"Sound City": Two Perspectives on Dave Grohl's Love Letter to a Music Institution

Remember the first time?

Do you remember your first time?

It does not matter what I really mean. I am sure most of you thought the same thing.

I am talking about musicians playing in garage bands. Bands may have the luck of playing at joints where people are more concerned about what they are drinking or eating at the time, barely listening to them playing their hearts out. They dream of success, just like us.

It takes time and a lot of work. Many do not have time. Life takes them down other roads, so that they can provide for their family. Others are committed enough or have luck and support to hold on out here and wait for their moment to come.

The moment arrives when the musician enters a recording studio for the first time. Dear reader, the feeling you thought about when I started mentioning your first time, I compare that feeling with what a musician feels when they enter a studio for the first time.

At last, they will plug their instrument into a professional rig. They may sign on a microphone worth north of a thousand dollars. Their voice will go through a mixing board more expensive than a zero miles car.

It is the best day of their life. The day they will show their talent and record it in the best quality possible. It is the beginning of a professional career.

Gustavo Beitler

Send in the Critics!

Sometimes, indie films rock. Literally. Music nerds and gearheads will have a blast with Sound City, a documentary retelling the story of the hallowed Los Angeles studio that made history as the birthplace of seminal records like the eponymous Fleetwood Mac (1975) - opening salvo of the Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham era of Mick Fleetwoods’ band - and Nirvana’s Nevermind (1992). The Nirvana connection runs deeper than one might think. The movie is the feature film directing debut of Dave Grohl, drummer of the iconic grunge band and leader of Foo Fighters, for which he has created many music videos.

With plentiful archival material, Growl set how to compile an oral story of Sound City, interviewing everyone from the suits to the office managers and the runners, who would escalate in the shaggy dog operation all the way to sound engineers. In form and spirit, it will remind you of All Things Must Pass (Colin Hanks, 2015), retelling the rise and fall of Tower Records. It is also streaming on Popflick, and together they would make an awesome double bill.

For all the charm of the grunts in the front office, the suits and the engineers behind the mixing board, it is impossible to escape the gravitational pull of the stars. And there are plenty of those: Mick Fleetwood, Lindsay Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks; 90s acts like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and The Pixies’ Frank Black; cult heroes like Fear’s frontman Lee Ving. No matter the stature of the talking head, the atmosphere is always warm and down to earth. The only moment the movie gets starstruck is when Carl Perkins steps into the studio with John Fogerty.

Full disclosure: I had to google who Carl Perkins was. My ignorance sheds light on the not-so-hidden value of Sound City. We have a fascinating time capsule of the creative side of the industry. It frames music-making as an ultimately human endeavor, where the imperfection comes part and parcel with the feeling and the soul. It’s all about human connection. First, the one the musicians recording together establishes between them. Then, the one mediated by technology as the product of their work reaches the listener. The final act introduces Pro Tools and Autotune, presented as the final blow to the institution of Sound City Studios. With everybody able to put out a record on their laptops, why spend thousands of dollars recording at a dumpy place in Van Nuys?

Ten years have passed since Sound City premiered. If anything, the industry has moved further down the digital realm. A decade later, the movie gains unexpected resonances as we parse the rise of artificial intelligence in creative arts. Just last month, Spotify and other streaming services retired a song that used A.I. to create a track made to sound like a non-existent duet between Drake And The Weeknd. The controversy folds into the current screen writers strike, as the possible use of A.I. by the film studios factors into the negotiations.

When Dave Grohl and his friends grouse about the famous Neve analog mixing board that is - was - the heart of Sound City studios, they are speaking of a piece of technology that basically kept the human element of the sound pure. A cynic might dismiss them as old-timers fetishizing their way of doing things, but there is plenty of room for Reznor. He is identified as an artist that uses Pro Tools as a musical instrument and not just as, well, tool.

Sound City is clearly a labor of love for Grohl and a sneaky piece of self-promotion. Spoiler alert: the man performs a salvage operation, rescuing the Neve mixer to house it in his own 606 Studios. As a homage to the defunct studio, he rounds up some veterans who recorded there to put down some new tracks and interview them for the movie. This is a cross-promotion / cross-production juggernaut. Alas, it is hard to resent it since his enthusiasm for history and the nuts-and-bolts of music-making is so genuine. Grohl is not above poking fun at himself. When he interviews English engineer Rupert Neve, he uses subtitles to put forward his own cluelessness about the sound scientist explanations of how his invention works.

There is a melancholic undertow to Sound City. The movie premiered ten years ago, in 2013. Looking at the musicians who have died since then can break your heart. We practically see Tom Petty aging before our eyes, from a fuzzy home video shot during the recording of Damn the Torpedoes (1979) all the way to the mature musician recounting his adventures in the studio. You see Foo Fighters' dynamic drummer Taylor Hawkins, gone too soon at 50 years old in 2022. You can find solace in the climatic session where the surviving Nirvana members record a rocking track with Paul McCartney, screaming on a mic with abandon that would make Kurt Cobain proud. Sir Paul is still around. In 2020, he released his 18th solo album, McCartney III.

For all its dreamy-eyed evocation of the past, film and music makers cannot fight the advancement of technology. We are watching this movie on a movie streaming service. And the soundtrack, Sound City: Real to Reel is available on all the major music streaming platforms. It is convenient but also bittersweet. We can find solace in the wonderful and imperfect music that Growl and his colleagues managed to record for posterity.

Juan Carlos Ampie