Foo Fighters

FOO FIGHTERS

Formed: Seattle, Washington, 1995

Members: David Grohl, guitar, vocals (born Warren, Ohio, 14 January 1969); Taylor Hawkins, drums (born El Paso, Texas, 17 February 1972); Nate Mendel, bass (born Seattle, Washington, 2 December 1968); Chris Shiflett, guitar (born Los Angeles, California, 6 May 1971). Former members: William Goldsmith, drums; Pat Smear, guitar (born Georg Ruthenberg, Los Angeles, California, c. 1960); Franz Stahl, guitar.

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: The Colour and the Shape (1997)

Hit songs since 1990: "This Is a Call," "My Hero"

Although Dave Grohl never intended to have his home demo recordings released, the dissolution of Nirvana following the 1994 suicide of the group's leader, Kurt Cobain, offered the world's most famous drummer an opportunity to step out into the spotlight. The resulting string of power pop/rock albums from Grohl's band, the Foo Fighters, made Grohl a rock star all over again, proving to the world that Cobain had not been the only talented songwriter in Nirvana.

Grohl was raised near Washington, D.C., by a single mother and was steeped in the city's politically charged music scene via a record player he borrowed from the public school where his mother taught. A teenage member of local punk bands such as Dain Bramage and Freakbaby, the seventeen-year-old Grohl quit high school to tour Europe with the group Scream.

Following that band's breakup in 1990, Grohl was introduced to the members of Nirvana, joining the band in the fall of 1990 just as Nirvana prepared to record the album that made them the most lauded rock band of their generation, Nevermind (1991). Grohl provided backing vocals and a monster presence behind the drum kit during Nirvana's precipitous rise to fame.

Though Nirvana had been the artistic vision of Cobain, Grohl had been recording his own compositions for several years, working on his own songs during the long spells of enforced idleness resulting from Cobain's struggles with drugs. In 1995, Grohl needed only one week to record the self-titled debut album by his new band, Foo Fighters, with help from his friend Barrett Jones. The Foo Fighters—named after a 1940s-era slang term for flying saucers—were a band in name only, since Grohl sang and played all but a single guitar part on the album. The flying-saucer theme extended to Grohl's label imprint under Capitol Records, Roswell Records, an homage to the New Mexico site where aliens were purported to have crash-landed in 1947.

Foo Fighters is a daring debut from Grohl, harnessing the power and energy of Nirvana's most raucous rock songs while focusing on sunnier, more power pop-oriented music. Though the album bears some of the fuzzed-out power chords of Nirvana's grunge sound along with Grohl's aggressive, athletic drumming, tracks such as "This Is a Call" and "Big Me" are notable for Grohl's slightly hoarse but melodic singing and an occasional evocation of the music of the Beatles.

In order to tour in support of the album, Grohl put together a band that included his Nirvana band mate, guitarist Pat Smear, and two members of the disbanded Seattle group Sunny Day Real Estate, drummer William Goldsmith and bass player Nate Mendel. The group, with Grohl singing and playing lead guitar, undertook a sold-out spring 1995 tour with the former Minutemen member Mike Watt and Hovercraft, an ambient rock project led by the wife of Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder.

Fans could not help searching for meaning in the lyrics to songs such as "Alone + Easy Target" ("Tear at the seams / He don't feel so good / Don't feel bad / Not that he should") and "Exhausted" ("If it could be undone / Will it have costed? / It's taught and lost"), but Grohl insisted the words were nonsense. The album sold 1 million copies, and Grohl further demystified his image by appearing in a video for "Big Me," which spoofed the inanely cheery ads for breath mint Mentos.

Though The Colour and the Shape (1997) was the first Foo Fighters album recorded by the group, the lineup soon changed. Goldsmith left the band because of creative tensions during the sessions, forcing Grohl back behind the drum kit to finish the remaining rhythm tracks and to re-record many of Goldsmith's parts. Taylor Hawkins, a onetime drummer for Alanis Morissette, replaced Goldsmith after the album was completed, at which time Smear announced his resignation as well. Franz Stahl, a former band mate of Grohl's in Scream, replaced Smear.

The concept album about the death of a relationship coincided with the end of Grohl's marriage to his high school sweetheart. From the fragile ballad "Doll" ("You know in all of the time we've shared / I've never been so scared") to the blast-furnace punk pop of the album's break-out single, "Monkeywrench," The Colour and the Shape is a more emotionally engaging, diverse, and slick album. Grohl indulges in his love of the soft/loud musical dynamic made famous by Nirvana, in which the song's verses are calm but explode into furious strumming and singing on the choruses. But he is also unafraid to mix crooning with crunchy guitars on songs such as "Hey, Johnny Park!" and another one of the album's signature hits, the rock ballad "My Hero."

Stahl did not stick around long enough to record There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999), a powerful, dark album that swings from Grohl's guttural screaming ("Stacked Actors"), to sunny crooning on the arena pop single "Learn to Fly." Chris Shiflett, previously a guitarist with No Use for a Name, joined the band after the album's release. During a promotional tour date in Europe, Hawkins was hospitalized in serious condition after what was termed "overindulgence" in substances.

Once healed, the group hit the studio to work on One by One (2002), their most cohesive album to date. Unsatisfied with the songs halfway through, Grohl scrapped the entire album and began the sessions anew after a break. In between, Grohl played drums on an album by the Queens of the Stone Age, later touring the world with them as the group's drummer. One by One, the first Foo Fighters album with a returning band, blends the intensity of The Colour and the Shape with the clean, straight-ahead pop rock song craft of There Is Nothing Left to Lose. Grohl was able to indulge a childhood fantasy by inviting former Queen guitarist Brian May to play a ghostly guitar solo on the ballad "Tired of You."

Through endless personnel shifts and persistent comparisons to his former band, Nirvana, Dave Grohl steered the Foo Fighters through a series of finely crafted power pop albums as he laid to waste the trite jokes about the dim-wittedness of rock drummers. Grohl re-created himself and achieved a rare feat for a rock drummer: coming out from behind the kit and proving himself an adept songwriter and bandleader.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Foo Fighters (Roswell/Capitol, 1995); The Colour and the Shape (Roswell/ Capitol, 1997); There Is Nothing Left to Lose (Roswell/RCA, 1999); One by One (Roswell/RCA, 2002).

WEBSITE:

foofighters.com.

gil kaufman