Film to focus on mountain music studio

The legendary Caribou Ranch recording studio will live again — at least on the silver screen.

From 1972 until it was damaged by fire in 1985, the converted barn in the Boulder County mountains near Nederland was visited by some of popular music’s most fabled performers, including Paul McCartney, Chicago, Joe Walsh and Elton John, who named his 1974 album “Caribou” after the studio.

Among the hit singles recorded there were John’s version of the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” and Rick Derringer’s “Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo.”

Now, according to the Hollywood Reporter, scriptwriters Randall Miller and Jody Savin are preparing a screenplay for a movie to be titled “Caribou Records,” which will tell the story of the studio run by music producer James William Guercio.

Miller will direct “Caribou Records,” and the filmmakers will work with Guercio on the project.

Guercio “left Hollywood to go to the wilds of Colorado and put everything on the line,” Miller told the Hollywood Reporter. “Everyone thought he was nuts. But all these artists — John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Elton John, the Beach Boys — came out there. He’s basically this young guy who had a crazy dream.”

Filming is scheduled for this summer in as-yet-unspecified Colorado locations.

“The locale will definitely be a character,” said Miller. “The ranch and this wilderness has a tapestry of its own. Album after album came out of that place, and you have to ask yourself, ‘What was the secret ingredient?’ ”

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