are currently selling out stadiums across North America and Europe.

Page has not been so lucky. Since Led Zeppelin collapsed in the aftermath of John Bonham’s death in 1980, what little music Page has made has been the palest shadow of Zeppelin’s greatness, sub-par albums made with sub-par collaborators like The Firm and David Coverdale. These efforts seem to confirm his fans’ (and perhaps his own) worst fears – that Page cannot function musically outside the Zeppelin framework, a framework which he created, led, and nurtured.

In December 2007, a one-off reunion show at London’s ’02 Arena led to hopes and plans of a full-scale Zeppelin reunion, a new album and tour with Jason Bonham taking his father’s place on the skins. Alas, it was not to be: Zep vocalist Robert Plant is enjoying some of the best commercial and critical success of his career with his collaboration with bluegrass crooner Alison Krauss, and apparently and understandably wants no part of Jimmy Page’s nostalgia trip.

Where does that leave Page? He has written two new songs for It Might Get Loud, titled “Embryo No. 1” and “Embryo No. 2,” so called because they are sketches of ideas that may or may not evolve into full song-hood. One of the songs makes a brief appearance in the film, but so far there are no plans for either of them to appear in finished form, nor does there seem to be any other Jimmy Page solo work on the horizon: When asked what Page would be doing in the coming year, his manager Peter Mensch recently told MusicRadar: “Fuck if I know.”

As the film closes, Page speaks candidly about his fears of the day when the creative coals are at last still and cold. That day comes to all artists, he notes; all you can do is try and make sure that it remains as far away as possible.

The painful evidence suggests that, for the architect of “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kashmir,” that day has already come. But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe Page’s creative straight jacket is self-sutured. Maybe he just needs someone to believe in him.

I do.