We must adjust to changing times...
...execute the office of President
of the United States...
I challenge a new generation
of young Americans...
My biggest fantasy when I was a kid
was that I would go to see
my favorite band play,
and someone would come out and say,
"Sorry, the band can't play tonight,
their drummer broke his fuckin' leg.
"Unless there's someone
that knows all the songs... "
Then, of course, I would jump up
and be the greatest drummer in the world.
I fantasized about that.
With Nirvana, the process
of making the music
was so entirely simple and pure and real.
Kurt was a great lyricist,
he had a beautiful voice,
and he wrote really simple songs.
There were things I learned about songwriting
from being in a band with Kurt
that I don't think anyone else
could have taught me.
That record, Nevermind, came out
almost a year to the day
after I had joined the band.
This song is called Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Before Dave had joined the band,
there was a message on my
answering machine from Kurt, saying,
"Butch! We have the best drummer in the
world! He's the greatest drummer in the world.
"I'm not kidding you. He's awesome, dude!"
And he hung up.
About a week later we were in LA
and I walked into a rehearsal space with him.
And Dave walked up - skinny, long hair...
"Hey, man, I'm Dave. Nice to meet you. "
He was just full of energy.
I was like, "Let's play.
Play me some songs, you guys. "
And they played Teen Spirit.
Dave did the...
...and it just floored me.
Of course, everybody was telling the band
that they thought we were great,
but I don't think the three of us ever believed
a word of anything anyone was telling us.
We never thought we were gonna sell
a million records.
None of us had any idea that it was gonna
completely change my life and their lives.
But I knew that they sounded really tight
and pretty focused,
and that they had written
some amazingly powerful songs.
We knew something was happening
because the atmosphere of the gigs
just changed.
They went from being cool, hipster,
underground people in a club
to, like...
jocks were coming to the show.
That was the first thing, like,
"Oh my God, there's jocks here,"
you know?
"That's kind of strange.
They like our music?
"You used to kick my fucking ass
for listening to this music. "
I was a really big fan of Nirvana,
like everybody else,
and I happened to be reading
an interview with Kurt
where he had mentioned,
Nirvana was always meant to be a four-piece,
a two-guitar band.
It was never meant to be a three-piece.
I thought, "Oh, well that's my in. "
Pat is from this legendary punk rock band
called the Germs
that we all grew up listening to.
There was no one more badass
than the Germs.
Germs didn't give a fuck.
So Pat shows up in Seattle,
and all of us were just like,
"Oh my God, hey, it's Pat Smear
from the Germs.
"He's alive?"
So now Nirvana is hitting the big halls,
with guitarist Pat Smear
helping to make the loud louder.
The day before the first rehearsal
I saw my picture on MTV News, saying,
"Nirvana has a new guitar player, Pat Smear. "
I was like, "My God, it's real! There it is!"
I don't think Kurt wanted to be
a huge fuckin' rock star.
And I don't think he could handle
how complicated it had all become.
No one was very happy with the tour,
or the band.
So Kurt decided he wants a break,
even though we're on this tour
you can't get out of,
because you're a big band
and you get sued.
We had, like, a week and a half off
in between two legs of the tour.
I decided to fly home.
And Kurt went to Rome, where he was
meeting Courtney Love, his wife.
Hi, I'm Tabitha Soren, with MTV News.
Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain
was hospitalized in a coma in Rome, Italy
on Friday morning...
I turn on the TV, and Kurt was being
wheeled away in an ambulance in Rome.
I went to the hospital with him, and I didn't
know what to do, because I thought,
"Do I say, this is Kurt Cobain,
take care of him right away, VIP,"
or do I say, "This is just some guy,
don't call the press"?
I finally went with, "This is Kurt Cobain, VIP.
Do something about it. "
Nirvana spokespeople reported
encouraging signs,
saying they've been told Kurt Cobain
was responding to his name,
opening his eyes,
and squeezing his wife's hand.
When he came home,
I remember talking to him on the phone,
and saying, "Hey man,
I don't want you to die, OK?"
And he was very apologetic,
"No, I'm sorry, it was a big mistake.
"I took these pills, I was drinking
this champagne and I was in Rome...
"It was, just a...
just made a mistake. "
It was really sad. I had a message
from Kurt, but I wasn't home.
And so whatever help he needed from me,
I couldn't help him.
And that was the last time
I ever talked to him or saw him.
When I found out that he had killed himself...
I was kind of numb.
I knew that it...
He was gone,
but I didn't know how to feel.
Kurt Cobain, a sweet and gifted man,
dead at the age of 27.
To Courtney Love,
one-year-old Frances Bean Cobain,
Dave Grohl, Kris Novoselic and Pat Smear,
our deepest sympathies.
Everybody knew Kurt was in a bad way,
but that's something
you never expect to happen.
When someone is that down and out
you still can't comprehend that they're
actually gonna commit suicide.
It was terrible.
After Kurt died, I didn't wanna play music.
I didn't wanna play the drums.
When Kurt died,
it wasn't just that my friend died.
It was my whole life kinda died around it
and with him, you know?
And I quit the music business.
At some point, I was finally motivated.
"I'm gonna get myself out of this funk
I've been in for the last eight months. "
Or whatever it was, you know?
I decided that I was gonna take
my favorite songs
that I'd written over the last four or five years
that no one had heard...
and I was going to record them...
...at a 24-track studio
down the street from my house.
And it was really exciting,
because I was doing it totally by myself.
I didn't know why I was doing it.
I just wanted to do something, you know?
So I booked a week at the studio,
and at the end of the week, I had a cassette,
and it sounded good.
And I started thinking,
"I won't put my name on it.
"People will imagine it's just a band.
"They won't know it's the guy from Nirvana. "
In the middle of that session,
I get a call at the studio
that Tom Petty wants me to come
play drums for him on Saturday Night Live.
I just thought,
"Oh my God, he's a hero of mine. "
And I had the opportunity to join the band
if I wanted to join the band.
I really had to kind of choose.
Was I going to play drums with Tom Petty,
or was I gonna start over from scratch
and be the lead singer
and guitar player of a band,
do something I'd never done before,
that I was terrified doing?
Believe me, it was not easy to tell Tom Petty
that I wasn't going to be his drummer.
It was not an easy decision to make.
I can still see my hand
just putting the phone down,
and thinking, "OK, let's see what happens. "
There was a band in Seattle
called Sunny Day Real Estate.
And a good friend of mine told me
that Sunny Day Real Estate
were playing a show,
and it was gonna be their last show
because they were breaking up.
My band was falling apart
about the same time that
Dave found himself without a band.
We were broken up
while we were doing the tour.
We decided we weren't gonna do it anymore,
but had already booked this tour,
so we were like,
"This will be the last thing we do. "
It was ironic because that was the first tour
that we were playing shows
where people were actually showing up.
We were like, "Oh, well!"
