吉他英雄

《搖滾青春夢》（ㄟˇ金ㄘㄚˋ喔） It Might Get Loud
美国2009年著名纪录片导演Davis Guggenheim（《不愿面对的真相》）全新力作！值得期待，美一区12月22日发行，国内D版最快12月7日发行，考虑到字幕问题，预计12月12日左右可见D版。

简介：
这部音乐纪录片以三位吉他手的音乐生涯及自述作为主轴。他们分别是活跃于1970年代的英伦摇滚乐团Led Zeppelin（齐柏林飞船）的吉他手Jimmy Page，在1980、1990年代扬名立万的爱尔兰乐团U2的吉他手The Edge（猴鳃雷）以及近年以堪称蓝调文艺复兴之姿震撼美国乐坛的姐弟双人组The White Stripes（白线条）的吉他手Jack White。导演Davis Guggenheim结合三位吉他手各自的访谈纪录，以及三人聚首，谈论并且共同飙奏电吉他的片段，剪接成为一部从电吉他对于三人各自的意义出发，进而触及所谓「摇滚乐」如何定义他们的生涯，最后呈现三人以摇滚乐手的立场剖析自己的纪录片。

花絮：
Davis Guggenheim在映后座谈当中也以对于自己的剖析开场。他说自己不是以一个摇滚音乐学者的立场去拍摄〈It Might Get Loud〉；同样的，拍摄〈不愿面对的真相〉的Davis Guggenheim也不是一名环保尖兵。Davis Guggenheim只是一个「说故事的人」，一个以说好故事作为工作的人。他所以用吉他作为主轴，去说三个吉他手的故事，也说三个吉他手联系起来所衍生的故事。。然而吉他手满世界，为何偏偏是他们三人？导演Davis Guggenheim一句「人家我也想要找Jimmy Hendrix啊！」惹得全场哄笑。他掩不住得意地继续说，以一个将故事说得精彩的前提，他很喜欢Jimmy Page、猴鳃雷和Jack White联系起来产生的冲决效果。

猴鳃雷说：我永远对自己也对工作伙伴吹毛求疵地追寻更多元、更丰富的声音表现，那些追寻，那些声音，就是我。Jack White说：我只是永远想要和听众分享一些所获。三人之中，Jimmy Page超过半世纪的音乐阅历令他兀自地动人。齐柏林飞船时期的Jimmy Page及肩的长发乌黑，脸上若非群玉山头见的清新俊秀和一旦弹奏起吉他的放肆张狂令人分不清他就竟是天使抑或厉鬼。遍历综乐酒精、毒品，他的伙伴，齐柏林飞船的鼓手John Bonham死于饮酒过量引起的急性肺水肿以及更许多繁华梦幻以后的Jimmy Page，头发已经花白。他说：我只是用每天执起吉他，好让我再也无力弹奏的那一日永远在望不到尽头的天边。

简评：
齐柏林飞船最著名的作品当中用远不乏Jimmy Page长篇的吉他独奏以及主唱Robert Plant张狂也魅人的性感嗓音。猴鳃雷在动荡的爱尔兰成长，层出不穷的冲突、爆炸、死难在他心中划下的伤痕令他不得不执起吉他进行控诉。这样的猴鳃雷，反动的是齐柏林飞船兀自作乐的耽溺恣肆。猴鳃雷广泛的社会关怀令他永远在乐音当中寻求更深刻、更缜密的修辞。不断在硬件、音效合成和音像科技中实验的猴鳃雷和U2唱出许多结构严整，制做精致的歌曲有如〈Where the Streets Have No Names〉：

太严整显得虚伪，太精致不免矫饰。浸淫底特律（Detroit）非洲裔美国人社群蓝调乐音的Jack White用他的音乐当中不假雕琢的生猛节拍，发乎于心的真诚吶喊反动的正是有如U2那样深深根植于数字科技的精密算计。Jack White的白线条乐团所以只有他和鼓手姊姊Megan两人，他们以当代的不安与焦虑简洁直白地回溯摇滚发源的蓝调传统，翻出令死滞乐坛惊艳的曲调如〈You Don’t Know What Love Is （You Just Do As You’re Told）〉：

