When Jimmy Iovine — now chairman of Interscope Records, then a recording engineer working with Tom Petty in the ’70s — first saw Sound City studios in Van Nuys, Calif., he noted: Someone should “firebomb this f – – king place.”
While the studio was drab and rundown, it’s also where many of rock’s greatest albums, including Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” were created. Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl loved the place so much he purchased its legendary analog sound board when it closed in 2011.
Now the drummer turned Foo Fighters frontman has added filmmaker to his credits, directing “Sound City,” a documentary about the studio, which begins a one-week run at the Sunshine Cinema on Thursday, and can be purchased online the following day at buy.sound-citymovie.com.
Just after wowing the Sundance festival with an all-star concert that celebrated the film’s debut, Grohl spoke to The Post about his passion for one of rock’s lost treasures.
What memories did making the film bring back for you?
Recording the [“Nevermind”] song “Something in the Way” was the first time I’d seen digital technology used in the making of music. Seeing a computer wheeled into the room, looking at the sound waves and manipulating it for the first time, I thought, “Wow. Is this the future of music?” We had all decided, “Well, no. It’s just a gimmick. Thank God there’s tape.”
What other stories about Sound City surprised you?
The story of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks meeting Mick Fleetwood at Sound City for the first time is beautiful. Or that Rage Against the Machine recorded one of their albums live in the studio — just invited friends over, set up speakers in the room and performed for their friends. That blew me away. And then Rick Springfield being just some kid from Australia trying to get a record deal, and then he records “Jessie’s Girl” on a whim in Studio B and becomes the biggest star in the world. They’re all Cinderella stories.
You just played at Sundance with John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks, Rage Against the Machine and more. How did that come together?
I called my pals in the band and said, “I know we’re on vacation, but I need you to learn 40 songs in the next 10 days.” The idea was that we would play [other artists’] songs from the [documentary] soundtrack, and then play three, four, five songs from their back catalog. Every day I was learning 10 songs and trying to retain that information. I was a high-school dropout. I wasn’t good at taking tests. So it was a bitch.
What was the most important thing you learned about making a film?
I have a problem calling myself a director, mostly because I have a problem calling myself a drummer or a guitar player. I never took lessons in these things and, in a lot of people’s minds, I do them wrong.That’s one of the reasons we wanted to be independent. I didn’t want someone to say, “That’s not how movies are made.” I just felt like, well, this movie is gonna be made the way I’d like it to be made.