Dave Grohl names his favourite Foo Fighters album
Dave Grohl has had one hell of a career from a decade-defining grunge drummer to a genre-defining bandleader. Born in Washington in 1969 and raised on a diet of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Kiss and Motörhead, the musician toured the world with D.C. punk outfit Scream until the late 1980s, at which point he relocated to Seattle and began drumming for a then-little-known band called Nirvana.
Following the tragic death of frontman Kurt Cobain, Grohl began working on various solo projects and collaborations, culminating with the birth of Foo Fighters in the mid-1990s. Blending anthemic songwriting with an expansive stadium sound, the band quickly became one of the new millennium’s most celebrated alternative rock bands. Here, we join Grohl as he puts an end to speculation and names his favourite Foo Fighters album.
By 1999, Foo Fighters had already released two immensely successful albums in the form of their self-titled debut and 1997’s The Colour and The Shape. With the 2000s looming, Grohl and the other Foos decided it was about time they crafted their “freak-out record,” their version of The Beatles’ White Album, as Grohl put it at the time.
Unfortunately, the band members didn’t all agree on a collective project vision. After realising he’d made a terrible mistake in hiring his former Scream bandmate Franz Stahl, Grohl decided to give the guitarist the boot and continue Foo Fighters as a three-piece. An utterly bewildered Stahl then flew to Dave’s home from Austin to demand an explanation. “They proceeded to give me the biggest load of bullshit I ever heard,” he would later recall.
After managing to piece their splintered group back together, Grohl and his bandmates set about recording There Is Nothing Left to Lose in the state-of-the-art studio Grohl had built in his basement. It had been a bumpy road, but things were finally coming together. “It was the most relaxed and simple and perfect recording session I’ve ever been to in my life,” Dave told Kerrang.
Grohl added: “It was everything you would want making an album to be. It was springtime in Virginia, all the windows were open, there was beer and BBQs and we would record all night and sleep until noon, listen to what we’d done the night before, and maybe re-record it. When I listen to that record I honestly think it’s my favourite Foo Fighters record… It’s such a relaxed, honest, organic and real album, and it was a really good experience for all of us.”
You can revisit There Is Nothing Left To Lose below.
