Let’s say the electric guitar had never been invented. Pop music wouldn’t be the same. Would all the artists on the Billboard charts ‘lo these many decades have even existed? What colors would be missing from music if you take away how an electric guitar acts/responds through different amplifiers and effects? One answer is the opening sequence of this film, a “how to build an electric guitar or at least throw it together with junk” workshop. Take this one tool away and you have to ask if the framework built on three chords and the truth would even be standing. This is just the aural component, let’s save what constitutes a good or bad song for another time.

In this documentary, Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White are brought together to discuss the electric guitar. All three have had successful careers, both monetarily and artistically, and in doing so all have spent those careers trying to transcend and exploit the limitations of the electric guitar. And it is an instrument with limitations and, depending on what your ears respond to, those limitations can be as sublime as they are idiosyncratic. Each of these players in their own way, if you listen and I mean really listen to music, has skewed their contributions into the sonically poetic.

Director David Guggenheim travels with each as they explain how their artistic identity came to be, then he has them sit down in a funky, comfortable environs and they talk. These are three very different artists, each from a very different era in popular culture. There are history, opinions and personal anecdotes told. There are no 20 minute solos or, in my opinion, a tiresome espousal on proper music theory. What you get from these three craftsmen is love and respect for the tool of their trade, that seemingly from when they picked up their first guitar, was the missing component of their DNA. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Documentary/Music

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 12/22/09

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