Jimmy Page, Jack White and U2’s The Edge Make Film History

“What turns us on is pretty similar,” rock legend Jimmy Page said, at his party for the rockumentary, “It Might Get Loud.” He went on, “the initial spark and why we played and what turned us on…what made us want to be part of music…though we come from slightly different musical genres was the same enticement.”

Page writes a new song for the film, Jack White makes a guitar out of a vacuum cleaner retractor chord, U2’s The Edge confesses his dire need to create music as a youth in Dublin. Reigning in different eras, but equally vital to music lovers everywhere, three guitar gods take cultural, societal and economic expanses and meet on camera in the documentary, “It Might Get Loud.”

“I learned a lot, not only musically but about the other guys. They were wonderful,” Page expressed of the experiences rendered during the making of the film.

When asked to name who his own idols were, megastar Page answered, “Oh, I’ve got many, many, many. I could talk about it all night.”

The Sony Pictures Classic is produced by the same Oscar-winning team behind Al Gore’s global warming harbinger, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

“It’s a perfect follow up,” joked producer Lesley Chilcott about this searing look into electric guitar messiahs that took two years to make. It premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and it bears candor in its title, with a warning music lovers live and die for.

“It’s tough to listen to your own voice over and over,” White said. Admitting it was a struggle without his former White Stripes counterpart, Meg White, or current bands The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather to accompany him in the film. “I wanted to flip my ears a little bit. It’s easier when I have some instrument to hide behind.”

“It was funny and there were so many profound moments,” added Chilcott, “like seeing Jimmy Page’s alphabetized album collection and bootlegs organized by dates.” Noting that she thought the musicians, especially Page, would have a lot of rules, she was thrilled to find that all three were “extremely generous and not many things were off-limits.”

Uniquely candid, “Loud” features the naked truth and off-center musical backstory of a Detroit upholsterer, a painter from London and a Dublin schoolboy who morph into modern musical rebels—not to mention record breakers. “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin’s 1971 uber-hit, is the most requested song on FM radio stations in the United States, despite never having been released as a single here.

One of the rockers documented in the exposition, White exemplifies how three different generations of electric guitar players rose to the pantheon of superstar. Ranked in the top 20 guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone and considered widely as having a gift from above, White was earthy and personable, admitting that his musical influences are broad. The 50-year-old dark-haired musician, who channeled Johnny Cash with his all-black attire and towering persona, said, “I grew up listening to Spanish music, Mexican music, Tejano music, polka music…especially instrumental.

“Oh, there are so many,” said the father of two. “A couple of them are in this film.” Outside the film, he revealed that one of his major influences musically is Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945). Johnson helped bring blues to white America.

White, who took his ex-wife Meg’s last name upon marriage and kept it despite his second marriage, to fashion model Karen Elson, explained the film’s draw in certain terms. “If they like music and they want to dig a little deeper, they will enjoy it. They don’t have to be a musician.”

White also admitted there were things he learned from the other guitar icons in the film that he wouldn’t tell anyone about. Joking that these treasures “may or may not include criminal activity.”

However, White—whose direction in music seems fated, alluded to his passion to become a priest, and the alternate road he so nearly took. Reconciling that the thing that came between him and a priestly collar was one small interruption that changed music history. “It was only that I didn’t think I could bring my guitar into the seminary I got into that I didn’t go.”

Producer Davis Guggenheim was fascinated by the common thread that connected the three in the film saying, “Each one of these guys was not raised in a place of artistic privilege. Jimmy was in a home where there happened to be a guitar in the corner. It was an ornament. Jack lived in a Mexican town where no one played an instrument. Edge was in Dublin.

“These guys had a need to create, despite all these obstacles. Guitar is just so quintessential to rebellion and aggression.”

In terms of how much creative control he exerted, Guggenheim revealed, “the more I know and the power I have to do whatever I want, the more I get out of the lens and I let the people in the story tell the story and I help guide it along. If something great is happening, like Jimmy writing an original song for the movie or Jack writing a song on camera, I just get out of the way.”

Speaking about Michael Moore and his controversial reputation, Davis said, “I think he’s a lot more aggressive with the truth than I would like to be. I wouldn’t make the films he makes. I think he’s broken ground for people like me. It means that I can do what I’m doing. It’s a lot about taste. Like some musicians like other musicians.”

How Page, White and The Edge were chosen for the film “was organic,” Guggenheim explained.

“It Might Get Loud” streams on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

This interview originally appeared in Hollywood Today, but was updated today with the latest news.