Sound City Studios

Sound City Studios in Van Nuys opened in 1969 in a converted warehouse on Lankershim Boulevard, built around a vintage Neve 8078 mixing console that would become one of the most recorded-through pieces of equipment in rock history. The room had a particular analogue warmth that drew artists looking for something the slicker new Hollywood studios couldn't provide. Neil Young tracked albums here. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recorded their early records here. Fleetwood Mac worked here during the Tusk sessions. The board accumulated a reputation that was inseparable from the sound of American rock in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1991, Nirvana arrived with producer Butch Vig and recorded the drum and bass tracks for Nevermind in Sound City's main room. The power and precision of Dave Grohl's playing in that room — captured on "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come as You Are," "Lithium," and the rest of the record — defined the sound of an album that changed popular music. The sessions were recorded to the analogue tape the Neve console demanded; the digital processing came later. After Kurt Cobain's death in April 1994, Grohl returned to Sound City and recorded what became the first Foo Fighters album largely alone, in the same building where he had made Nevermind.

Sound City closed in 2011 when the owner sold the property. Dave Grohl purchased the Neve console and installed it in his own studio, then made a documentary film — also called Sound City — tracing the board's history and the artists who had played through it. The Van Nuys building has since returned to use as a recording facility. The console is gone, but the room is still there.