I went to the show to see them play,
knowing it was probably the last time
anyone was gonna see them play.
And I was watching them thinking,
"That's a really good rhythm section. "
I gave them the cassette, thinking,
"Hey, check it out.
Maybe we could jam sometime. "
Dave was the first famous person I'd ever met.
He was just out of Nirvana, you know,
like, that was a very big deal.
I remember the first time that
Nate and William and I got together to jam.
It was over at William's parents' house.
I remember going up
to William's parents' kitchen
and sitting there after we played,
and Dave just goes,
"You guys wanna be in the band?"
And I was like, "Hell yeah!"
Playing in front of people
was very difficult for me.
I did have a conversation with Dave
and I said,
"I don't think that I should do it. "
Dave said, "That's exactly
why you're the guy that has to do it. "
I don't know what that meant
but that convinced me, I guess.
After that rehearsal, Dave brings up
that he wants a second guitar player,
and thinks it should be Pat Smear,
who William and I knew from him having
played in Nirvana and the Germs.
Then Dave came over,
and he gave me a cassette.
I listened to that whole tape,
just front to end,
and I thought it was all great.
I didn't have anything against Pat.
I didn't know him as a musician or as a person.
But he lived in Los Angeles,
and I just thought that was fucking crazy.
The way I'd grown up,
you were in a band with your friend from school
that you saw every day.
You'd go home after school and get together
at somebody's mom's house or basement
and work it out.
You can't do that
if the guy lives in Los Angeles.
Pat came up, we played,
and he was perfect,
so I got over that "Him living in LA" thing.
I might have talked to him
about trying to move to Seattle.
All of us came from bands
that ended prematurely.
We didn't really talk about our former bands.
For me, it was always
kind of a touchy subject.
At this point in time,
Kurt had only been dead for a year,
and I didn't wanna talk about it.
So we all entered into this new band
like it was helping us get through the loss
of the bands we'd been in before.
I remember it really vividly,
Dave saying, like, "Let's have it be fun.
"Let's have things be out in the open.
"Let's talk about shit.
Just no drama. "
He was like,
"I don't want it to be a stressful thing.
"We're not gonna tour into the ground. "
And...
Which I was glad about.
The first tour that we did,
was with a musician named Mike Watt.
He is a legendary punk rock bass player.
And he asked me if I would tour with him.
And I said, "Yeah, man.
How about this?
"I'll be in your band
if my band can open up on tour. "
And Eddie Vedder, from Pearl Jam,
had done the same thing.
And we said, "Cool,
"Let's put together a tour
where Eddie's other band,
"they were called Hovercraft,
my band - Foo Fighters,
"would open up for Watt,
and we would all be his band. "
It was just this, like,
revolving cast of musicians.
Each song would have a different line-up.
Instead of getting a bus for the first tour...
"We'll get a van. "
I'd never done a bus tour, so to me it was
totally obvious, "Yeah, we'll get a van.
"What, we get to buy a brand new one?
Ha! Awesome!"
We played six shows a week,
and the places held maybe anywhere
from 300 to 600 people,
and Foo Fighters were making
As the tour was going on,
the venues were getting bigger,
and we started having that
really nice but weird sort of pressure.
There was a lot of attention,
because it was Dave's first tour after Nirvana.
The shows had
all of these Nirvana fans that came.
They didn't know the songs
because the record hadn't been out yet.
So there was a song called Marigold
by Nirvana,
that Dave had written and sang on.
It was the only thing they knew to yell out
when we were playing.
So you'd just hear, "Marigold!"
Marigold! Marigold! Marigold!
Shut up!
And we never played it.
How weird that must have been for Dave.
Arriving in record stores Tuesday
was one of the most buzzed-about
new releases of the year,
the self-titled debut album by Nirvana drummer
Dave Grohl's new band, Foo Fighters,
who wowed crowds
on Mike Watt's recent club tour.
Personally, to me, it was a big deal
when that record came out,
because rather than go in
and record something as a band,
we used the stuff I had recorded on my own.
That cassette.
That's the first record.
Making their network television debut
right here with us,
we couldn't be happier,
ladies and gentlemen, Foo Fighters.
Hi, Jena!
And the winner is...
Foo Fighters, Big Me.
I would like to think of this award
as some sort of closure, it's...
Stop throwing Mentos at us at our shows.
That's what I'm trying to say.
There were lots of interviews and,
you know,
Dave not wanting to talk about Nirvana.
Every question in every interview
was about Nirvana.
You can imagine what they were,
like, "Is this song about Kurt?"
Take any song from the record.
"Is that song about Kurt Cobain?"
What's it like to be at a press conference
and not be asked any questions?
Fine with me,
because I didn't wanna answer
any of the questions that were asked.
There were some people
that really resented me for starting this band.
"How dare you fucking start another band. "
They asked me, like,
"Why did you decide to carry on
"and make music that sounds like Nirvana?"
I said, "Well, wait a minute.
"What do you mean,
like loud rock guitars and melodies
"and cymbals crashing and big-ass drums?
"'Cause that's what I do.
"That's... I was in that band and this is, like...
That's what I do.
"You want me to fuckin' make
a reggae record?"
The first couple years,
I really felt like I had to explain
and defend what I was doing,
because, first of all,
"You're just a drummer.
"And, what, you're trying to sing?
"And also, you were in Nirvana,
so what the fuck is this shit?"
So there's a... You just get to the point
where you just think,
"Fuck you people. "
I wasn't sure what was gonna happen.
"Can Dave write more songs?
"How is the writing process gonna work?
Will we suck?"
I had no idea.
"Does this band have a future?"
I knew we were gonna be OK
and be able to continue
after I heard the song My Hero,
'cause it was great.
There were some songs
that we just started writing
and throwing into the set.
There were only a couple songs that we had
that were really good openers.
I thought, "God, I need to write
an opening song for us. "
In Europe and in England,
when bands play
the audience don't beat the shit out
of each other like they do in America.
They do this bounce, right?
Everybody bounces.
So I wanted to write a song
that everyone would start bouncing to
when we first came out and played.
So I had a melody and a riff idea,
but I didn't know the tempo.
So I jumped up and down,
and I found a tempo by, like, bouncing.
The tempo should be this...
I wrote the song, brought it to sound check,
said, "I have this new song.
"Let's learn it, so we can open with it
tomorrow night or tonight. "
We sound checked, ran through it,
the next night we opened with that song,
the audience was going...
It worked.
It's like, "Wow, cool. Let's keep it. "
We played, like,
I'm exaggerating, but it felt like.
Then we just toured a lot!
Pat was keeping track,
Pat was always...
Every other day he'd look at me and be like,
"12 months. 13 months. 16 months. "
I was just like...
I remember each time he would tell me
I'd be like, "No fuckin' way!"
We've been on tour for so long.
We've been a band for almost a year now,
and I'd say about seven months
out of that year has been spent on the road.
