Touched and Transformed

In this video we explore the Enneagram Types of the three hard core electric guitar players from the movie “It Might Get Loud” We’ll look at their body language, word choices, life orientation, and favorite memories as tips to revealing their Enneagram Type.

It Might Get Loud Part 1

It Might Get Loud Part 2

Summery

The movie is walk through the development and coming of age for this unlikely trio. They have wildly different backgrounds and wildly different personality types as you’ll see and we dig into their psychology.

Guitarist “The Edge” from the band U2 is probably an Enneagram type 5. He has made a study of notes, tone, technology, and electronic synthesizers and is now a true professor of sound. He has mastered the art form.

At one point he stripped away all the extra noise to get to the ‘bare minimum” of a note like a good five would. (Fives are minimalists at heart.) This allowed him to crank up the volume and lets the sound be more aggressive.

His precision drives people crazy. He has a different set of minute adjustments and levels for each of the 23 songs in a set. And a different guitar ready, levels set, for each song.

The edge shows us very little body motion in the movie, even when he’s rockin’ out on the guitar. The other two are swaying and rocking and feeling it through their bodies. I have the sense that The Edge is fully immersed in the experience, but getting it primarily through his head. This detachment from the body, and accessing things through the head, is typical for Enneagram Type fives.

The second character is Jack White from the White Stripes. At first blush he looks like an Enneagram Type four. He is a dark character. He wears dark clothing, black suits, a black hat low over his dark eyes, and has a flair for the unique. He says things like, “Technology destroys emotion and truth… and kills creativity.”

His favorite song is written by a blues player whi is deep in self doubt, there is painful tension in the song and Jack resonates with that. He says, this man plays where, “my soul rests.”

On deeper exploration he starts to feel like a Enneagram Type six with a Counter Phobic (or Confront) twist. He’s talking about what will happen as these three get together and says, “Probably a fist fight,” and goes on to say, “I’m going to trick these guys into giving me their tricks.” He’s got a chip on his shoulder and comes from the hard part of southwest Detroit. Where his family had, “a stiff upper lip.”

In the movie he says you want “to pick a fight with the guitar… and win the fight!” He keeps bent and broken guitars so he can do battle with them and make it give him the sound he wants. He says, “I want to conquer it! I want it to be a struggle.”

I’m torn between type four and type six for Jack. He’s angry and edgy, but you see these characteristics in both fours and sixes at times. If you have an opinion please comment below.

And finally we get to Jimmy Page who is, I believe, the most accomplished hard rockin Enneagram Type nine in history. He’s nice, compliant, available, and seemingly without the ego that you might expect from someone so famous.

Like many nines, his career path wandered a bit (as he landed in a recording studio playing ditties, tunes for commercials, and (yawn)  “musac”) It was a dream that he fought for his entire life. It was fame he stumbled into with a love of the guitar and an uncanny ability to make the guitar sign for him at will.

Nines are blenders. They loose themselves in a group and enjoy feeling that connection. Jimmy talks about this in the movie when he talks about his band Led Zeplin he says, “We were so comfortable playing with each other that we could take it in any direction.” and “the four of us so blended we took on a 5th element… it was musical heaven.”

In the movie he got into relationship with the other two quickly and started to feel the connection verbally and through the music.

I would not have guessed it, but in a dog-eat-dog industry where you’re paid for your hard edge, conviction, channeled anger, an Enneagram Type nine is one of the best ever!

It just goes to show, we are not defined by our type!

Please enter comments or questions below.

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