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Just received a missive on my Blackberry from my colleague Guy Dixon, who will be at the 3 p.m. press conference at the Sutton Place for the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) titled It Might Get Loud, about the electric guitar. Guy was at the screening last night, and reports thus:
It wasn't a festival crowd jamming the Ryerson Theatre last night for the documentary It Might Get Loud. It was a rock crowd (albeit of the well-behaved Toronto variety). Then in came the dignitaries, none other than Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge and Jack White of The White Stripes. All wore de-rigueur black, but in their own expected ways. Page had on a long top coat, his new white hair shoulder-length. He was clearly the legend among the guitar legends, taking his seat in the theatre and smiling with that sour-lemon smile of his, the same face he always made during the Stairway to Heaven solo. The Edge looked neat as usual under his obligatory skull cap. (If Page can muster the courage to go gray, feel free to ditch the skull cap, Edge.) White was in usual sartorial splendor, a kind of New Orleans vaudevillian man, with a pork pie hat and tie (in fact, so well decked out it would be a surprise if White didn't have a stylist).
The best glimpse of them came when they appeared on stage for a brief post-screening Q&A. The Edge, who said that this was the first time he had seen the finished film, immediately joked that he regretted his choice of clothing in the film. Presumably he means the concert clip from U2's Pop Mart era, with his vaguely gay cowboy look with the muscle anatomy print. White, swinging between humour and earnestness, said it was "great to find out these guys were in bands too. I look forward to hearing their albums one days," gesturing toward the much older Page and Edge. As to their very different styles, White added about The Edge, "he's got more [effects] pedals."
The Edge retorted, "I'm older than he is," joking that the pedals are a crutch for old age. To which White responded that he may stop going the minimalist route and take up effects pedals too, "one day when I'm older." White's wife, model Karen Elson, bent over in her seat in an oh-no-I-can't-believe-he-just-said-that fashion.
Then came the burning question of the night just before the trio were whisked away to a very large (and as it turned out, not very exclusive - or even very loud) after-party given for the film at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel on Wellington: Which one and only guitar would you choose to have among your collection of guitars on a desert island? (Agh! The obligatory desert-island rock hagiography!)
White's choice: Page's guitars. (He was half joking.) Page's choice: White's guitars. The Edge's choice? His old, trusty, wedge-shaped hunk of wood, better known as a Gibson Explorer. As innovative as his music may be, The Edge was never known for visuals.
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