I wasn't some kid who was just like,
"Yeah!" at that point.
It was just kind of like, you know...
I'm older and I'm lazier...
What?
...and still I'm playing the same 20 songs
This song's called For All The Cows.
This song is called
For All The Cows.
It's called For All The Cows.
This one's called For All The Cows.
This song is called
For All The Cows.
The second album that we made -
The Colour And The Shape,
we decided to work
with this producer named Gil Norton.
And Gil, at the time,
was famous for making the Pixies records.
This was my first real recording process.
Now there's a producer,
someone who's not just pressing play
but actually is saying, like,
"I think that should be a C.
And you should also play it in time. "
We went into the studio with Gil
and he worked us hard, real hard.
I was fucking terrible.
And William was having his own challenges.
Gil called Nate and I the "rhythmless section".
So that was encouraging.
I could tell, when I had
to do something a million times,
that it was taking longer than I wanted,
and it was my first realization -
"I'm not a fully-formed musician.
I've got to keep getting better. "
Constantly, there was this feeling that,
whatever song we were working on,
Dave had a drum...
a drum part for it already,
in his head or whatever.
When I've written a song,
I have kind of a clear idea
of where the basic root accents should lie.
That's a fancy way of saying,
I know what the drums should sound like
in my head as I'm doing this thing.
That's not necessarily fair
to say that as a songwriter, you know,
who's collaborating with other musicians.
You're the drummer for a band
where your singer is the greatest
rock 'n' roll drummer in the world,
looking over your shoulder waiting for you
to do it as good as him.
That's just fucked-up pressure.
Regardless of how good you are,
that's just fucked-up pressure.
And remember that William was a kid.
He was really young.
I think that William
played the best that he could.
And sometimes it was great,
and sometimes it wasn't.
What sucked about all that was, you know...
I don't think the drum performances
were the best.
They didn't...
They weren't horrible.
If I listen to a song and I don't think
it has the thing that it needs,
it's not necessarily gonna get past me
and get on an album.
We left Seattle, and went to Los Angeles
to a different studio
to finish this thing up.
And Dave comes in, he's like,
"Listen, we're gonna redo... "
"My Poor Brain. "
Or whatever the song is.
"Drum track's not quite right.
Actually, I'm doing the drums on this one.
"We're just gonna redo it. "
William's up in Seattle
at this point in time.
They'd call me down and say,
"We need you to come play guitar on a song. "
And I'd go down and I'd be like,
"Well, I already played this song. "
"Well, we did it over. "
"Oh, OK."
You know, do it again.
I'd go home, then I'd get called again,
"Come down and play. "
I'm like, "All right, cool. Let's do it. "
"I already played this song!"
It just kept happening.
"What the fuck is going on here?"
And this happens three or four times,
like, "Hey, we're gonna try this one again. "
It ended up like, "Wait a minute.
We're just doing this whole album over. "
I remember asking, "Does William know?"
William's still up in Seattle,
so he doesn't know what's going on
and that this is happening.
And I'm stressing pretty hard because
that's gonna be a big problem.
I was like, "What's going on?
"Should I book a flight?
I should be down there. "
Dave calls me, like, "Don't come down here. "
I was like, "Why?"
He goes, "I'm redoing a couple of drum tracks. "
I was like... "Whoa. OK."
And I met with Nate.
I said, "What's going on?
Dave's redoing a couple of the tracks?"
He goes, "Is that what he told you?"
I said, "Yeah. "
He goes, "He redid 'em all. "
The conversation
that I eventually had with William
was that I really wanted him
to stay in the band,
and I really wanted him to be the drummer...
but...
I was gonna play drums on the record.
I don't know whether it was management,
the record company, Gil,
all of the above, Dave,
that wanted him to play drums
and didn't want me to play drums,
but him redoing the drum parts
has never been explained to me.
It's a tough thing to talk about,
because I know that William
will never forgive me
for playing drums on that record.
I know it.
And I wish things were different.
But I felt like this is what I had to do
in order to make this album happen.
We talked and Dave said,
"I still want you to tour the record. "
And I was just like,
"Dude, I mean, I have to, you know...
"As it is now, I have to rebuild my soul,
"or refind it, if you know what I mean.
"If I do that, it's like, 'see ya'.
"So... thanks but no thanks. "
It was a really weird time,
and I was young.
What the fuck?
I heard on the radio...
"Foo Fighters drummer has left the band. "
I was like, "Whoa! Really?
"I wonder if they have a drummer yet?"
I remember vividly my brother saying,
"You should be in this band. "
I was like, "Well, fuck, yeah,
that'd be great, wouldn't it?
"I would love to have been in the Who,
Jane's Addiction and Led Zeppelin too. "
Around that time, Taylor Hawkins
was playing drums with Alanis Morissette.
And she was blowing up.
I'd seen him play before, and there's no
question the dude's a monster on the drums.
It's funny, 'cause back there's Taylor
just fuckin' like... Just fuckin' killing it.
Like, "Oh my God!"
We all loved Taylor, but he was in a band,
the biggest band around at the time.
We were kind of in a pinch.
We had just recorded this record,
and we had to go out and start doing shit.
So Dave calls him up, like,
"Hey, man, do you know any good drummers?"
I was like, "Yeah. I'll be your fuckin' drummer!
Let me try out. "
I remember saying to Taylor, "You realize
we're not as big as Alanis Morissette?"
I'm like, "I know, but I wanna be in a band.
"I wanna be part of something like that. "
So he said,
"Well, if you try out, and if we jam and...
You have to be in the band. "
Dave called me like, "Remember Taylor?"
I'm like, "Oh yeah. "
He's like, "Yeah, I think he'd be the drummer. "
And I reacted poorly to that.
I was hanging out with Dave and
me and him were bouncing off the walls,
and Nate was going, "Oh no,
not another one of these fuckin' guys.
"I can't take two spazzes in one band. "
I didn't think our personalities were compatible.
He's just this, like,
outgoing Southern California surfer dude.
Say somethin' funny.
I don't know anything funny.
I just came from a different world.
I was like, "That guy...
"He is not a guy I'm gonna be in a band with.
No way. "
It's like, "He's really good. "
"OK."
- I hear you got a new drummer?
- Got a new drummer.
- From the Alanis Morissette band?
- That's right.
His name's Taylor Hawkins, and...
Is that his last name?
I think it is.
- He's really new!
- We just met him.
So now Taylors in the band,
and he comes in his first day of rehearsals,
and Pat quits the band.
Right then and there.
Pat says, "Can I talk to you guys
for a second?" We said, "Yeah, sure. "
We walk outside and he goes,
"I gotta leave the band. "
I'm like, "What the fuck? Why?"
I was just so sick of it.
I was just so sick of the whole thing.
I didn't wanna go out on another...
you know, bazillion-show tour and...
I just don't wanna do this anymore.
