It Might Get Loud 2008 (DVD)

I got the It Might Get Loud DVD last week and have been watching it obsessively. Hey, I only saw it twice at the cinema. Another ten views to go!




Look, this is Jack White's nine year old self. He brings him over to learn to play guitar. Someone asked Davis Guggenheim where he got the kid from.

WCP: Speaking of Jack, who was that little kid in the movie who helped tell his story?
That's Jack White as a 9-year-old boy. Did it throw you off?
WCP: A little bit.
Yeah. Jack said to me, “I want to teach myself how to play guitar.” And I was like, cool. And the next day he shows up in a hat and a bowtie and a suit, and in the back, seriously, was a 9-year-old kid dressed exactly like him. And he said, “Davis, this is Jack. Jack, this is Davis.”
WCP: Any idea how he found the kid?
Not a clue. I let them tell their own stories, and how he told his was quintessential Jack.
WCP: The kid was good.

The kid was good. [Pause.] How do you know it's not him as a 9-year-old?

You know, I wouldn't put it past Jack White to be able to do that.


At one point, we see Jimmy Page in a room full of old junk. But it's Jimmy Page's old junk! It's probably worth millions to collectors. He's kept everything.



Look, there's the pair of Rickenbacker Transonic cabs we last saw in June 1969. We know he stopped using the heads after the first American tour, and we know he used the cabs (and possibly heads) on Led Zeppelin II. Most of the cabs were abandoned in the US after the second tour, but it appears he kept two – for forty years! The head is a Vox UL 7120, though, not the 4120 he used on that tour.

Jimmy hasn't changed much over the forty years, either.




The DVD also contains "deleted scenes" which is a weird phrase to use about a documentary, where you're building up a visual sculpture from piles of local material, rather than a feature film, where you're producing your own material and perhaps deleting some scenes that you love later on. 90% of his footage, at least, was a deleted scene. Presumably these were the sort of short-listed scenes.

They are are split evenly between the three guitarists and are equally as fascinating as the main movie. Is Jack White wearing lipstick in the build-a-diddley-bow scene? How very Whitean. Jimmy Page playing his theremin. White teaching the others to play Seven Nation Army, Jimmy teaching the others DADGAD tuning. (If he's just teaching them it, how come their guitars are already tuned in it?) Jimmy explaining how in the sixties, before really light strings were available, they'd move the strings down one and use a banjo string as the top E. And in another moment where it could only be Jack White saying this, Jack explaining how he used to choose strings because they were elements – Copper, Aluminum, Nickel. Lots of other things, all of which seem a little bit more personal than the main movie, but maybe that's because I wasn't familiar with them before I saw them on the little screen.

The DVD also contains a long press conference Q&A and the trailer. It's not an extensive package, but it's pretty cheap. As cheap as a new CD, in fact. (And the record companies wonder why no one's buying CDs.)