Back in his May 2011 Pint of Milk interview, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl cheerfully told **Empire **that he doesn't have much time for movies (although he liked Black Swan). That hasn't stopped him making one though, and a trailer for his documentary about the legendary recording studio Sound City has just arrived.
Very much a sibling of Keanu Reeves' **Side By Side, Sound City comes at the analogue vs. digital debate from a musician's point of view. But it's also a history of the famous studio, seemingly told by practically anyone who ever recorded there. Grohl's address book has been thoroughly plundered.
Now turned into soundstages, the Van Nuys complex played host to basically the entire rock Hall of Fame in its 40 years in operation. The first album to be recorded there was Neil Young's After The Gold Rush in 1970, and the band that switched off the lights for the final time was Everclear, in 2011. Grohl ended up buying one of the mixing desks, amazed that it wasn't going to be preserved for posterity elsewhere.
Sound City alumni include Tom Petty, Fleetwood Mac, Josh Homme, Frank Black, Trent Reznor, Lars Ulrich and Corey Taylor, all of whom appear in the documentary. There's also Grohl himself, of course, along with his Nirvana compatriot Krist Novoselic, and famous producers like Rick Rubin and Ross Robinson, among many others.
The film premiers at the Sundance Festival in January.