Dave Grohl’s studio time-travel

DAVE Grohl thought Sound City studios was “a dump” when he first went there.

The Foo Fighters frontman – who spent 16 days in the Los Angeles studio, where greats like Neil Young and Fleetwood Mac recorded some of their best work, to make new documentary ‘Sound City: Real To Reel’ – first used the studios when drummer in Nirvana and despite its dilapidated appearance, he was staggered by the impressive sound it produced.

Asked his first impressions of the studio, he said: “The same as anybody else’s: that it was a dump. It was 1991 when we walked in the front door, and it looked like it was 1973 inside. When we recorded the first song (‘In Bloom’), we plugged in, sat down, recorded the first couple of takes and went into the control room to listen to playback.

“Butch hit ‘play’, and it was unlike anything we’d ever heard. It was Nirvana, but the biggest, baddest, punchiest version of Nirvana we’d ever heard. It was just like, ‘Oh my god! How did that happen?’ It was that room and that board.” BANG!