Foo Fighters were never supposed to be Nirvana Part Two.
Thank God for that.
I first heard them in the summer of ’95 when the first record showed up at the store.
Everybody knew what it was before anybody heard it.
Dave's new band.
That was the story.
Except it wasn't really a band yet.
Dave had gone down to Robert Lang Studios outside Seattle the previous October and recorded almost the whole damn thing himself in about a week. Guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Greg Dulli played a little guitar on one track, but otherwise it was basically Dave making a record because he needed to make a record.
At least that's how it sounded to me.
Somebody put on “This Is a Call.”
I stopped what I was doing.
Not because it sounded like Nirvana.
Because it didn't.
That mattered.
“I'll Stick Around.”
“Alone + Easy Target.”
“Good Grief.”
“For All the Cows.”
“Exhausted.”
There was still plenty of noise in there, but it sounded lighter somehow. Not happy exactly. Just like somebody opening a window after being stuck in the same room for too long.
I needed that record more than I expected to.
Seattle was still carrying a lot around in ’95.
Maybe some of us needed to hear Dave playing drums again.
Maybe we needed to hear him singing.
Maybe he just needed to do it and the rest of us happened to be listening.
Either way, I bought the record.
Then he had to put an actual band together.
Pat Smear stayed with him after Nirvana.
Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith came over from Sunny Day Real Estate.
And suddenly Foo Fighters weren't just a tape Dave Grohl had made by himself.
They were a band.
I saw them during those first couple of years and that's the thing I remember most about Dave:
the guy looked like he was having fun.
After everything we'd watched happen, that was almost strange to see.
He'd spent years sitting behind a drum kit while Kurt stood out front getting all the attention.
Now Dave was the guy with the guitar, running around, yelling into microphones and talking to the crowd.
Took some getting used to.
The Colour and the Shape came out in ’97 and that's when I stopped thinking of Foo Fighters as Dave's new band.
They were just Foo Fighters.
“Monkey Wrench.”
“Hey, Johnny Park!”
“My Poor Brain.”
“February Stars.”
“Everlong.”
Yeah, “Everlong.”
I don't know what else anybody needs me to say about that one.
Great fucking song.
The funny thing is that making that record nearly tore the band apart.
Dave wasn't happy with some of William Goldsmith's drum tracks and ended up re-recording a lot of them himself.
William left.
Then Pat left too.
So much for the stable new band.
Franz Stahl came in for a while.
Taylor Hawkins took over the drums.
Eventually Chris Shiflett came in on guitar.
Foo Fighters have had enough lineup changes already that I stopped trying to predict who's going to be standing onstage next year.
That's probably healthier.
Then came There Is Nothing Left to Lose in ’99.
Different record.
Less desperate.
More room in it.
“Stacked Actors” still hits hard, but then you've got “Ain't It the Life,” “Next Year,” “Aurora”...
And “Learn to Fly,” which I'm pretty sure I've heard enough times in the store to last me until about 2015.
Still a good song.
Don't tell Dave I said that.
I think There Is Nothing Left to Lose might actually be my favorite Foo Fighters record so far.
Ask me again next year.
They're working on another one now.
From what I've heard, they've been recording down in Virginia at Dave's place.
That's about all I know.
No point pretending otherwise.
It'll come out when it comes out.
Looking back, I think that's why Foo Fighters matter to me.
Not because they're carrying some Seattle torch.
They're not.
And not because they're the continuation of Nirvana.
They definitely aren't.
It's because for a while after April ’94 it was hard to imagine what came next.
Then this stupid little record showed up with a ray gun on the cover and Dave playing almost everything himself.
And something came next.
It wasn't Nirvana.
It wasn't supposed to be.
Good.
