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The Edge on the future of the guitar
The documentary feature film ‘It Might Get Loud’ opens in the UK this Friday, January 8th , about a meeting between three iconic guitarists of different rock generations: the legendary Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, garage blues primitivist Jack White of The White Stripes and U2’s professorial effects master The Edge. My interview with Jimmy Page ran in the Telegraph last week but while researching it I spoke to The Edge, who called from LA just before Christmas. Here, for U2 and guitar fans, is that conversation in full, in which Edge discusses the past and future of the guitar, U2’s new album, why they might play new songs at Glastonbury, the fate of Spiderman and the Edge’s previously unremarked resemblance to a Hollywood sex symbol.
Its not often that you might find yourself on stage with some of the greatest guitarists in the world, so what did you learn from the experience?
What did I learn? Even though all guitar players are reaching for the ideal guitar tone, I was struck by how different they sounded, and in the hands of other people with different set of ears to put a sound together, its such a different result, and it just showed me how the instrument is so versatile. A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that’s true of a lot instruments, pianos sound like pianos, but there’s something about the guitar, the range of possibilities is much broader. And I really felt our differences influences and points of view were really contained within our sound and choice of sound and ways of playing.
Indeed, the way the different personalities express themselves through their instrument is something that comes across very clearly in the film. Yet while the individual journeys that bring you to that shared stage are fascinating, when you do all get together, there’s no great musical explosion, just a lot of tentative twiddling, really.
That was the other thing I learned: how useful drummers and bass players and singers are! Put three guitarist together in a room and what you get is lots of guitars. Also I was thinking about what would I play out of my stuff for these guys, and I realised what I do isn’t really designed to be heard solo. Its not like I sit down and write a guitar piece and that becomes a song. I actually rely on what Adam and Larry are doing to complete the picture. The Streets Have No Name doesn’t make any sense out of context, it just becomes this very Philip Glass like set of motifs, and the meaning is really in the changes in the bass and drums. So that was actually a nice realisation, I’m one of those guitar players who’s really integrated into his band. I’m not like Jimmy or Jack, who can play solo guitar that would stand up on its own
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