Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 0:0	Budget Medium

Supposed to be an Evening with Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge, but is actually short documentaries on each of them with a few minutes of them playing guitar together.

In the interest of Full Disclosure, I don't like U2. I was not impressed with "Gloria" when I first heard it in the 80's and the band has done nothing to change my mind since. Part of the problem is that they are not that good and yet they are superstars while other bands that are much better (and by much better I mean bands that I like better) languish in obscurity. After all these years, you'd think that I would be used to this. Popular music is rarely the best music. More full disclosure, Jimmy Page is an associate producer of the movie.

The movie opens to Jack White hammering a couple of nails into a piece of wood. He wraps a wire around them and over a glass bottle. After adding a pick up and plugging it into an amp, he uses a shot glass to play a tasty slide blues lick. He looks at the camera and states "Who says you need a guitar". In short order we are introduced to the dapper Jimmy Page and then to The Edge. Jimmy is shown leaving a hotel room and getting in a limo. The Edge seems to be driving his own car. There are frequent cuts back and forth to the three guitarists and lots and lots of guitar playing. And some damn fine guitar playing at that.

When people talk about the best guitarists ever, Page's name comes up. There are few technically more proficient guitarists out there and fewer still that can switch styles so effortlessly. During his interview sections we see him playing a few records that he worked on a session guitarist. Initially I was distracted by the size of his record collection, but once I got my attention back to Jimmy he was playing some horrible 60's pop song. There is a quick montage of some pictures of him in the studio and a quick dismissal that he did not actually play on every record that came out during that time, but he did play on quite a few important ones. He then played a couple songs that had influenced him but the filmmaker had already made his point. First, Jimmy Page was an influential guitarists in the 60's. He worked and played with a lot of the icons from that time. Second, Jimmy plays what he wants. He talks wistfully of playing with the Yardbirds, stating that he loved playing with musicians that were so connected that they could free form the songs. And it is not like his band mates in Led Zeppelin were slouches either. Actually they pretty much were the same guys. As the Yardbirds went through a lot of personnel changes they eventually lost all the original players. So Page moved in Bonham and Plant and then changed the name to Led Zeppelin when John Paul Jones joined the band.

During Jimmy's interview bits we see a hint at his extensive guitar selection. No outside shot is shown, we are just suddenly in a warehouse full of oblong boxes. And he pulls out an old National resonator. Seriously, I could happily spend a couple of months in that room. Also during the film we see a couple of his classic guitars. I believe that is the original 1971 Martin D-28 that he used during the Led Zeppelin recording days and probably the same Gibson double neck. There are clips of him with the old Danelectro, but I did not see it during the guitar sessions.

Page comes off as very likeable and frequently just drops into some various famous riffs. The extras feature him playing that nice old Martin in a big hall. This is a tremendous instrumental piece that you do not want to miss.

Okay, now this is really unfair. I thought I'd come in here and just slam The Edge. I am not a fan of his guitar playing and, as mentioned, not fond of U2 in general. But as the movie spends time with the man, I found myself liking him. He clearly understands that as far as pure guitarists go, he is not great. So he works his ass off to get exactly the riff and sound he wants through effect pedals. He is quite disarming about this and even goes so far as to play a lick without the effects just to show how different it is. He clearly knows the work of the other two performers and even starts a really interesting discussion about strings. Jack states that he doesn't care because he breaks them so frequently, while Jimmy remembers using a banjo string for the high E and then using the other strings displaced up one. They even discuss using piano strings to get a really heavy bass sound. By the end of the movie, I was thinking that Edge would be a good guy to have a beer with. And then I watched the extras. During the film they had moved an amp outside and filmed him playing in front of it. So one of the crew asked him if he comes out here often to play. Immediately he replies in a perfect deadpan delivery that he does and that he particularly likes the long echo when the sound travels over the lake. I thought I'd die laughing. Damn it. He really might be a nice guy with a strong work ethic and a good understanding of what he wants to play.