Davis Guggenheim安排三位彼此反动的音乐人会见的结果竟是一团和气。Jimmy Page、猴鳃雷和Jack White三人忘我地谈论音乐、竞飙吉他固然火花四射，却也令在场某些观众不禁质疑到：让三个反骨倨傲的摇滚乐手在音乐中爱上彼此，摇滚乐还怎么「屌」得起来呢？


摇滚乐有多屌？也许是在初衷失落复又寻回的许多过错以后，用片体鳞伤换取到一点毕竟不迟的诚实。

I drive myself totally crazy, trying to get the sound that I can hear in my head to come out of the speakers.
As writers, we start with the feeling and everything follows from that.
We are always worried about being satisfied. When you become satisfied, it's sort of like you just die.
There is a tension in that music that you can feel. It just feels like there's this place where, you know, my soul rests and these guys were expressing it.
I got really into drumming, playing along with the records. Those rhythms got into me early. 100% only caring about music and rhythm. I had a bedroom that was about 7 by 7 feet, really small. There was so much junk I had collected. I had two drum sets in there, a guitar amplifier and a reel-to-reel, and no bed. I took the bed out. I slept on a piece of foam on an angle by the door.
...and so I found ways of playing these chords where I'd eliminate certain notes. So there's a more clear sound... Really paring it down to the absolute bare minimum. When it's so simple, you can turn it up really loud, and it's got more aggression.
Pop music was rubbish, so we weren't gonna be playing that...not going with the flow.
They thought it was going to be counterculture or something. It wasn't doing harm to anybody. Not then it wasn't.
When people take a guitar that's known for a certain sound, and throw it into a whole different context, something interesting happens.
I got this echo unit and I brought it back to rehearsal, and just got totally into playing, but listening to the return echo, filling in notes that I'm not playing, like two guitar players rather than one. The exact the same thing, but it's just a little bit off to one side. I could see ways to use it that had never been used. Suddenly everything changed.
This spoke to me in 1000 different ways. I didn't know that you could do that. Just singing and clapping. And it meant everything. It meant everything about rock'n'roll, everthing about expression and creativity and art. One man against the world in one song... I heard everything disappearing. It didn't matter that he was clapping off time. It didn't matter that there was no instruments being played. All that mattered was the attitude of the song.
Jumping off into the unknown. Hope and have faith that the next chord or the next few notes will come to you. On occasion you get nothing and you come out feeling like a complete idiot and that you don't know everything and you can't play guitar and you can't write songs.
So many lives destroyed. Perverted, distorted ideas of freedom. No life was sacred.
And I thought about it for a long time, for days. There's this whole new world that's just opened up in front of me and I have to figure out, "How do I get there?" "Am I not allowed to get there?"..."Am I a writer, or just a guitarist?"
I shed this coat off me, and then I wanted to try everthing that was breaking rules. I wanted to do things that sped up. I wanted to do things that were like playing a bow and hurting people's ears.
We're presenting ourselves in a really childish manner, almost like cartoon characters. And a lot of distractions to keep people away from what was really going on, which was we were just really trying to play this.
Total disregard for human life. We are not buying into this.
Clarity of Vision. What you've been looking at from the wrong angle and not seeing at all. You labor. You sweat to see, what you couldn't have seen from that other perspective.
I come in here and sometimes it's just not a great day. But there's always gonna be something if you just keep going.
There's a total concentration on music and creativity and writing. Pushing the boundaries. Looking over the horizon. Musicians that were absolutely on top of their game.
The biggest thrill is creating something that has the power to really connect with people.
For me it was a much bigger world. I had a voracious appetite for everything. All of it.
Music keeps progressing and moving on and people come up with new ideas and new tricks and new ways to tell the same story in a different way. We are all doing the same thing, attempting to share something with another human being. In essence, we are effectively the same band. We are a little bit more complex. But we are really still the band that's crowded into the small rooms, trying to play with each other, and find those clues that will take us somewhere new.
I loved this whole idea of, you know, getting a band together.

