A rock critic once described the ringing guitar line on U2's most unforgettable song "Pride(in the Name of Love)" as The Edge's "imitation of God". Accompanying Bono's usual bombastic, but heartfelt vocals, "God" humbles man, and stands firm against the latter's fiery petition to release slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King from the kingdom of Heaven. In other words, it's the Edge's song, despite Bono's sterling vocal performance, in which the U2 front-man transforms the famed "Unforgettable Fire(The)" track into an occasion for a seance during Phil Jonoau's documentary "Rattle and Hum", when to a enraptured sold-out audience, he implores, "In the name of Martin Luther King: Sing!" As it turns out, however, there is no God. Through the metaphor of technological wizardry, The Edge unintentionally demonstrates how God is man-made. The Irish ax-man shows us how effects pedals transform ordinary guitar-playing from something pedestrian to something grand. Although this demystifying revelation takes nothing away from The Edge's incendiary riffs on "Pride", his musical voice seems more earthbound, dishonest, as if the chords were on steroids. In revealing his trade secrets, this exceedingly humble man(he performs an acoustic version of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" that sounds more sincere than Bono's), he messes around with his legend of being among the pantheon of great musicians. According to him, "an effects unit pushes music forward," which dispels the whole notion of a guitar god, since a god needs no improvement. When he says, "That is my voice coming out of the speaker," it's with all the humility of a mortal.
Tell a Led Zeppelin fan that there are no gods, and you're liable to start a fistfight. They believe in Jimmy Page. "It Might Be Loud" does nothing to dispel this myth. In front of his English manor, Robert Plant's legendary sidekick tears up the mandolin on an acoustic version of "The Battle of Evermore". A god doesn't have to plug in, but Page doesn't act like a god; he smiles too much, you would think this former wild-man was the Buddha. Inside the music room of his palatial estate, in the film's best scene, Page selects Link Wray's 45 "Rumble" from his collection of vinyl albums and singles for the camera. Of all the people to be playing air-guitar, Page, the former-Yardbird, who along with Jimi Hendrix, rewrote the rules for this once relatively new instrument(which had famously annoyed Bob Dylan fans at the Newport Folk Festival), commands those shriveled but functional fingers through the invisible axe on cue with a look of pleasure across his face that demonstrates the seductive power of good rock and roll. It can even seduce a god. While punk-era Edge, and Jack White as an Upholster(pre-White Stripes), shock us with their youth, as all before-they-were-stars incarnations of famous people usually do, hands down, the best archival footage belongs to Page, impossibly young on a local television program, performing with a skiffle band.
Since Jack White is considerably younger than Page and The Edge, and his status an an all-time-great, still an ongoing case being mounted in his favor with each successive album, the filmmaker has fun with this Detroit-born neo-traditionalist by building his myth through scenes that shows White as a mentor for his nine-year-old self, a pale-faced boy dressed in the same black and red ensemble of coat, tie, and hat. In spite of his relative youth, the moviegoer can see that White is instantly relatable to his elders. Unlike most young people, this old soul knows his history. When White joins the two older musicians in a low-key, but nevertheless, rousing version of The Band song "The Weight", he carries his weight with aplomb.
Tell a Led Zeppelin fan that there are no gods, and you're liable to start a fistfight. They believe in Jimmy Page. "It Might Be Loud" does nothing to dispel this myth. In front of his English manor, Robert Plant's legendary sidekick tears up the mandolin on an acoustic version of "The Battle of Evermore". A god doesn't have to plug in, but Page doesn't act like a god; he smiles too much, you would think this former wild-man was the Buddha. Inside the music room of his palatial estate, in the film's best scene, Page selects Link Wray's 45 "Rumble" from his collection of vinyl albums and singles for the camera. Of all the people to be playing air-guitar, Page, the former-Yardbird, who along with Jimi Hendrix, rewrote the rules for this once relatively new instrument(which had famously annoyed Bob Dylan fans at the Newport Folk Festival), commands those shriveled but functional fingers through the invisible axe on cue with a look of pleasure across his face that demonstrates the seductive power of good rock and roll. It can even seduce a god. While punk-era Edge, and Jack White as an Upholster(pre-White Stripes), shock us with their youth, as all before-they-were-stars incarnations of famous people usually do, hands down, the best archival footage belongs to Page, impossibly young on a local television program, performing with a skiffle band.
Since Jack White is considerably younger than Page and The Edge, and his status an an all-time-great, still an ongoing case being mounted in his favor with each successive album, the filmmaker has fun with this Detroit-born neo-traditionalist by building his myth through scenes that shows White as a mentor for his nine-year-old self, a pale-faced boy dressed in the same black and red ensemble of coat, tie, and hat. In spite of his relative youth, the moviegoer can see that White is instantly relatable to his elders. Unlike most young people, this old soul knows his history. When White joins the two older musicians in a low-key, but nevertheless, rousing version of The Band song "The Weight", he carries his weight with aplomb.