Before Sir Paul appears onscreen, though, Grohl does a thorough service to Sound City, channeling his upbeat, enthusiastic personality into figuring out exactly what about the space made it so special before it closed as a commercial studio in May 2011. What was recorded there, you ask? Just Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” Nirvana’s “Nevermind” (so for Grohl, the return to Sound City is a sort of homecoming), pretty much everything Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers ever did, other work by the likes of the Grateful Dead, Santana, Cheap Trick, Pat Benatar, and Neil Young—all in a dingy former box factory that looks like it needs a solid scrubdown. Is it the wide, open space that makes the acoustics so good? Something about the recording room? Or was it the equipment, like the 8028 Console soundboard, designed by English electronics engineer Rupert Neve? Is the magic of Sound City even a quantifiable thing?
Grohl aims to answer that question by specifically attacking two specific narratives in the recording industry today: that digital technology is better than analog recording and that everyone can be a musician now, that experience and institutionalized knowledge aren’t important anymore. We’re all used to the slickness of current music, but Grohl argues that the improvisation, the unexpectedness of what could happen in Sound City gave the space an edge. And the people, too—producers, engineers, even the place’s receptionists—all helped create a certain kind of communal atmosphere that made the place fun, vital, important to be. People wanted to be there, so they went there. People liked working with each other, so they did. It was that human-to-human, collaborative interaction that made Sound City so impactful, Grohl says—and he gets a host of other musicians, including Petty, Stevie Nicks, Young, Rick Rubin, Lars Ulrich, Trent Reznor, and Butch Vig, among others, to agree, sharing their own stories about Sound City.
Most of that is in the first hour of the film, and it’s all well and good. Confessional-style interviews with rock stars, aided by Grohl’s excitable, exciting personality? Great! There should be more of that. Except for where, frustratingly, there isn’t more of that, as the second half of “Sound City” becomes a save-the-memory-of-the-studio endeavor that seems more like a plug for Grohl’s and other musicians’ music than something integral to this documentary.
Back when Sound City closed, Grohl bought that custom Neve console for his own personal use, and so him recording with it becomes the driving force of the last 45 minutes or so of “Sound City.” To be fair, watching the technology in action, used by Grohl and other greats like McCartney, is interesting on its own. But it’s not enough to carry the entire second half of the film, and the voyeuristic glee we might get from watching how musicians really put songs together isn’t long-term. It becomes repetitive and somewhat self-serving, so a story Grohl had been telling about someone and something else now becomes centrally about him.
To be fair, Grohl doesn’t seem like the kind of person who purposefully mugs for attention, which is why it’s more likely that he really wanted to honor Sound City Studios by bringing a host of musicians together to work on this project. So it’s believable that the album created because of the film, “Real to Real” (which will be released on March 12 through the Foo Fighters’ Roswell Records label) is honestly meant to, according to press materials, “demonstrate the human element of creating and recording music, teaming up to write and record brand new original songs on the spot.” But still, it makes for a disjointed narrative in the film, one in which the subject jarringly becomes the object.
Up until then, though, “Sound City” is immersive and admirable, defined by Grohl’s admiration for the studio and aided by the place’s remarkable story. The magic of the place may be mysterious, but Grohl tries his hardest to share it with us—and “Sound City” is a worthy, mostly enjoyable attempt.
