When Dave Grohl first sought out to make a film about Sound City Studios, a dilapidated recording studio in Van Nuys, Calif., he thought it would be a short film that would be distributed through YouTube. The final product ended up being a feature-length documentary that was less about the history of the studio and more about music’s inherently humanistic qualities and the role that this specific studio played in the production of that personalized sound.

Since the Skeeter family opened the studio in 1969, music legends including Neil Young, Tom Pettyand Fleetwood Mac had flocked to Sound City for its unique acoustics and its rare Neve mixing board, one of only a few ever made. In a press Q&A at Sundance, where the documentary premiered, the Foo Fighters frontman recounted the studio’s impressive clientele. “When we first decided to call out to the musicians to make the movie, I asked the head of the studio —Tom Skeeter, the owner — ‘Can you give me a list of everyone that has recorded here?’ And he just laughed.”

Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foreigner andRick Springfield are merely a few of those who recorded at Sound City.

In 1991, Grohl was the drummer for a little trio from Seattle called Nirvana, who journeyed to L.A. to record their album Nevermind at Sound City. “I don’t know what would have happened if we recorded it at some other studio in the Valley,” Grohl said. “It might not have sounded like Nirvana.”

With vast personal ties to the Sound City, Grohl was motivated to make the film when the studio closed in May 2011. “Sound City represented something to the small group of people that would frequent there,” he said. “You know, it was really people that liked a nice, natural sound — something that wasn’t manipulated, something that was real.”

The movie is not only a love letter to a studio that forged some of the greatest albums rock ‘n’ roll has ever known, it’s also a call to arms.

“Making a movie about a dying studio and analog becoming obsolete, it can feel a little hopeless,” Grohl said.

But he hopes that Sound City will inspire kids to look beyond the modern, digitized world of music and to seek out the tangible records of the bands that inspire them. While making the film, Grohl realized that “the appreciation of music will never go away, you just have to f—ing get it into their hands or their hearts, and that is where we started feeling like, ‘Now we’re on a mission.’ ”

It is the story of a beloved, albeit defunct, recording studio in L.A. which was home to the recording of some of rock & roll’s greatest albums (After the Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac, Rage Against The Machine, Nevermind, to name only a few). The Foo Fighters front man exhibits an intimate film with a playful nature, and the kind of forthright, unabashed enthusiasm for music performance that only Grohl himself could deliver. Check out the rest below…

not my review -different sources

SOUND CITY MOVIE

mp4 1080 p

Directed by

Dave Grohl
Produced by

Dave Grohl
James A. Rota
John Ramsay
Written by

Mark Monroe
Cinematography

Kenny Stoff
Editing by

Paul Crowder
Studio

Therapy Studios
Distributed by

Variance Films
Roswell Films
Gravitas Ventures
Release date(s)
January 18, 2013 (Sundance Festival)
February 1, 2013 (Cinemas and Video on demand)
Running time

108 minutes
Country

United States
Language

English w/ Spanish Subtitles