The soul of an old machine

This is one of the most enjoyable rock documentaries ever made, and it's not even really about a single rock group, though many of them appear as it unfolds. It's primarily about a recording studio, a particularly funky and charismatic one in Van Nuys, California, called Sound City Studios. They said it was so funky you could pee in a corner and nobody would notice. You just wanted to make your recording and get out. Well, many did, and great recordings, too. But really the hero of this movie isn't the studio either, though the main recording studio's mysteriously superb acoustics are repeatedly mentioned. The real key to platinum is the studio's indestructible and awesome mixing maching, the "Neve console." Musicians were in love with it. If Sound City got them started, it was the Neve console that made that happen. It enabled them to do their best work. It was designed by Rupert Neve, an English electronics whiz, and the founder of Sound City paid $73,000 for it in the early Seventies, then a lot of money. As for Dave Gruhl, he's the drummer of Nirvana. And he took over the Neve console after Sound City folded and has made some great recordings at his own studio in Encino. And besides that, he's a filmmaker: this is his first film. If you are into recording sound, or into rock, or just find hanging around musicians at work, this movie is for you. The real subject is how music is about people: the magic when they play together in a room, and let things happen. And happen they did: Sound City Studios was the place where over a hundred gold and platinum albums were recorded.

Gruhl pulls this film out of the doldrums just the way Sound City pulled itself together repeatedly when its fortunes rose and then fell till finally working solely with analog recording became too costly and too slow as digital editing and recording got nimbler and faster. At first, you get the cast of characters, the founder, the engineer, the producer, the runner who became a producer, the ladies who seemed every musician's girlfriend (one of them actually married Rick Springfield), the groups that came and went -- the way fortunes fell and then another big hit made them rise again just at the last minute. Nothing was happening and then Fleetwood Mac made their big hit Rumors in 1975 and then other groups came. Fortunes faded again and then Rick Springfield came and made Working Class Dog in 1981. Fortunes faded at the end of the Eighties and then Nirvana came, who knows why, and their 1991 debut Nevermind was a giant hit and a game changer, filling up Sound City's dance card again.

All through this saga, the Neve is the hero. But a lot of this in the documentary's first half is conventional stuff and it may look like it's all going down a very conventional and routine road. But cleverly, Gruhl edits in his own commentary (sitting at the wheel of his truck), with some by Neil Young and a few others, including the studio's longtime associate Tom Petty, to make this a story about the room, the machine, and the understanding, not just bands and record sales.

Gruhl makes this a promotional film too, in a way, because after Sound City had shut its doors, he found a home for it at his own recording studio in Encino, moving that unparalleled Neve console and setting it up in Encino with digital interfaces. It seems the drum sound is the key to a good rock record, and the Neve excelled at delivering that. And then Gruhl briefly chronicles a series of recordings he's done at his own post-Sound City location. He delivers a natural climax when we are as excited as the younger musicians in the studio, including Gruhl, to see him work with the idol of Gruhl's younger days, none other than Paul McCartney, on the wailing song, "Cut Me Some Slack," which they made in three hours with Gruhl's current group The Foo Fighters. And we hear Gruhl say, "It should always be this easy," and McCartney says, "It is." Yeah, for him I guess it always was. And apparently still is. It is hard to watch this sequence without emotion. The idol of his youth together with the sould of the old machine, the Neve console, that made that first hit Nirvana album happen: that's musical heaven for Dave Gruhl and for us to share with him.

Gruhl's effort ends with a thrill and an emotional punch, and it never ceases to flow and provide a sense of the big, wide-dynamic range analog sound Sound City and the Neve made possible. But the film is not without flaws. It's hardly a full history of the recording studio whose name it bears, because there are quite a few recording artists who worked there who aren't mentioned. We see Johnny Cash, recording when he was already ill, but we don't see or hear about Dr. John, Joe Cocker, or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We also har from Vinny Appice, Joe Barresi, Brian Bell, and Frank Black, who were involved in the studio; and from Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks (who's seen recently recording), Krist Novoselic, John Fogarty, Rick Nielson, and Barry Manilow. There is greeat footage of Nirvana recording Nevermind and of Nine Inch Nails recording for Gruhl, with an interesting cameo of Trent Reznor, who speaks both for analog and for digital as a creative tool. (Obviously coordinating the two, with the humanness of analog and the convenience of digital, is the only way to go.) But the details of the Sound City's closing (in 2011) and how Gruhl's new studio with the Neve functions are skimmed over. But as more than one of the speakers say about recording, it's also true of a documentary, you can't achieve perfection. It's the spirit that counts. And considering Gruhl's enormous creativity and productivity as a musician and now a record producer, we can cut him some slack as a filmmaker.

Sound City, 108mins., debuted 18 Jan. 2013 at Sundance and opened in Montreal, NYC and LA 31 Jan. Screened for this review at Landmark Sundance, NYC 14 Feb. 2013.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.