When you join a band the first week,
and one of the members decides...
ever since you've been there, he's gonna quit,
you're like, "Obviously, it's me. "
I was shocked. I was shocked.
I begged him to stay in the band.
And he said,
"No, man. I'm just not into it anymore. "
It was right when we were
about to go out and start our tour,
like, "Here's these new songs. "
Pat quits, and so he's kinda got us in a bad...
in a bad spot.
I asked him to stay
until we could get someone to replace him.
So we made a deal
that I would tour for six weeks,
till the new guy was ready.
But it stretched out to, I think,
six months maybe.
So Pat has quit the band,
but he's still playing with us.
That gives us some time
to integrate Franz Stahl,
who became
the second guitar player in the band.
I'd known Dave for years.
We grew up in the same city.
He was in my first band,
this punk rock band called Scream.
When I left Scream to join Nirvana,
the one relationship that felt the most strained
was my relationship with Franz.
I think that he resented me for leaving.
It took a while, and then we reconciled
and we became friends again.
That moment where Pat said,
"I don't wanna be in the band anymore,"
I immediately thought,
"I'm gonna call Franz. "
I was on tour in Japan
and I get the phone call from Dave
and... he wants to know
if I'd like to join the Foo Fighters.
There wasn't any sort of musical audition.
I just thought,
"Franz, you wanna be in the Foo Fighters?"
He said, "Yes. "
And then the next day
I was on the roof of Radio City Music Hall.
Please give a warm welcome to Foo Fighters!
We were playing at the MTV Awards,
on top of the marquee,
as kind of a warm-up act.
And so I played the first song,
and then I quit.
And then Franz came up and he joined.
It happened just so fast.
And I was still jet-lagged from Japan.
Hello! The last song we played
was my last song with the band.
I would like to introduce you to Franz Stahl,
who will be taking over.
Thank you! Rock on, guys!
Foo Fighters!
It was all very new to me,
because I was used to slumming it.
Sleeping on people's floors,
just getting by, you know?
And this was a whole new level.
When I joined the Foo Fighters, it was like,
you know, you made it.
You hit it, and you were getting
recognized for it. It was awesome.
Once Franz joined the band, we did
what we always did, we went on the road.
We played as many places
and as many shows as we could,
and it was starting to grow.
Like, you could see there were 2,000 people,
We were no longer playing
the afternoon slot at the festival,
we were playing the evening slot.
And there was a song on the radio,
Everlong,
and all of a sudden
there were videos on MTV,
and it was happening to us,
that thing that happens to new bands
when they start to get popular.
We got Franz.
I indoctrinated myself.
That's right. Franz joined the band on-air...
That was a great big surprise.
It was awesome.
It's the best year we've had as a band,
and Franz is, you know...
he's the dude.
I loved the first two records.
And there wasn't a song
that I didn't enjoy, you know?
And I certainly was looking forward to writing,
and... you know, leaving my mark.
Franz is a great guy.
And a sweet guy.
And I was actually...
got really close with him.
It seemed like it would be perfect.
We were rehearsing and writing
at the time,
and coming up with song ideas...
and Taylor and Nate and I
seemed to have this thing
where we were on the same page,
and we were jamming
and coming up with something together.
And Franz just didn't seem to
find his place in all of that.
In Scream, I wrote all the music,
the majority of it.
My brother would write the lyrics.
So I was always,
I was very hands-on, you know?
But it was Dave's band.
And he writes all the music.
I was kinda leery
of pushing my ideas, you know,
so I wasn't trying to be
as vocal about it.
For some reason,
the four of us together wasn't right.
It never congealed into feeling like a band.
It's just chemistry.
We had a talk with Dave about it
and he didn't wanna hear it,
but he knew what the situation was.
My relationship with Franz was
much different than everybody else's.
I'd known the guy since I was 18.
And we had cut our teeth together.
It was tough, man.
I mean, honestly, like...
It was just, you know,
a great old friend of mine that,
unfortunately,
I was asking to leave the band.
That's not to say he's
not a fucking great musician,
because, of course, everybody knows he is,
but when we worked together as four people...
it just didn't gel, you know?
We got on some kind of conference call
and told him we were
gonna get a different guitar player.
There was a lot of sadness and drama.
It was ugly.
Basically, I got a phone call.
I got a fucking phone call.
And it just all ends right there.
I don't even know how to react,
you know?
There's just no nice way of saying,
"You're out of the band. "
I'm not exactly sure what happened.
You know, I was in the band...
and, for whatever reason,
I was out of the band.
But, I mean, it was the best two years
of my life, you know?
Most bands go through the same shit
that we had been through
up until that point.
Before anybody's ever heard of them.
Unfortunately, we went through all of
those embarrassing growing pains in public.
By 1998, I would sit down
to do an interview, and people'd say,
"OK, so fuckin'...
Who's in the band right now?
"Has anybody else left
in the last month and a half?"
But there was always Nate.
I was staying at my mother's house,
and I got a call from Nate.
I said, "What's up, man?"
He goes, "I gotta leave the band. "
And I just thought,
"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. "
I said, "OK."
At this point...
my response to a member leaving
was like, "All right, why?"
Sunny Day Real Estate
had gotten back together.
I had a lot of really formative
experiences with them,
so I had this like...
high-school crush, kind of irrational...
attraction to that project.
And I was tortured, and I called up Dave.
And I was fuckin' pissed.
I think I told him, "OK, you know what?
Call everyone and tell 'em you quit.
"I'm gonna go fuckin' get drunk. "
As soon as I got off the phone,
I knew it was the wrong thing to do,
that I was gonna be happier in Foo Fighters.
It was a better thing for me to do.
I called a couple friends...
"I quit the band and I feel weird about it. "
"Yeah, 'cause that was a dumb idea. "
Me and my buddy Jimmy
took my rental car out to Ribsters,
we got fuckin' shitfaced,
rallied my rental car,
fuckin' threw rocks at it all night,
busted out windows,
drove over people's lawns,
and I wound up stumbling home
and woke up at seven in the morning
in the bedroom that I grew up in as a kid,
with my mom saying,
"David, Nate's on the phone!"
I called him the next morning at 6 am.
I was wigged out
and I think it caught him off guard.
"I don't really wanna quit the band.
I don't know what I was thinking. "
He's like, "Good. "
I was like, "Yeah.
This is better. Sorry about that. "
I was still wasted, too.
I was just lying in bed, like,
"I love you, man.
I'm glad you don't wanna quit. "
So we decided that we're gonna make
this next record as a three-piece.
We had just made
this super hyper-produced record,
which we slaved over
and lost two band members.
I thought, "I'm gonna buy a house in Virginia,
build a studio in the basement,
"and we're gonna make this record
without any fuckin' record company
"and no pressure,
and no one telling us what to do. "
It was different,
just having the three of us there,
we were starting to form
a good identity for the band.
That's when Dave was first starting to become
more comfortable as a lyric writer.
