Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm is a delightful romp through the history of British rock and roll, centered on a Welsh farm that was converted by two music loving brothers into a recording studio. Everyone from Black Sabbath to the Boo Radleys to Oasis recorded there, and many of the musicians appear in the documentary.

The studio began when brothers Kingsley Ward and Charles Ward became enamored of rock and roll in the late 1950s. They started a group and managed to get an audience with George Martin, then a record executive, who did not sign them. Undeterred, they decide to record themselves and convert a pig stall into a small recording studio. Eventually, they give up on their failing musical dreams and begin to book local acts for recording session. At first, it was a good source of extra income because, as Kingsley states, farms rarely break, even at the best of times.

Then, in 1969, a little-known band named Black Sabbath booked some time there, and then the studio took off. In quick succession and throughout the ’70s, all the huge British guitar bands begin going to the residential studio, where bands lived and created albums for months at a time without any distractions, save for the local pub. The Stone Roses actually spent more than a total of two years there. As Martin Carr from the Boo Radleys states, “It was perfect. You had your food cooked for you, your drugs were set up for you,” and plenty of these musicians were city kids completely unused to seeing farm animals or even stars at night.

Hannah Berryman has a breezy directorial style that informs the piece and manages to wring every amount of entertainment from the participants. Her interviewing technique boasts a minimum of questions, but she never pushes and doesn’t seem to have to. Everyone is more than happy to talk about their time there. She also allows them to talk about themselves, which rock stars, of course, love to do. As a result, she gets some choice anecdotes from the usually press adverse Liam Gallagher, for example. And when she touches upon the only really tragic moment, the death of Charlatans keyboardist Rob Collins in a car accident up the road, she steps back and allows the band members to speak without interruption.

Ultimately, the film firmly focuses on the Ward family. Kingsley’s wife, Ann, oversees the books and daughter Lisa now runs the studio. Though Charles actually set up a studio on the other side of the farm, this is glossed over because, if anything, Rockfield is a celebration, a celebration of family, of Englishness, of creativity and ingenuity, and, above all, the lifesaving power of rock and roll.