Why wasn’t Franz Stahl successful with Foo Fighters?
Nothing can replace the chemistry that comes with joining a rock band. There might be some times when people butt heads when talking about where a song should go or how to arrange its parts, but when everything is firing on all cylinders, it’s almost like you’re speaking the same language without having to say a word to each other. Foo Fighters had that kind of chemistry down to science most of the time, but according to Taylor Hawkins, bringing Franz Stahl in was where everything started to hit a massive brick wall.
It’s not like Dave Grohl hadn’t encountered this kind of problem before, though. Throughout the making of The Colour and the Shape, he knew that drummer William Goldsmith was not going to go the distance with the rest of the group, eventually leading to him recording all the drum parts behind his back.
Then again, drummers come and go in rock, and Taylor Hawkins was bound to be the perfect fit, up until Pat Smear decided it was time to hang it up, too. After going through the rock and roll circus, Smear had had enough after years in the business, leading to Grohl having to bring in Stahl from his old group, Scream.
In a perfect world, this could have been the full-circle moment that Grohl had been waiting for. Stahl had given him a home in his first band before Nirvana had even formed, and now that Grohl had become one of the biggest rockstars in the world, why not get the chance to return the favour?
Everything was going well at first, but Hawkins remembered everything getting tense when it came time to write with Stahl, telling Back and Forth, “Franz was great, and I actually got really close with him, and it just seemed like it would be perfect. [But] for whatever reason, the way that we were playing together wasn’t right. It never congealed into feeling like a band. It’s just chemistry.’”
Then again, Stahl’s writing style may have just been hesitancy on his part, eventually saying, “In Scream, I wrote the music and my brother would write the lyrics, but this was Dave’s band, and he writes all the music, so I was leary of pushing my ideas, so I wasn’t trying to be as vocal about it.”
Sure, Grohl writes all the music, but the arrangements were also a big part of turning the songs inside out, and Stahl didn’t seem ready to let go of his songwriting just yet. Any band can spend time working that kind of internal drama when they’re just getting started, but Grohl didn’t have time to wait around for everyone to figure it out, ultimately getting on a conference call and telling his old friend that he had to leave the group.
While Stahl still said that his days in Foo Fighters were some of the best times of his life, his contributions would only be limited to a few song remixes before the group went in to make There is Nothing Left To Lose. Still, hearing one of the leaders of D.C. hardcore music clashing with Grohl’s brand of radio-rock is one of the biggest missed opportunities in rock and roll history.