A song like Ain't It The Life,
without realizing what I was doing,
I was kind of making this wish list
of all the things in life I wish I had.
We weren't really on a major deadline,
our friend Adam Kasper was down there
engineering and co-producing.
I did all of those vocals sitting on a couch.
It was just a laid-back record, and you hear it.
And the Grammy goes to...
And the Grammy
goes to...
Learn To Fly, Foo Fighters.
There Is Nothing Left To Lose,
Foo Fighters.
We won three Grammys for that record.
I remember standing there
at the podium making the speech,
looking out at all those people
in tuxedos and diamonds and shit,
thinking, "I bet you this is
the only record made in a basement
"that's gonna win a Grammy this year. "
And I was so fuckin' proud.
Take care,
thank you very much, everybody.
Roll camera. OK, and roll sound.
Roll playback!
We take our music really seriously,
but music videos?
They're commercials.
They're candy commercials.
So why not make fun of the process?
But once we got into it,
I started having fun with it.
And it became a trademark for this band.
We try not to take ourselves too seriously.
In videos a lot of times,
you could easily get caught up in that,
"We're playing on a mountaintop. "
The wind's blowing in your hair,
and then an eagle flies down
and lands on your shoulder.
Or some, you know, like...
I just think that's sort of
an outlet of our humor.
I mean, I've seen Dave do stuff on videos,
where he's bein' such a fuckin' goofball.
I'm not as good at it.
You know, I did try to make us a trio.
Dude, Police! They're a trio!
Musically, we needed more.
More guitar.
Part of the sound of the Foo Fighters
is a lot of guitars. It's just part of the sound.
We argue about it
every time we mix a record,
'cause I always want the drums louder,
and Dave's like,
"It's the Foo Fighters.
The guitars are really loud. "
None of us had the right guy that was a friend,
or a friend of a friend...
It wasn't handy.
So we had to have open auditions
for a guitar player.
Pin a note at the Guitar Center, like,
"Guitar player wanted for Foo Fighters. "
We wound up in this rehearsal space,
and I just remember
this line of guitar players.
And I was terrified.
It sounded great. I mean, I dig it.
Nice meeting you for the first time.
Hopefully see you again soon.
There's the guy that came in
and hugged everybody.
It was like, "Hi. Hi. "
It was like...
There was one kid that came in,
he was so nervous.
He came in, and was like, "What's up?
Will you sign something for me?"
He just immediately wanted us
to sign some shit.
We were like, "Yeah, dude, cool it.
It's cool, you know? Just relax.
"Let's hang, you know? Let's talk. "
And we hung out and talked a little bit.
And then he went to open up his guitar case,
and it was locked.
He had a brand new guitar,
a brand new case,
and he fucking locked his guitar in it.
And didn't have a key.
We literally did, like,
a week or two of tryouts.
There was one point where it was getting
a little dire, we were like, "Fuck!"
A good friend of mine called me and said,
"Hey, I heard Guns N' Roses
are auditioning guitar players,
"and I think I could get you an audition. "
And I was like, "Well, I don't wanna audition
for Guns N' Roses. "
But I said, "But I heard the Foo Fighters
guitar player quit.
"Try to get me an audition with Foo Fighters. "
Everyone, shake hands with Chris.
Chris!
When Chris came in to audition,
we somehow came to the realization
that we met when we were kids
at a punk rock show in Santa Barbara.
Years and years before any of this,
when Dave had been the drummer in Scream,
and I was playing bass
in a band called Rat Pack.
We actually opened up for them.
The fact that he was a part of
that underground punk rock thing
was really important to me.
So we bonded pretty instantly,
because I thought,
"He's gonna get it. He's gonna understand,
and he won't take this shit for granted. "
Very good, that's very good, man.
He could sing, and he was a shredder,
and he was a good guy,
and he'd been in bands,
and he didn't smell,
and he was awesome.
So the next day, just all day,
I just sat there by the phone.
And at like, around five or six,
the phone rang
and it was Dave and Taylor
And they said,
"All right, you know, you got the gig.
We start rehearsing tomorrow.
"Say goodbye to your friends, you're not
gonna see anybody for the next year. "
It was like, Chris joined the band
and we had our itinerary ready to go.
"Ready? We're gonna leave for ten years.
Let's go. "
The Foos found their new best buddy
in Chris Shiflett,
a former member of punk bands
No Use For A Name and 22 Jacks.
I remember wanting
to help Chris feel comfortable.
We went out to dinner a couple of times.
Trying not to have a situation
where he comes in and it's like, "OK, go!"
When I joined Nirvana,
I was the fifth drummer of Nirvana.
With Chris, it was maybe the same way,
you know?
He was the third guitar player
of the Foo Fighters.
In the early days of being in the band
I didn't wanna step on anybody's toes.
I didn't even know what...
I didn't know what my place was.
And I was just genuinely, like,
this was everything that I ever wanted -
the dream coming true.
Every time Foo Fighters
would put out a record,
I would get really excited
and miss it so bad.
I found out after being in the band
for a couple months
that they had almost replaced me with Pat.
Pat almost came back,
who they had a lot of history with,
and there was a relationship there.
Dave didn't know that I knew that,
and probably most of them didn't.
There was at least a couple times where
I called Dave and said, "I want back. "
Then when it looked like it might
actually happen, I got scared.
After being in the band for a couple months,
I had this feeling,
"This could all end,
and I'm gonna enjoy this while it lasts.
"Because it probably will end
sooner than I want it to. "
That third record, we went on the road
with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
For, like, four months
we toured America with them.
We had never played arenas before.
We hadn't done that arena rock thing.
That's when we started
coming up with jams onstage
and working out, like, a show.
Not a "show,"
not dancers and shit in the show,
but really like kinda work out a good set.
So that it's impressive.
Taylor really drove that home.
It was great.
That changed the band, probably, forever
and made us concentrate more
on really playing together.
We had a stage setup
that we had built for the arena.
It was basically modeled after
the Queen Live Killers record cover,
it was very seventies.
Hi. This is our dressing room,
where we get dressed before we play.
And we had these little uniforms set.
And we brought a wardrobe case
Everything was red and black, or white.
That was our color theme for the tour.
It was the first time we thought
in terms of something like,
"Let's look a certain way on stage. "
I had the black shirt with white tie
and black pants.
Nate had the red shirt with black tie and...
We looked like Kraftwerk
or something like that.
We were... It was silly, really.
But we put on this show,
and we fuckin' killed it.
OK, we'll see you guys in a town near you,
I hope very soon.
Take care and...
I love you.
It just stands to reason no matter how great
a thing that your life or your job is,
after a while, you need a break.
That was fun
until after two months of doing it.
It feels like Groundhog Day,
all those arenas look the same.
You start bringing the bottle of whisky
to the stage with you.
It started with, "Let's do a shot
before we play. " We'd call it "band prayer".
