The most enjoyable Foo Fighters record, according to Taylor Hawkins
Any band will want to switch things up just a little bit on every record. Although a handful of acts like AC/DC have seemed to find the exact mathematical key to success for their specific sound, it’s no use trying to coax on easy mode and pray that your audience doesn’t see through your bullshit. Getting into the music business doesn’t mean time for people phoning it in, and when Foo Fighters finished with Wasting Light, Taylor Hawkins knew that he had the most fun he would ever have in a studio.
By the end of the 2000s, though, the post-grunge icons had been through the wringer more than a few times. Dave Grohl may have already been the de facto leader of the group, but over time, things had begun to flesh out into a full band collaboration, with Hawkins having more of a say in the arrangements alongside Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett.
With Pat Smear joining the group again for Wasting Light, though, the group’s now-three-guitar assault was much harsher than before. All the pieces were in place to make a great record in some sleek studio, but Grohl wasn’t thinking of that kind of approach. He wanted something more guttural, which meant tearing up the garage and recording it on tape.
And that’s not just a retro way of recording; it means being at the top of your game all the time. Since every other band was using Pro Tools at the time, playing on tape meant that every band member had to give their all every time they played because if they were to screw up, it was going to be a part of the final mix.
It’s easy to see the tension in the room when Hawkins was tracking drums as well. In the documentary Back and Forth, hearing the drumming god lay down the track ‘These Days’ and continuing to screw it up probably did nothing for his ego, especially when there’s the other drum god from Nirvana on the other side of the glass looking right at him.
For all of the hardship that went into it, though, Hawkins said he wanted to make every record in that format afterwards, saying, “I think it’s the most fun record I’ve ever made with this band. I don’t really want to go back to a recording studio again. You show up and go, ‘What do we have to do today?’ And then it’s like, ‘Okay, well, you’re not going to need me for three or four hours, so I’m going to jump on my mountain bike and go up into the Hills for a few hours.”
Despite the hours of effort that went into it, it’s easy to hear that fun translated onto the record. Compared to other bands that had been in the game for over a decade, Wasting Light may be the most straightforward record the group had ever made, complete with a grab bag of everything that made them great, whether that’s the punk of ‘White Limo’, the arena rock of ‘These Days’, or the shades of Nirvana on ‘I Should Have Known’.
And while the rest of Foo Fighters’ subsequent records with Hawkins had shades of brilliance, their latest record, But Here We Are, might be the closest they ever came to capturing this kind of magic again. The 2000s had seen the group building themselves back together and almost breaking up in the process, but this kind of return-to-roots record just reminded everyone that at their core, Foo Fighters was still a damn good rock and roll band.
