Liam Gallagher calls it “a national treasure.” “Music seeps from the walls,” said Elton John. Film, composer John Williams called it the “mother of the music that was birthed there.”
The place is London’s Abbey Road Studios, one of the most famous recording studios in the world, and the subject of “If These Walls Could Sing,” a new documentary/hagiography now streaming on Disney+, directed by Mary McCartney, eldest child of Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman.
From playing home to everyone from cellist Pablo Casals and Cliff Richard to Pink Floyd and Kate Bush to Fela Kuti and all the above-mentioned stars to, of course, the Beatles and so many other 20th and 21st century luminaries, the studio has made an indelible impact on recording arts and popular culture.
Broken into sections defined by era, McCartney presents an engaging nuts and bolts history of the studio, from its grand opening in 1931 to early rock and roll, to the heady days of Beatlemania and onwards to the young artists who create new music there, while soaking up the vibes of everyone who came before. The mix of archival footage, music and talking heads from the musicians who recorded there, paints an affectionate and informative portrait of the people and the place.
The stories are fun. Did you know Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin played acoustic guitar on Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” in Abbey Road’s Studio Two? That Linda Eastman brought a pony named Jet, who would later inspire the famous Wings’ song, to the studio? That Elton John, then still called Reginald Dwight, played piano on The Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”?
There are more tales from the recording studio, by-and-large, told by those who made the music, including Kanye West in a segment obviously shot some time ago, but the movie lacks real depth. When Paul McCartney is asked what makes Abbey Road so special, he says, “It’s a great studio. All the microphones work. It sounds silly but you go to some studios…” It’s not the most illuminating answer, but if you want details, John Williams goes deeper later in the film, describing the studio’s “nice face” and “nice sound.”
“It’s a gift to music,” he says. “I have to tell you.”
“If These Walls Could Sing” is nostalgia dolled up in a pretty package, with all the rough edges shorn off. Rock docs probably shouldn’t be this respectful, still, as music movies go, this one mines rich, entertaining territory.
You may not have heard of Rockfield, a recording studio located on a cattle and pig farm just outside the village of Rockfield, Monmouthshire, Wales, but you’ve heard the songs recorded there.
A new documentary, “Rockfield: The Studio on The Farm,” now on VOD, aims to illuminate the history of a place that helped create the sound of heavy metal, gave the world Queen’s signature tune when the band mastered the final section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” there in the summer of 1975, and inspired Chris Martin to write “Yellow” and Oasis to record “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”
“It’s like the ‘Big Brother’ house with tunes,” says Liam Gallagher. “You go there and don’t leave until the album is done.”
The walls of the storied studio don’t have to talk, they have owners Kingsley and Charles Ward. The brothers began as farmers and wannabe musicians, but soon realized there was more money in offering a place for bands to get away from the hustle and bustle of London’s music scene than there was in raising pigs.
“Once we got rid of the pigs,” says Kingsley, the quirkier of the two, “we got into the music business. So, it was more and less the same, except the usage had changed.”
The Ward brothers provide a great deal of the film’s charm. From helping Lemmy find a place to store his drug stash in the band’s living quarters to Kingsley’s colorfully understated way of telling a story. They provide the doc’s backbone. The stories are fleshed out by the musicians who called the place home at one time or another.
“We started as a rock band dabbling in drugs,” Ozzy Osbourne says of Black Sabbath, who rehearsed their breakthrough album “Paranoid” at Rockfield, “and ended up a drug band dabbling in rock.”
Gallagher talks about trying to record after spending the day… and night… at one of the local pubs. “You’d have a go,” he says, “but you’d end up sounding like The Pogues.”
Robert Plant says he was “already a cliché” by the time he hit Rockfield to record his first solo album and seems to have genuine affection for the place and Kingsley. Like so many others before him, he used “this arboreal green and pleasant land” as a place of reinvention.
Rockfield is still a recording studio and a working farm, and that mix and match of pastoral and musical is key to the magic of the place. Chris Martin of Coldplay calls it a “musical Hogwarts,” where bands went to live, create and find their sound. “We were sent away to figure it out,” he says.
“Rockfield: The Studio on The Farm” is an exercise in nostalgia, but it’s an entertaining one. A look back at rock ‘n roll’s first residential studio, it’s a guided tour through several generations of British rock’s guitar.