Then that turned into like,
"Let's do ten shots before we play. "
And we all started gettin' fuckin' hammered
before we went onstage.
And we got really shitty by the end.
I think that's probably why so many musicians
wind up getting so fucked up,
just 'cause you need something to keep it fun.
Taylor had been struggling with...
with drugs, I think.
He and I had talked about it a few times.
I didn't really know how to deal
with the way you were supposed to be.
I thought that to be a rock 'n' roller
you have to be the fuckin' Keith Richards.
You have to be the dark, partying, fuckin'...
the real deal.
That's the only way it's real rock 'n' roll.
Rock 'n' roll!
I would tell him, I'd say,
"You know, dude, I love you like a brother.
"I'm not a cop. I'm not your dad, whatever.
"But I'm worried about you, you know?"
We were in London,
and we all went out to a bar
across the street from the hotel.
We were having a good time,
and I came back to my room early.
And in the morning I got a call
that he was on his way to the hospital.
We got word that Taylors in a coma
at the hospital,
and OD'd on, you know,
whatever it was.
I think it was heroin that he did.
And our sound man at the time,
he was like, "Oh yeah, Taylor fucked up.
"He's gonna die, like, he's fuckin' dead. "
It was so weird, like, he hadn't died,
but he had overdosed.
And...
I just felt so totally helpless,
you know?
What sort of things do you demand on tour?
Instruments.
So I sat with him...
for those couple weeks.
Until he woke up.
And when he woke up,
I said to him,
"Dude, it's gonna be OK."
And he looked at me and he said, "Fuck off!"
And I thought,
"Oh, good, everything's gonna be OK."
Dave's my best friend.
And even more than a best friend,
he's like a brother. He really is.
And, yeah, he was...
as I would be with him,
if something happened to Dave
where he was on the brink of death,
I would be losing my mind.
And he was losing his mind.
So we get back from London
after my fuckin' OD,
and then two months after that,
we start trying to make this record.
But we weren't ready.
And nobody's really into it.
Everyone's playing half-assed.
I'd do something
and Dave would listen and say,
"This has gotta change. This is not working
with the vocals. That's too busy. "
I was disagreeing.
I had a shitty attitude 'cause I was pissed.
It was bizarre.
It was my first record with the band.
And I was just
showing up to the studio every day
and was sort of confused, like,
"It's weird, I'm never playing on this.
"I show up at noon every day
and I kinda sit here
"and I eat food and drink coffee
and then I go home.
"What is this?"
There's starting to...
There's a little bit of infighting
and whispers of, "Blah-blah's pissed
at blah-blah about wah-dah. "
And the vibes just were not happening.
Dave's like, "I feel like you guys
are taking the band for granted.
"It's just, show up, make a record,
and go on and do our thing.
"There's no... You don't have
to show up with a passion for it. "
And he had a point.
I would walk in,
listen to what we have, and think,
"I don't really know
if I want anyone to hear this. "
The making of that record was a fuckin'...
It sucked.
We finished it, and...
we gave it to our manager, John Silva,
and he was like,
"Well, we could put this out,
"but I don't know if we're gonna be able
to sell any of them. "
Immediately following that,
Dave had done a record with
Queens of the Stone Age as their drummer,
and went out and toured on that record.
And was like, "I'm gonna go do this.
"We'll figure out what we're gonna do about
this record that didn't work later. "
Dave's not happy with the record
and he wants to shelve it.
And he's also gonna go on tour
with Queens of the Stone Age.
And so it was kind of like,
"Whoa. He's doing what?
"You know, what are we doing again?
What did you say?"
I just started to think that we should stop.
"I don't have to be here,
"and I really fuckin' love
doing this other thing, so...
"fuck it. "
He went off with Queens,
and that went on for a little while.
Then we got together to rehearse,
to go play Coachella.
We were signed on to do this show,
where Dave was playing with Queens
the day before,
and then we were playing.
There was so much tension.
Nobody was talking, and we were
just rehearsing to get through these songs.
God bless him, Chris at one point in time
in the rehearsal just goes,
"I don't know if I'm the only one,
"but you could cut the air in here
with a fuckin' knife.
"What the fuck's goin' on?"
Then it was just on.
We had this big fight,
one of the biggest arguments we've ever had.
It was mostly between Taylor and Dave.
They had it out, like this serious discussion.
Stuff that had been pent up.
When I went to play drums with Queens
of the Stone Age, Taylor resented me for that.
What bands are you listening to now?
The new Queens of the Stone Age CD
is amazing, everybody knows that.
He was really upset that
I didn't come see him play drums
and how exciting it was
for him to be back onstage
playing with another band.
I just went through this awful trauma,
and I was supposed to be happy
that Dave's having such a good time.
But I wasn't, you know?
"I'm not fucking happy
for you to go play with another band.
"Why should I be happy for that?"
So Dave was trying to write
the set list for the show,
and we had an argument about it, just,
"You're a fuckin' asshole. "
"If you don't like it, you can leave!"
And the next day, I said,
"I will be leaving. As soon as we finish this.
"As soon as we play Coachella
and finish this record,
"do whatever commitments we have,
I'm out of here. "
"Look, let's go and do this show,
"and if we never wanna do it again,
then let's not. "
"The Foo Fighters are over.
And I'm OK with that. "
"OK. That's it. Oh well. "
I played two nights at that Coachella.
One with the Foo Fighters,
and one with Queens of the Stone Age.
And Taylor sat and watched Queens
of the Stone Age that night, at Coachella.
At that point, I was OK with it.
I didn't care anymore.
I was like, "Well, this is probably
our last show, so, you know,
"maybe Dave will just end up being
Queens of the Stone Age drummer for now
"or whatever,
and that'll be what it is. "
And then we played the next day
and we played great.
Dave was like, a new front man
in front of 10,000, 20,000 people,
however big that fuckin' thing is.
It was really good.
After that, me and Dave went for a walk.
And he said, "Let's go back to Virginia,
record a couple songs. "
We made a plan to meet and just jam,
see what happens.
I said, "I have this new song.
It's called Times Like These. "
Times Like These was basically written
about the band disappearing
for those two or three months.
And me feeling like I wasn't entirely myself.
I just thought,
"OK. I'm not done being in the band.
"I don't know if they are, but I'm not. "
It wasn't too long before Dave was excited
to get back to work on the record.
We just started picking all the songs
and going, "Let's re-record that.
We have a week. "
And we re-recorded the album
in seven days in my basement.
It was all finished really quickly,
and it had the passion,
it had the feel and sound that was like...
a record we could be proud of.
I remember that being like, the turning point.
Like, "OK, this isn't ending. "
We had already spent
three months and a million dollars
on something that we threw away.
The difference between
All My Life and All My Life
was that this one cost a million dollars
and sounded like crap.
This one,
we did in my basement in half an hour
and became the biggest fuckin' song
the band ever had.
