Guitar heroes

Rock documentary 'It might Get loud' an amplified gem

The concept is simple enough. Round up three generations of famous rock guitarists, use home movies, visits to their old stomping grounds and concert footage to tell their stories, then put them in a room together to see what happens.

It Might Get Loud? Good guess.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) talked Led Zeppelin's legendary Jimmy Page, The Edge from U2 and Jack White from The White Stripes and The Raconteurs into plugging in and cranking it up for a film that's as whimsical as it is musical.

You get the impression watching this that the players recommended each other for this session - Page, the groundbreaker who basically invented the label "rock guitar god;" The Edge, famed for taking thin chord progressions and, through effects, creating a "sonic architecture" (Page's words) of ringing and chiming, that make you marvel at how big a sound U2 has on stage.

White's the iffy addition here, but a pleasant surprise. Yeah, he's a poseur, with his pork-pie hat and ties, blues pretensions and love of ratty, department store guitars. But when he pulls an electric yowl out of some wire, a Coke bottle, a spark-plug wrench, nails and a 2-by-4 he has pieced together in a farm shed, you figure out why he fits here. He's the purist, pulling the sound back to its origins and away from the synthetic.

Startling footage of a teenage Page, pre-rock, already becoming known as a guitarist on local TV, of U2 making really awful pop as teens and of White's play-till-it-bleeds ethos gives the film its heft. The concert footage gives it context. A nice moment? The Edge visits the Irish school where his band first played. "Bono was here and Larry (the drummer) was back there, naturally," he says. "I was standing on that side." He pauses and realizes "that's been my side ever since."

Rock fans and Guitar Heroes in the making will get a charge out of visiting where the happy accidents that put guitars into each man's hand happened. And the playing isn't bad, either. Loud. But good.

Terrace Theater's "Loud" event

Catch a performance by local band Leslie at the movie premiere of "It Might Get Loud" at 10 p.m. before the 10:45 p.m. showing of the movie. Tickets, which includes both the live performance and the movie, are $10. Tickets may be purchased at the box office or by phone 762-4247. The Terrace Theater is at 1956 Maybank Hwy in James Island. Visit www.terracetheater.com

'It Might Get Loud'

**** (of 5)

Director: Davis Guggenheim.

Starring: Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White.

Rated: PG for mild thematic elements, brief language and smoking.

Run Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.