Culture
Sound City: The Human Element
By Adam Parshall / Gavel Media Staff
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n the documentary Sound City (released on Feb. 1), Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl tells the story of the legendary Sound City recording studio in Van Nuys, CA. An analog tape-based studio with a knack for churning out hit records, Sound City closed in 2011, prompting Grohl to purchase some of the studio equipment, including the legendary custom-made Neve 8028 console. He also planned to make a short film paying tribute to the studio, the console and the people who had worked there throughout the years. But what started as a short film soon snowballed into a much larger project. The resulting movie, Sound City, documents the studio’s history, its legendary physical qualities and the people who worked and recorded there who gave the studio its natural, human feel. Grohl takes us through the studio’s early days as a Vox amplifier factory all the way to its private ownership by Tom Skeeter in 1969, who bought the building as a way to get into the entertainment business. Through dozens of interviews with artists, engineers, producers and others associated with Sound City, Grohl shows us how this building, described by some who used it as “dumpy” and “trashed,” became one of rock and roll’s best-kept secrets. One thing that set Sound City apart was the one-of-a-kind Neve 8028 analog console, custom ordered
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for the studio by longtime engineer and producer Keith Olsen. Artists and engineers who worked on that board would often refer to it as the best board they had ever tracked on or recorded into. Grohl regards it as “the reason I’m here right now.” From the time artists began recording through that board, with Buckingham-Nicks in the early 1970s, to Fleetwood Mac after that, all the way through the ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s, it was known for producing hit records. Sound City’s first great successes came with Buckingham-Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, who recorded their critically-acclaimed, self-titled albums as well as Rumours at Sound City. That combination of the live tracking room, the Neve console and analog tape gave those albums their signature sounds. Sound City would continue to spawn hits throughout the late 1970s, including hit records with REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Cheap Trick and Tom Petty. With their next big success in Rick Springfield and Working Class Dog, Sound City saw a surge of business throughout the early 1980s, including
Nirvana. Neil Young. Fleetwood Mac. Metallica. Weezer. Cheap Trick. Johnny Cash. Rage Against the Machine. What do all of these have in common besides being multiplatinum bands and recording artists? They all recorded at Sound City Studios.
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Diver. The conversation shifted, however, to the battle between analog and digital recording that would eventually seal the studio’s fate. With the emergence of digital recording technology, Sound City’s analog, tape-based process began to be viewed as archaic, as more and more bands were leaving analog studios to move to the cheaper, simpler digital studios. That “human element” of music was slowly drifting into the digital realm, with sound manipulation and huge amounts of production becoming the popular way to make a record. In the late ‘80s, Sound City was dying. The takeover of digital had almost driven it completely out of business, until Nirvana chose Sound City to record their multi-platinum Nevermind. That album essentially saved Sound City for the rest of the 1990s. Focused almost entirely on primal, raw performance, Nevermind launched Nirvana into the mainstream and made Sound City the place to record for those who wanted to make a hit record. The ‘90s and 2000s were a crucial time for the studio, producing records such as Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ One Hot Minute and Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth. However, despite the www.bcgavel.com
success of those records produced at Sound City, the emergence of Pro Tools as a simpler, more cost-effective way of making a record sounded a “death knell” for Sound City. In 2011, the studio, behind on its bills, was forced to close. The studio that had been a home to so many inspirational artists and produced so many hit records was gone. The final part of the film focuses on Grohl’s purchase of the Neve console from the studio in 2011, because he wanted to give “that old board new life, with new music.” Many of the musicians who had recorded at Sound City were invited to Grohl’s Studio 606 to make a brand-new record, Real to Reel. His goal was to capture the “human element” of music. With the emergence of technology and new ways of manipulating sound, Grohl wanted to ask the bigger question of how we make music that continues to sound like people. Musicians that had recorded on the Neve in the ‘70s were brought together with musicians who never had, in order to create an album that reflects how people respond to others with music, and how each person feeds of each other’s “feel.” The Foo Fighters teamed up with artists including Steve Nicks, Rick Springfield, Corey Taylor, Jim Keltner, Trent Reznor, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Tim Commerford, Lee Ving, Krist Novoselic, Paul McCartney and many others to create a truly unique album that would try to encapsulate the vibe and the human aspect of music that was captured so many times at Sound City. Hearing all of these artists playing and talking about the music they made together at Sound City drives home the fact that music is made by people interacting with other people. The heart and personality of music are felt in the artists making that music. It doesn’t happen with a computer creating sounds for them. With Sound City and Real to Reel, a little bit of that human sound is captured again. For Grohl, Sound City represents a kind of musical “integrity” that is all too hard to come by nowadays. “Bring ‘em in the room, mic ‘em up, and just let tape roll.” Screenshots by Emily Akin/Gavel Media
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