Dave Grohl on why Foo Fighters couldn’t be a three-piece
There was a brief period when the Foo Fighters evolved into one of rock music’s pre-eminent three-piece bands. The three-piece is a beloved mainstay of rock music, with everyone from Cream to the Jimi Hendrix Experience to Rush to The Police making the most out of a modest lineup of musicians. Dave Grohl even got his own fill of the three-man band when he pounded the drums for legendary grunge gods Nirvana.
Following the recording of The Colour and the Shape in 1997, the Foos experienced their first lineup change. Original drummer William Goldsmith was disgruntled when Grohl re-recorded almost all of the drums on the album and left before the supporting tour began. The group quickly drafted Alanis Morissette drummer Taylor Hawkins into the group, but only a few weeks into Hawkins’ tenure, guitarist Pat Smear announced his intention to leave the band.
Grohl managed to convince Smear to stay on long enough for them to find a replacement, which meant that Smear stayed on tour to support The Colour and the Shape for nearly half a year. When the Foos pulled into the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards in New York, Smear played ‘Monkey Wrench’ with the band before handing over the guitar to new member Franz Stahl. Stahl completed the tour but couldn’t find his place within the band’s songwriting dynamic, causing him to be fired before the recording of 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
That meant that, for the first and only time on record, the Foo Fighters were a three-piece. Grohl handled all the guitars on There Is Nothing Left to Lose, and the resulting record was one of the band’s lightest and most melodic. When it came time to tour behind the record, Hawkins believed that the band could have made it work as a three-piece.
“You know, I did try to make us a trio,” Hawkins shared in the documentary Foo Fighters: Back and Forth. “[I told Grohl] ‘Dude, The Police: they’re a trio!” But Grohl wasn’t having it for one simple reason. “Musically, we needed more. More guitar,” Grohl shared. With that, the search was on. While Smear had cut his teeth touring with Nirvana and Stahl was a part of Grohl’s first serious band, Scream, nobody had the right guitar player to fill the void.
“None of us had the right guy who was a friend or a friend of a friend. It just wasn’t handy so we had to have open auditions for a guitar player,” bassist Nate Mendel revealed in the documentary. Hawkins joked that the band were placing ads at local Guitar Center stores to find potential new members. Grohl had never experienced an open audition before and wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen.
“We wound up in this rehearsal space, and I just remember this line of guitar players,” Grohl recalled. “And I was terrified!” The trio saw every manner of guitar player, from professional to amateur, jamming away at a seemingly endless clip. At one point, a young kid walked in with a brand-new guitar but couldn’t access it because it was locked in its brand-new case. Comical moments like that continued to persist, but as the auditions went on and on, the members started to feel the crunch.
“We literally did a week or two of tryouts,” Hawkins remembered. “And I remember there was one point where it was getting a little dire.” One of the final people to audition was Chris Shiflett, guitarist for punk rockers like No Use For a Name and Me First & the Gimme Gimmes. Shiflett and Grohl bonded over their underground punk roots, Shifflet knew all the material, and he was one of the few guitarists comfortable enough to sing backing vocals during his audition. The results fit perfectly, and Shiflett rounded out the next incarnation of the Foo Fighters.
Listen to what the Foo Fighters sound like as a power trio on ‘Learn to Fly’ down below.
