Sound City Review

From Nirvana sticksman to Foo Fighters frontman, and with a musical legacy spanning collaborations with Killing Joke, Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, Dave Grohl has already achieved a career of legendary status in music. Sound City sees him turn his assured hand to directing, documenting the life of LA's legendary Sound City recording studio.

Opened by joint owners Joe Gottfried and Tom Skeeter in 1969, Sound City housed over four decades of recorded music, journeying a roller coaster ride of financial peaks and troughs along the way. The documentary is split into three parts opening with the history of the studio, progressing to the impact of technology and finishing with an emphasis on the principals of musical performance and songwriting.

Skeeter admits that to achieve their goal of attracting the best artists throughout the inaugural years of Sound City Studios, they knew that only the best recording equipment would entice them. The acquisition of a custom Neve Mixing Console was exactly the piece of kit to assume the role of their star magnet. The console – considered by many as the Rolls Royce of mixing desks – was priced at over $70k, double what Skeeter had paid for a house at the time.

The booking floodgates were opened following the recording of Fleetwood Mac’s eponymous album, with artists including Neil Young, Grateful Dead and Elton John all electing it as their studio of choice. Sound City was flying high until the digitally synthesised sounds of the 80s turned people away from the merits of their naturalistic, analogue output.

Struggling financially, it was Grohl’s own band Nirvana who rescued the studio in 1991, recording the momentous Nevermind and cementing their rich analogue sound as an essentiality for artists moving forward. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against The Machine and Johnny Cash are just a few of the many artists who subsequently recorded at the studio. Nevertheless, the development of recording software such as Pro Tools, which allowed musicians to record for free from the comfort of their own homes, was the catalyst for the demise and eventual closure of Sound City Studios in 2011.

Grohl largely takes a back seat until the third section of the film, preferring to put the emphasis on the recollections of other musicians and workers at the studio. Despite this, the story of Sound City is intertwined with his own personal journey through music, and the culmination of the documentary sees Grohl working with his musical hero Paul McCartney in his home studio (which now hosts the Neve Console, bought by Grohl from Sound City). The energy, spontaneity and excitement in the room is captured on the analogue tape – elements which are not present on more sterile Pro Tools recordings in the modern day.

The audience are left with an appeal to maintain the human elements in music. Too often the modernistic approach is to rely on digital tools to edit takes to perfection, whereas through practice and experimentation the un-tampered final take on an analogue tape simply captures the true heart and soul of music.

After just one afternoon of writing, jamming and recording a new song, Grohl leans over and asks, ‘Why can’t it always be this easy?’ to which McCartney replies, ‘It is!’

Sound City is released on DVD on March 11th 2013.

[embed width=550]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoOfiLz1G4[/embed]