Dave Grohl’s admiration for the kind of recordings that came out of the Sound City studio in Van Nuys, Calif., inspired him to turn filmmaker for the first time.

The Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman made his directorial debut with Sound City, a documentary that bowed at the Sundance Film Festival last month.

“If you had the courage to record at Sound City, you were going to get something special,” Grohl said in an interview with CBC’s Q cultural affairs show.

Grohl recalled his first impressions of the studio — a dump, with dingy linoleum, in an unfashionable industrial district. He first entered the studio when he was just 22 to record the album Nevermind with Nirvana.

“The place looked dumpy but the first song we recorded in that room was huge, it was enormous, and we hadn’t heard Nirvana sound like that yet,” Grohl said.

“That album became huge and changed my life. I kept this emotional connection for the past 20 years to the place that changed my life, the board that changed my life, the room that changed my life.”

When the studio closed down last year, Grohl bought one of its Neve sound boards, a piece of analog equipment no longer considered useful. He says looking at that board inspired him to pay tribute to its past with the film Sound City, which looks back at great moments in the studio’s history.

In his Q interview, Grohl discusses the strengths and weaknesses of analog, compared to today's digital technology.

Grohl says he respects the “human element” that led to legendary recordings at the studio, by bands such as Fleetwood Mac and Rage Against the Machine and artists such as Neil Young, Tom Petty and Johnny Cash.

“People went there to capture the true sound and feel and vibe of their band. Sound City would capture moments. There wasn’t a lot of production technique,” he said, contrasting the studio with its analog equipment with today’s digital production, which Autotunes the human element out of every song.

Sound City opens in cinemas across North America on Jan. 31.