It was a big record, you know?
Millions of people bought it.
All My Life we just have to play
when we play gigs.
To this day, that's by far
my favorite song to play live.
Every night, good or bad show,
it doesn't matter,
when you get to that part of the set,
it always goes bananas.
If you're having a bad show,
that's the turning point every night.
Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome the Foo Fighters!
Ladies and gentlemen, Foo Fighters.
Please welcome back to the program,
Foo Fighters.
Foo Fighters!
Ladies and gentlemen, Foo Fighters!
We barely got through making a record,
and then started kinda
going up the ranks as a live band.
We didn't have huge success
right up front.
It's been little milestones of things
we've been asked to do and been able to do.
It was a fun time.
We were doing these great tours,
and the shows were getting bigger,
and we were on a good roll.
We'd get asked to play on the MTV Awards,
and we'd show up,
and we'd be
the only fuckin' rock band there.
So it'd be like us and fuckin' boy bands,
girl bands, rappers, solo artists.
After a while we got suspicious, like,
"Wait a minute, do they know who we are
or do they just need a rock band?"
Thank you.
After One By One,
I went home and started demoing
all this really delicate acoustic music.
I thought, "Let's make an album
"where you have one CD
that's all the really heavy rock shit,
"then you have another CD
"that's really beautiful
acoustic-based, lower dynamic stuff. "
And we'll tour for six or seven months
on the rock record,
then go out on this theatre tour
doing the acoustic shows.
Since the acoustic record
had additional instrumentation,
I thought, "We need a bigger band. "
I always had in the back of my mind
that someday I'll get to come
and play along with them.
And in 2006, Dave called me and said,
"Come out and do
this acoustic tour with me. "
I didn't actually know Pat,
but I was aware that there'd been
a couple times through the years
when Dave had almost brought him back.
And so, to me, Pat was just a guy
that wanted my job.
So when I found out about that, I was just like,
"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me. "
Pat is a Foo Fighter,
whether he's in the band or not.
He and I have gone through a lot together.
Pat should be in the band.
I definitely thought
it must be awkward for Chris.
So I felt awkward only in that...
"I hope this isn't awkward for you. "
The first rehearsal, Pat showed up,
and we actually instantly hit it off,
you know?
I sorta got to be friends with him
over the course of doing those shows.
Clive Davis came to see us play
at one of the acoustic gigs,
and I said, "I think it'd be so cool
if we were that band
"where we did the rock show and
we had all the people that love the rock show,
"and we did the acoustic show and had
all the people that love the acoustic show,
"and they wouldn't necessarily
have to go to both. "
And Clive was like,
"Yes, but you can do both together. "
In a total Yoda moment.
I was like, "Oh my God, you're right!"
And that was the next album,
Echoes, Silence, Patience, & Grace.
Those songs were basically just that.
So that tour and that album before
totally shaped the one that happened after.
We were at a point in our career where
we thought things couldn't get any bigger.
We've headlined these festivals,
played these arenas.
We're perfectly happy
with the way things are.
And then John Silva said,
"You guys wanna play Wembley Stadium?"
And I said, "Fuck.
OK, but wait, how big is that place?"
When you do something like that
you put it on sale six months ahead of time
because that's a lot of tickets -
You need six months
to get rid of all those tickets.
And we sold it out.
I couldn't believe it.
So we put another one on sale,
and it sold out in, like, a few days.
When it sold out like it did,
I think everybody in the band was just like,
"What the fuck?
How did that happen?"
It was this huge responsibility,
this great thing like,
"All right. It's our turn now,
like, we have to make it great. "
It was six months
until we had to play the show.
Every night before I went to sleep
for six months, I'd think,
"My God,
I have to play fuckin' Wembley Stadium. "
Then I'd wake up in the morning,
like, "We're playing Wembley!"
Wembley is so big,
and it's like this sort of
monster bowl you're playing.
It's just sort of the weight
and the responsibility I put on myself
for a show like that, it's intense.
I remember before the first show,
I was so nervous,
and I somehow got hot sauce
in my eye backstage,
right before we went on,
I was just, "Why now?
Why did this have to happen now?"
You don't just go,
"Yay, they asked us to do this thing
"and we're gonna go and do our best
and see what happens. "
You wanna make sure it becomes
the most memorable show you've done.
And know that you killed it.
It was nerve-wracking,
because it's Wembley Stadium.
And if you've ever been there,
it's so fucking huge.
It's like an illusion.
How the fuck did this band
get this fuckin' big?
Can you tell me that?
When you have 20,000 people
and there's nosebleeds
that are so far away,
you wanna be able to bring everybody in.
I want the people up there to feel
like they're right there.
You'd imagine that after playing something
like Wembley Stadium
and playing to 85,000 people,
"God, what do we do now?"
Yeah, it's good.
It's the same way with records, in a way.
This is our seventh record.
What could we possibly do that's different
than the last thing we had done?
And I thought, "Well...
I wanna do the next one in the garage. "
It's about making records
the way we used to fucking make records.
But let's do it with Butch Vig
so it's fucking huge.
Butch Vig is probably most well known
for doing Nevermind, the Nirvana record.
But he's done
a ton of stuff through the years.
He did the last Green Day record
and he was in Garbage,
and he's been
a working producer for a long time.
Dave said, "I wanna make
the record in my garage. "
And then he said, "What do you think
about making the record on tape?"
I wanna get away
from what people think we should do.
I learned how to make records on tape.
And there's something
about that process that I love,
but you can't fix things like
when you're working purely in a digital format.
That's the first thing I said to the band.
"If we're gonna do this on tape,
you guys have to play really well.
"Because nothing's gonna be fixed. "
I think most people have an idea
of how records are made.
They're made on computers.
You can do whatever with computers,
but we all grew up
making records on tape.
It's got a certain sound.
It's got a certain set of limitations.
You can't go in and just go like,
"Well, that's close enough. "
Wow, this is great!
Rock n' roll is imperfection and flaws
and four or five or six or eight people
playing together.
It's not gonna line up.
It's gonna be a little fucked up. It should be.
Human beings aren't perfect.
You wanna say hello?
Hi!
What was really different was the environment,
doing it at Dave's house.
Which is the most comfortable environment
you can imagine.
It's like...
It's just fun to be there anyways.
I think the atmosphere of where you're
recording has to come out on the record.
I don't see how it couldn't.
Look at this crew.
Look at the Hawkins!
What, are you kidding me?
The engineers and everybody
at one point were like,
"OK, we're gonna need this
and this and this.
"$700,000 worth of outboard gear. "
And Dave's like, "No, no, no.
We're making a record in a garage!"
I love that we're about
to make an album at home.
I think the album's gonna sound like that.
I know it will.
If we need to have
three different drum sounds,
wouldn't it be cool to have them
crossfade into each other,
like as the other drum sound's
starting to come up
and the other one's going back?
