As a guitarist and songwriter who in my youth liked Led Zeppelin and U2,  I was really excited to see this film. Although I did enjoy small parts of the film here and there, I must admit it is not a very good documentary and is in fact rather disappointing.

I thought this film was going to be the three composers talking all about how they approach and craft rock guitar music  – that is certainly what the preview led me to believe. Boy was I wrong. The live discussion is really stilted and dull – one makes a generic statement and the other two smile and nod. And the solo segments are not much better. The Edge mumbles one sentence about how he voices his E chord, and that’s it for his playing approach. Oh yeah, and they point out he uses “effect pedals,” as if this was not obvious.  Similarly for Page – I read an long interview with Jimmy Page (freely available on-line) done a while ago that was 10-times as interesting as the stuff he says in this film. As for Jack White, he’s not really a craftsman but more of a spontaneous freak-show. His approach is to “pick a fight” with his guitar, and you see a clip of him teaching his son to stomp up and down on a guitar fretboard.

Then there are all these extended scenes of them giving solo performances of guitar parts from their songs, or of all three of them playing in unison a guitar part from one of their songs. These sound REALLY boring taken out of the context of the song from which they came.  I suppose they could have discussed WHY they sound so boring and unimpressive separately and explain how the parts are meant to function sonically within the songs, but that is way beyond the vision of this documentary.

Jack White’s contributions have the additional feature that he sings through ear-splitting distortion and his guitar (and piano) are badly out of tune, on purpose of course (otherwise he would just tune them before performing.) This put me in mind of the scene in Bandslam where Will points out the band’s guitar and bass are out of tune, the lead signer replies “we don’t want to come across as too polished,” and Will responds “I don’t think you have to worry about that!”

The bio segments are pretty plain vanilla. Nothing to get too excited about, that’s for sure.

The documentary just disappointed me in so many ways. There is nothing interesting on the guitars themselves. Nothing on how The Edge created his famous echoing rhythm guitar sound or how he layers his effects, or even what his effects are. Nothing on how Page crafted the Zeppelin sound, or on his views of how this sound was an evolution of older rock and blues. Page says over and over “the critics didn’t get what we were trying to do,” and I’m thinking, “yes, why don’t you tell us what you were trying to do?! THAT would be interesting!” They don’t even explain why Jack White feels you must “fight” with your guitar, when clearly Page and The Edge do not share this rather violent and combative approach to the instrument.

In all fairness, I should mention what I did like. I liked the rock version of Froggie Went a Courtin’. I liked Jack White’s talk about rock minimalism and spontaneity. I liked most of the stuff The Edge said – he came across as a really thoughtful and humble guy. Lastly I enjoyed learning about the White Stripes, primarily because in The School of Rock, Meg White is volunteered as an example of a “great chick drummer,” and I always wondered who she was!

By the time I got out of this film, I had fog-head from all the noise, and was in a bad mood. I felt like I had spent two hours listening to a bunch of teenage hacks with their amps cranked, fucking around with their guitars – it was frequently loud and irritating, and did not sound good!

If you love any of the artists involved, or if you love blues-rock guitar so much you’ll watch anything featuring this kind of playing, the film is probably a must see regardless of its flaws. Otherwise, I would think twice – watching the (rather excellent) preview might prove to be enough!