Unfortunately, I still don't like the style he plays. I always feel like the song starts off well and something should build on it, but I don't feel like anything ever does. This is demonstrated when Edge does not play a song all the way through in the film. Both Jimmy and Jack are shown playing complete songs, while Edge plays the main line from several songs and then stops, smiles quickly, and plays with his effects board and moves on to the next song. We do get to see a snippet of him singing and playing "Bloody, bloody Sunday".

In an odd way Jack White reminds me of Andy Warhol. They both were really talented and hung around with talented people and purposefully did odd things. Warhol made us look at everyday items as art and Jack does much the same. Of the three guitarists featured, Jack got the earliest exposure to musical education and could read music at an early age. Being the youngest of the three he also had access to a wider range of music. And like so many other guitarists before him, he was drawn to the blues. In particular he mentions and plays a recording by Son House. Of course, it is an a cappella track. Jack also mentions that Meg White is his sister. This is considerably after it was revealed that he and Meg were not siblings but had been married and divorced. Jack took her last name. In all this, Jack comes off as a very earnest musician. He seems a little separated from the other two, but he is still in the prime of his career.

Jack is shown almost desperately playing music. He plays with an energy and intensity that suggests a punk band but is far more musically sophisticated than that. We see him play solo, with the White Stripes, and with the Raconteurs. There is no questioning that the man can play. He talks a lot about making it difficult to play. He plays cheap guitars that originally came from Woolworth catalogs. For one show he moved the piano and organ so far apart that he had to run back and forth to keep up with the beat. Of course, he also seems to have a Gretsch or two in his collection.

This is a well done movie. Frequently when a movie throws in lots of styles, it can get too cute. It got borderline in the early going with Jimmy Page by using some really grainy footage of him walking out of his hotel room (it was meant to mimic the 16mm documentaries that were being shot when the band was getting started). Bringing Edge back to his high school and having him look at the board where he found the flyer looking for a guitarist was also borderline but worked. Of the three, Edge is one least likely to be a musician. He is a part of a band and not notable outside of it. He could have easily missed the note and missed his chance. Jack White is shown in a rundown old house with a kid that is supposed to represent his younger self. This fictional storytelling is markedly different than the way the other two are presented. One sequence shows Jack writing on a piece of paper, and we clearly see the words to a song. Then queues up a tape on a little reel to reel, plugs in his old Kay guitar and belts out a song. When he is done he rewinds the tape and seems to hand it to the director. Turns out this was the result of a conversation between him and the director talking about how music is so overproduced these days, so Jack wrote, sang and recorded a song in 10 minutes. But the movie all comes together. We spend time with each of the guys, listen to them play guitar live and with archival footage and then at the end, they play "The Weight". This old chestnut by The Band is played at more jam sessions than any other song. I suspect that it will eventually be replaced by Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel" but pretty much anyone who plays acoustic guitar has played "The Weight", of course, they didn't have Jake White's vocals or Jimmy Page's solo.

So in the end it is a very successful movie. We really end up liking these guys. It is a PG movie. The only explicative is when Edge realizes that he has been playing the wrong cord in "The Weight" and laughs and says "shit". No previous drug problems are brought up, no references to dead drummers, and everyone is shown in a positive light. You'd invite these guys into your home and introduce them to your teenage daughter. For fuck's sake, these are rock musicians! There is no tension anywhere in the movie. Its a little like watching an episode of "My Three Sons", everyone is so upbeat and polite and clean cut. Still even if the content is sanitized, the music is not. Page and White play the crap out of their guitars. I think I am minorly annoyed that this is such a fluff piece. When everyone is presented as being such great guys without any blemishes, you know the filmmakers are lying. Jimmy Page came close to dying from drugs. When Bonham did die from them, Page was a recluse for years afterwards. Jack White has been arrested for getting into a fight in a bar. He calls his ex-wife his sister, uses her last name and is clearly high strung. I know nothing about The Edge (I mentioned my lack of interest in U2) but the man has to have some problem other than how to spend the shitload of money he has made. These things are not mentioned in the documentary and a great deal of running time is spent showing what great guys they all are. It makes me distrust some of what is said about music and the contributions made by these three. But in the end, I loved the movie despite feeling more than a little manipulated by it.

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