A simple beginning: the Foo Fighters album Dave Grohl considered a “goof”
If there’s one thing to learn from Dave Grohl, it’s to not always always take things that seriously. He may have his heavy moments when working with Foo Fighters, but Grohl is more than likely to laugh at himself when talking in interviews than to drone on about how his music is important for the state of the world. Although Grohl does take all of his music seriously, he admitted that his first attempt at becoming a frontman was a bit of a laugh.
Because if there’s one thing that no one wants to hear in most rock bands, it’s what the drummer has to say. No one was wondering what Charlie Watts was doing after a Rolling Stones concert, and even in an outfit like The Beatles, Ringo Starr seemed to always get fourth billing when stacked up against his bandmates.
For Grohl, being in Nirvana and being able to fade into the background suited him just fine. At the turn of 1994, having the rug pulled out from under him with Kurt Cobain’s was bound to do a number on anyone’s psyche, let alone someone who had just seen all of their dreams die along with him.
Although Grohl wasn’t ready to touch his instruments again, he still had a few ideas rattling around in his brain for real pieces. Since he had already gotten a few licks and one full song in with Nirvana, then why not try and put together a new band from scratch?
Grohl would hammer out the first Foo Fighters album by himself in just a few days, but he admitted that it was never going to be all that serious, telling Storytellers, “[I did it] for fun, I didn’t think it was going to be a band…This guy named Robert Lang had a studio right by my house, and I had five days to make a record. That felt like an eternity for me, like ‘I’m making The White Album’. I recorded all of the stuff by myself just for a goof, and I called it Foo Fighters because I didn’t want people to know it was me.”
While Grohl may have hammered everything out really quickly, it certainly does sound like the result of someone who just had five days to record. Across all 12 tracks, Grohl seems to have a clear idea about what he wants to sound like, practically taking the model for what Nirvana had been doing and bringing his own optimistic spin to the whole thing.
If anything, the only element that could have used some work is the lyrics, which Grohl admitted are straight gibberish. It was enough to get him out on the road, though, and after the rest of the band formed around him, he knew he had to deliver on this new project whether he liked it or not.
Once they began woodshedding for the next album, songs like ‘Monkey Wrench’ and ‘Everlong’ proved that Grohl wasn’t just a flash-in-the-pan. Since the rest of the world was still immersed in the sad sounds of grunge, Foo Fighters kicked down all the doors and reminded us that it was okay to have fun playing music again. It’s not bad for a kid who made his first record for a lark.