吉他不是摇滚乐的全部，却足以诠释摇滚乐的灵魂。



我爱摇滚，但要我说我最喜欢摇滚乐的哪一部分，我还是会很自私的说——吉他。

我知道，单有吉他不可能创造出摇滚乐。没有鼓就失去了节奏的快感；没有贝司就缺少了音乐的基调；没有主唱，这个我认为摇滚乐当中最简单又是最困难的部分，就缺少了乐队的辨识度。可我就是喜欢吉他，没有理由。



It might get loud，这部电影的中文译名叫《吉他英雄》。翻译的人估计是个摇滚迷，看着Jimmy Page，The Edge，Jack White这三个人的名头，给了个跟这英文片名毫不相干的名字。而这个英文名的取名者，也就是导演，居然根本就不是个摇滚迷，而记者问他为什么选择这三个人时，导演还很搞笑的说了句“我也想找Jimi Hendrix啊”。话说回来，正因为这个导演并不迷恋摇滚乐，才能用这样一种写实甚至有点清新的方式表现出三位吉他大师的内心世界。



花白头发的Jimmy爷，略显苍老的Edge叔，加上依然有着青春活力的Jack，三个年龄段的吉他手，让我不得不佩服导演的选人。

Jimmy爷出道于“披头士年代”，摇滚乐刚刚起步，所有的创新都带动着摇滚乐的发展。可那个年代，摇滚却依然不为大众接受，以致Jimmy爷迷恋的将吉他背到学校天天练习之后，老师将他的吉他没收，并将他列为“反主流者”。这倒也造就他做音乐的风格——“反叛”，比如用小提琴弓拉吉他，比如运用双柄吉他。他尝试了许多前人不敢尝试的东西，因此，另外两位小辈一致认为，他们三人当中Jimmy爷是最有朋克精神的。

Edge叔出道时，摇滚乐已经基本成型，各种曲风也基本已经奠定了基础。这种时代，很容易踟蹰不前，因为创新很可能意味着对前人的不敬。他们出道于Punk盛行的年代，自然也免不了模仿前人。Edge叔走进曾经的录音室居然还说，“我们当时真不知道自己能做出来什么”。但他们成长了，他们用摇滚表现对政治的不满，让自己也成为后人学习的对象。

Jack叔是三人中年龄最小的，但是他却最复古。我对此人的了解甚少，但在这部电影中，他的才华让我不得不佩服。他敢于对以前的东西加以改进，敢于对现在的流行提出抗议。这个年代，创新能够为大众接受，因此Jack们才能够很快找到自己的道路。



三个年代，三种摇滚，但当三个人坐在一起讨论时，又可以达到同一个点位。



电影中让我最有感触的，是三人最后一起弹奏的民谣。G,C,G,Bm,四个简单的和弦，却如此动听。Jimmy爷还有些不好意思的说，“我唱不了歌，这很没前途，对吧？”而The Edge也在慌乱之中弹错了和弦。每个人都有自己小小的缺点，吉他大师也不例外。

电影中给我最高的兴奋点，是三人同时演奏Led Zeppelin的In My Time Of Dying。Jimmy爷的重金属，Edge叔的英伦，Jack叔的朋克，居然能够如此和谐的交织在一起。这是吉他的魅力。

为什么会选择摇滚？The Edge在最后说，“最大的激情就是创作，有一种能量将人们联系在一起，这就是为什么我拿起了吉他。”而创作很难吗？Jimmy爷说到神曲Stairway to Heaven时，仅仅把创作的过程表现为“不由自主的灵光一现”。摇滚来源于生活，却高于生活，这是摇滚的魅力。



听着Jack White最爱的那首没有伴奏，仅仅靠拍手和声音演绎的歌曲；看着Jimmy爷在听到自己喜欢的旋律时那慈祥的笑容；望着Edge叔在大海边带着音响弹奏吉他的身影。突然感觉到，摇滚也可以如此静谧，如此安详，如此平和。



当你在音乐的道路上摸索时，你也许正在创造着历史。时代在变，不变的，是摇滚精神。

但是当一个讲故事的人，真正的创作者，不断赋予陈旧的生活以新的色彩是很有意义和趣味的事情。
当你创作的时候，必须全神贯注，眼望地平线。