Under the Volcano review

 For a decade Air Studios was the go-to place for some of the world’s top rock stars to record. Situated on the remote Caribbean island of Montserrat it was founded by producer George Martin in 1979 as a spin off from his Air London studios. Over the next decade it birthed some of the Eighties’ biggest albums and was used amongst others by The Police, Duran Duran, The Rolling Stones, Dire Straits, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Buffet, Earth Wind and Fire and Elton John. It was a markedly different environment to the city bound or even countryside studios most of these artists were used to. Gracie Otto’s involving film includes anecdotes both from those who recorded there and also the people who lived there many of whom worked at the studios. It’s a great documentary reflecting the laid back atmosphere that made the studio such a favourite destination.

 

Whatever your opinion of the featured music- and there is plenty of it on the soundtrack- this is an absorbing tale of an era when rock and pop were never bigger and a time when albums needed the weight of the latest studio technology. This isn’t a film packed with juicy revelations and most of the developments that occurred while musicians were at Montserrat are already well known. Instead, as well as the musician's anecdotes, Gracie Otto focuses just as much on the local people who worked there from the bar owner, cleaner, technicians, studio managers, drivers and chefs. What much of it has in common is what a leveller the island was; stardom didn’t count for anything really and it seems like it was a place in the image of George Martin himself - cool, unflappable, relaxed yet creative.

There are plenty of photos and some rare video footage of musicians at work and often at play- a swimming pool adjacent to the studio seems especially popular. There was just the one studio so only one artist was in residence at any time with the full services of the staff, all of whom seem like the friendliest, welcoming people. This seemed to inspire creativity- Sting wrote a lot here as The Police made their last two albums, Elton John penned `I’m Still Standing` here and made three albums, Paul McCartney made two. Dire Straits made their multi million seller `Brothers in Arms` there. Various musicians and locals tell mostly happy and sometimes amusing tales of those times. While there are inevitable stories of late night bars, various substances and too much time relaxing rather than recording the place does seem to have had a remarkable soothing effect.

Not everyone enjoyed all their time there- as Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran makes clear- but you cannot deny that a number of the albums recorded at Air shaped music for over ten years. Sometimes the isolated ambience would cause significant developments whether helping to broker a rapprochement between feuding Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards or causing Sting to decide to finish The Police and go solo. Paul McCartney kickstarted his creativity at Air after the death of John Lennon.

The studio’s prominence also coincided with the advent of the CD in the mid Eighties and it would be the shift from analogue to digital recording that eventually made the place less viable though this wasn’t what ultimately stopped it operating. A devastating hurricane in 1989 shut down Air Montserrat and then a volcanic eruption in 1995 put a permanent stop to the studios.

The final fifteen minutes of the documentary show us some of the damage these natural disasters brought, not just to the studios but to people’s homes and livelihoods. There’s alarming video footage of a huge ash cloud turning day into night and you realise that all we’ve just watched was swept away by this. A whole town lies under a thick white coating, its buildings abandoned. The building that housed Air is still standing to this day and glimpsed from above and in photos in the film but is now dilapidated and overgrown with plants. It lies in an exclusion zone the island has set up to avoid losing any more lives or homes to the still active volcano so it can no longer even be visited.  A sad end to a legendary slice of music history but more than that a tragic fate to befall such a friendly place.