Foo Fighters play the Quicken Loans Arena on 9/20.
There are hundreds of jokes about drummers being the least sexy member of a band. This is probably because they sit at the back of the stage, hidden behind a drum set nearly as large as them and hit things. The drummer may be the timepiece of the band, but they don’t have the face time that the other members do, so they are usually lost in the commotion.
When Dave Grohl started Foo Fighters in 1994, it was thought of as a joke. How could a drummer start his own rock band, especially when he was the only official member?
When he walked out of the studio with a demo tape in which he played every instrument, except guitars on one track and carried the vocals, people began to pay attention. It is a good thing they did, because the result of that demo tape is one of the most successful modern rock bands and a consistent hit
machine.
Thanks to Grohl’s hard work and talent, he was able to start pulling together other musicians. Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith from Sunny Day Real Estate and Pat Smear (Nirvana) quickly signed on. Goldsmith was later replaced with Taylor Hawkins, and Chris Shiflett joined the group while Pat Smear was on hiatus to form the five-some that exists today.
Over the course of a decade and a half, Foo Fighters have produced seven albums. Six have been nominated for Grammys and three have won – an unprecedented success for any band.
The seventh, “Wasting Light” is still too young to be nominated, but nobody will be surprised when it is. Throughout the seven albums, a lot of experimentation can be seen and each album is different from the last. With “Wasting Light,” the band went “back to rock,” according to Nate Mendel.
“Maybe that’s a little cliché,” Mendel said. “Bono probably said it a couple of times.”
Just because it is cliché, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. “We decided to put in some effort to expand the sound of the band in the last few albums. It was necessary at the time. Now we’re back with a more direct, more catchy and less experimental album.”
One hallmark of the album’s back-to-basics mantra is the fact that it was recorded completely with analogue equipment, rather than the digital toys that are becoming more commonplace.
The album also features guest musicians Bob Mould and Krist Novoselic. Bob Mould is well-known for the band Husker Du, and is often referred to as one of the most influential musicians in alternative rock, even if he wasn’t as commercially successful as many others. Krist Novoselic was a founding member of Nirvana. He stepped in to play bass and accordion on one track.
When we asked Nate Mendel how it felt to see the old Nirvana bassist step in for him, he replied “You have to have thick skin. I wasn’t in town when we had to record that track, and Krist played on it. I didn’t know what to expect.”
Everyone thought it turned out very well, and Mendel, the longest running member of the band behind Grohl, doesn’t need to worry about his job any more than he already did. “You have to stay on your toes,” he said. “Dave [Grohl] showed he can do everything if he needs to when he started [the band]. Which means everyone has to stay sharp all the time.”
After fifteen years together, a band begins to feel like a family. “Sometimes we talk about the band as ‘This is our home, this is what we do,’” related Mendel. “We each have side projects. Musicians take big breaks. It’s fun to go out and play with other people, but it also helps you really appreciate the main gig.”
Foo Fighters has been through a lot together, that’s for sure. From the time they arrived late to the Grammy Awards, only to find out that they had lost the moment they stepped out of their car, to growing from an act that used one semi-truck for a show to a stadium-packing extravaganza requiring 25 semis full of gear and set, Foo Fighters is a band that doesn’t yet see an end in sight.