Wouldn't it be cool
if we had a bucket of KFC right now?
So in recording,
it usually begins with Taylor and I.
The drums first, with the guitar,
and at first it's really to see
if Taylor and I
lock in with each other.
Did I miss my cue?
Yes, you did.
I go through a process,
sort of a self-loathing, "I suck" process
when I'm recording drums.
I tend to think
I'm the worst drummer in the world.
Fuck.
Sorry. I messed up the pattern a little bit.
OK.
When I go back and listen to the recording,
I'm like, "I'm all over the place. "
It's not great.
Why? Why, God, why?
Sorry, I broke a drumstick!
Then it slowly evolves
and comes together after a couple hours,
and I have a drum track I'm really proud of.
The drums are finished.
I'm still not sure about These Days.
I could sit there and agonize all day
over one little snare hit or fuckin'...
the way a groove feels.
- And you will.
- And I will.
They'll play it on the radio and you'll go,
"Damn! That fuckin' snare hit!"
Maybe we should have just ProTooled
the fuck out of this record.
At least you know it's perfect.
When you're recording analogue like this,
knowing it can't be fixed
brings a factor to the way the band thinks
about how they're gonna play.
For instance, Nate,
before he would do his bass part,
would go out in the tent
and work out his part,
so when he came in to play,
he knew everything he was gonna do.
I think it sounds great.
It sounds awesome.
Yeah, it sounds awesome.
Is the bass or anything doing...
Is the bass or anything doing
a note coming out of...
Is there anything like that?
Is that gonna, do you want one?
- You know what I mean?
- I'd maybe not do that.
Don't do that.
That was very non-confrontational.
"Maybe don't do that. "
I would maybe not ever do that in the song.
I'm the guy that plays the rhythm
straight up the middle.
And then you have Chris,
and Chris has a really sharp and clean sense
of melodic playing.
Then over here, there's Pat.
And it's like...
when Pat puts on a guitar it just goes...
All of those things... If they're balanced
it sounds like the Foo Fighters.
Did we finally get too grungy?
It's never too grungy! I wonder if it's just,
you're losing, like, the notes.
We've had this expanded band now
for the last couple albums.
As a musician, it's a dream to
be able to play with as many people
and do as many different
things as you can.
So where should we start?
What do you wanna start with?
We gotta get Bob fuckin'
rockin' and rollin'.
What am I doing here?
I just learned the song, I got it in my head.
What do you want me to do?
When you meet someone that really helped
you become the musician that you are,
I really think it's important
to acknowledge that.
Bob's voice is so signature,
and to have him come to my fuckin' house
and do it on my fuckin' record
blows me away.
All right, cool.
You wanna do the bridge?
What do you wanna do, Bob?
Come on in.
I didn't write the middle section of the song,
because I wanted to write it with Bob,
while Bob was there.
But I didn't have the words,
so I sort of explained it,
and we tried it once just with phonetic crap.
Is that gonna make sense?
I think so.
OK, let me write something really quick.
OK, five-minute lyrics.
OK, give me a five-minute lyric break.
Clock's runnin'.
Dad?
Yeah?
Remember you said you'll swim?
I know, I have to write these words
really quick, so I can go sing it.
OK.
OK.
One, two, you know what to do...
That sounds so good!
That is so fucking cool, you guys!
You can hear, it's really good.
Some of the songs
still had question marks, you know,
the biggest song being
I Should Have Known.
That song became sort of the X factor
in the album.
Yep, that's cool.
Fuckin' A, right?
I kinda feel like I Should Have Known
is a song that's about Dave's past,
and I think there are definitely references
in there about Nirvana and Kurt.
Fuckin' A, man.
That's really good.
When I first started writing that song,
it was about someone else
that I was involved with,
and at the end of the day,
I said to myself,
"I should have known
that this was gonna happen. "
But when I sing that song,
it's hard not to think about
all of the times in my life that's happened.
Hey, Krist!
Hello!
We had Krist Novoselic come in and play bass
on I Should Have Known.
That was a very special moment,
'cause I had not been in the same room
with Dave and Krist
since we finished Nevermind.
It does that back and forth twice,
then it does the turnaround chords.
Yeah, it goes, D sharp,
G, D sharp, G, F, C,
then it goes back in D sharp,
G, D sharp...
It's like a six chord.
So it goes...
How was the tone?
I think it fuckin' sounds gnarly.
There, it's done. Seriously.
That's all you get, motherfucker.
I was not surprised that Dave asked Krist
to play on the record.
I was surprised it hadn't happened
any other time in the last 16 years.
You never realize how important
the bass sound is to the sound of a band
until you put it in another band and go,
"Oh, there it is. "
I think what Krist played on the song
was the absolute perfect thing for him to do
on a Foo Fighters record.
I think that might be the ending.
We've found it.
Yeah, sample my phone.
The ice cream truck.
It usually takes us a while to name an album.
But I decided to call the record
Wasting Light,
because I honestly feel like
I don't wanna let one minute of this go
without really feeling it.
The best way to prepare to playing
to 85,000 people
is to play at these small club gigs.
Because that's kind of a true test.
You go to see an arena rock band.
They're pretty good,
but would they be any good at the Roxy?
Hold the fuckin'...
Then bask in the glory for a minute.
Having Scream be the first band on the bill,
my heroes from my childhood,
the band that
I dropped out of high school to join,
to see them sharing the stage
with my band Foo Fighters
was a really big deal to me.
Yeah, good night, y'all.
Thank you.
You guys wanna hear the new record?
The Foo Fighters
sound like the Foo Fighters
because it's me, and Taylor, and Nate,
and Chris, and Pat.
If it were anyone else, it would sound different.
You never wanna lose anybody,
and you never wanna see someone
disappear out of your life,
but we wouldn't be here
if it were different with William.
We wouldn't be here
if it were different with Franz.
I feel bad about the bad things,
I feel good about the good things,
but I wouldn't change a thing.
We've worked hard,
and we've made a great band.
I'm incapable of doing
almost anything else
at this point in time,
so this is what I do.
I'm an adult that plays in a rock band.
How about that?
I've had people say in interviews,
"So, Taylor,
what is it like to be a rock star?"
And I'm like, "Fuck you.
I'm not a rock star. I'm a musician. "
It's a functional family,
you know what I mean?
I go to work coming up here,
and I just fucking laugh all day
and play great music.
There will probably always, to some extent,
be that feeling,
"This could all end tomorrow.
Who the fuck knows, you know?"
We're all pretty lucky
that we get to do this,
and we have to enjoy it while it's here
and make the most of it.
It's a crazy feeling when something goes
from a spark of imagination
to something you can hold in your hands.
That first cassette...
made in five fuckin' days or whatever,
and here we are. It's just like,
"Whoa. How the fuck did this happen?"
Honestly, had I taken
this whole career thing seriously,
I would've named it something else,
'cause it's the worst fuckin' band name
in the world!