The power of chords

Have guitar, will travel: Jimmy Page and The Edge

IT MIGHT GET LOUD **** Directed by David Guggenheim PG cert, IFI, Dublin, 97 minMUSIC NUTS of a certain age and inclination– those who sided with punk during the horrific rock wars of the late 1970s – might approach this documentary with a certain degree of trepidation.

The film hangs around a symposium involving guitarists from three generations: Jimmy Page (64), late of Led Zeppelin; Jack White (34) of The White Stripes; and The Edge (48) from some Irish band or other.

Hang on. Didn't the likes of The Ramones banish all this muso whittering to the pages of Guitaristmagazine? Learn three chords and form a band: that was the motto we expected guitarists to live by.

Interestingly, this hugely enjoyable film still seems undecided about the lessons of the punk era. About halfway through, The Edge (the most articulate and least affected of the triumvirate) engages with rock’s awful decline into pompous prog noodling during the 1970s. Footage of (I think) The Edgar Winter Group and (of course) Spinal Tap illustrates the sordid depths to which “classically trained” musicians sank.

Yet minutes later Page talks us through the genesis of Stairway to Heavenwith no apologies. It's as if Jeremy Clarkson had turned up in the latter sections of director Davis Guggenheim's previous film, An Inconvenient Truth, to eulogise the car industry's dirtiest SUV.

At any rate, the chaps prove to be good company. Back-to-basics White is hyperactive, effect-pedal nut Edge is accommodating, and blues fundamentalist Page is positively regal. True, the core meeting does seem a little formal – 100 attendant pages lurk in the background while the guitarists talk a little stiffly – but the accompanying documentary footage, both contemporary and archival, is so compelling that it would be churlish to complain.

It Might Get Loudis unlikely to convert those allergic to the power chord. It should, however, nicely warm the cockles of the nation's air guitarists in this icy season.