The argument that almost ended Foo Fighters: “The Foo Fighters are over, and I’m OK”
Being in a band is often thought of as like being in a gang of sorts. But the truth is, it is more like a family, with all the welcoming hugs and dysfunctionality that comes with it. Foo Fighters is most certainly a tight-knit musical family, and it goes without saying, one of the strongest when it comes to rock and roll.
For as long as Dave Grohl has been playing music with his friends, the Foos have always been seen as an insular group, consistently having each other’s back and giving fans a good time in stadiums worldwide. Although things were smooth sailing in the 2000s, Foo Fighters were dangerously close to breaking up, going into a festival performance, as an argument threatened to derail the group and stop them from achieving their global success.
During one of their first tours promoting the album There Is Nothing Left to Lose, the band were touring through Europe when Taylor Hawkins overdosed on heroin. With the band’s future uncertain, Grohl sat by Hawkins’ bedside, praying for him to rise.
After taking some time to regroup, the Foos’ new record, One by One, began to stall, with no morale amongst the band and Hawkins thinking that most of the group was trying to phone it in. Deciding to shelve the project for later, Grohl made a record with Queens of the Stone Age to pass the time, playing the drums on their concept album Songs for the Deaf and going out on a few festival dates with the band.
With the Foos on hold, Hawkins was upset to see Grohl having fun without the rest of the band, recalling in the Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth: “I had just gone through this horrible trauma, and then I was supposed to be happy because Dave was having fun.” It’s easy to empathise with Hawkins’ situation; however, seeing the other side of things, was Grohl meant to wait it out and let his creativity flail in the wind? Still, Hawkins was left irate, “I’m not going to fucking be happy that you’re playing in a band without me. Why should I be happy about that?”.
All the passive aggression came to a head during Coachella 2002, a time when the band played alongside Queens of the Stone Age, with Grohl playing double duty as frontman and drummer. During the rehearsals for the show, Nate Mendel remembers the arguments starting after Chris Shiftlett said, “I don’t know if I’m the only one here, but you can cut the tension in here with a fucking knife”.
After airing all of their grievances at each other, Grohl decided that they would play the shows and then see if they even wanted to play music together again. Hawkins even mentioned that he’d be fine if the band never played together again, remarking: “If the Foo Fighters are over, then the Foo Fighters are over, and I’m OK with that”. As the band played their show at the festival, something about their energy felt different.
Once Grohl returned to his bandmates with the song ‘Times Like These’, those old wounds started to mend. ‘Times’ was written during his time in Queens when Grohl was missing his old outfit, and it became the linchpin for the rest of the record. After shelving the old version, the band re-recorded the album as a stronger unit and got more raw performances. According to Grohl, the results were like night and day, saying, “the difference between both versions of ‘All My Life’ is that one was made for a million dollars and sounded like crap, and one was made in my basement in a few hours and became the biggest song The Foo Fighters ever made”.
Grohl would later refer to the track as the best he’d ever written, and while that is up for debate, it could easily be suggested it is the song that brough the Foo Fighters back together again, and with that in mind, he just might be right.
