If there’s one thing the documentary “Sound City” proved to me about the music industry, it’s that Dave Grohl can do anything. Yes, outside of the long haired drummer for Nirvana and the sometimes tender, sometimes quirky and always intense front man of Foo Fighters, is a director who knows how to put an entertaining and thought provoking movie together.
Even if “Sound City” devolves into a making-of movie for his latest album in its last half hour, Grohl has made a nostalgia soaked love letter to classic, analog rock where doing the same through music has only gotten him so far.
The film starts with a man going through the long process of setting up analog recording equipment the old-fashioned way, and then Grohl hastily proceeds to constructing a throwback style movie as well. “Sound City’s” wishful opening comes complete with a brat pack era voiceover, a 90’s driving montage in a hazy filter and a “Real World” typeface; it confidently wears on its chest, “These were the good ‘ol days.”
Grohl’s purpose for making this film was to document the stories behind a recently shuttered but legendary recording studio in Van Nuys, California called Sound City. This dumpy palace that should’ve never had as good of equipment or as good of sound as it did opened in the ‘70s and became home to some of rock’s greatest albums and stars. Tom Petty recorded “Damn the Torpedoes” here. Mick Fleetwood met Lindsey Buckingham and Steve Nicks in Studio A.
The studio’s walls are awash with history, and Grohl allows these stories to sing one by one as he assembles a litany of musicians, including Petty, Nicks, Neil Young, Rick Springfield, Barry Manilow and more to speak about their memories while recording there.
Some time, more than you might expect, is devoted to the technical aspect of how the studio’s custom Neve Console works or to the friendly receptionists and assistants who helped out over time. But mostly, “Sound City” is a collection of pleasant rock history anecdotes. That the studio would have closed were it not for Nirvana recording “Nevermind” there is a convenient way for Grohl to take credit for the studio surviving well past its prime, but he stays mostly neutral and likable as he discusses his own youthful insecurities instead.
Because if there were one thing we wouldn’t want out of a music doc directed by a rock star, it would be Grohl stroking his own ego. He has enough other side projects so that we can do that for him.
Rather, Grohl’s mission is to champion the art of making and recording music the old-fashioned way. He leads a crusade against Pro Tools and auto-tuning before putting Trent Reznor on camera to explain that these technological advances aren’t entirely terrible. But mostly, the ambitious ideas of philosophical bonds, familial connections and human interactions all created by cutting music onto an LP the hard way isn’t entirely earned.
Maybe that’s because “Sound City” comes to the debate way too late. Unlike its film counterpart “Side by Side,” which debates the merits of film versus digital as this transition is taking place, the computerized pop starlets have already won. Great guitar rock is out of the limelight and back into the garage, and a movie like “Sound City” serves only as a one-sided eulogy.
If “Sound City” isn’t a techie’s dream or a new way of thinking about music, I like Grohl’s doc for the same reason he’ll always be tied to this way of making music. It has the surface level substance and authenticity of great stories, people and music that will never go away.
3 stars
Saw this was out, but didn’t feel it was something I’d enjoy watching, simply because I’m not into the music.