Foo Fighters go weird and darkly romantic

Foo Fighters have resumed rocking ahead of the October-released album, ‘1 x 1’ (‘One By One’), a supplant to the 1999’s ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’ and first dates premiering new songs took place at a Dublin warm-up show and the Witness Festi as they’ll do at the Reading and Leeds three-dayers. Dave Grohl is back fronting the band after a drumming stint with the Queens Of The Stone Age.

Legal issues Grohl and fellow Nirvana bassing Krist Novoselic have with Love, the Cobain widow, over the rights and control of the Nirvana copyright in part caused it. No surprise then the new album had to be recorded twice as the first attempt ended, according to the band members, sounding lifeless, bog-standard and directionless.

“We made the first one, the first…” drummer Taylor Hawkins pauses for a second, “‘the million dollar demos’, as I call it… The emphasis, a lot of the emphasis was placed on getting everything perfect. Beyond pretty much what is humanly possible for us. So, a lot of the energy went into that frame of mind and in the end it sounded somewhat lifeless, it just sounded hollow… It was good, the first (version of the) album was good and if we had released it I’d have been proud of it.”

“But, it was still slightly lifeless and, as Nate (Mandel, bassist) put it once, sort of self-conscious so, the album kind of just stopped. We stopped and said we needed to chill out; and then there was the time Dave went off to play with the Queens and we all did our little things and whatnot and… And then, there was a short amount of time, we got it all together, in three weeks…”

Filtered hits

That inspired bout was preceded by a phase when Grohl felt listless, empty and creatively-vacant so he looked for an alternative cathartic process and found it in drumming onstage and recording all-but-one cut on the Queens Of The Stone Age’s August-due album ‘Songs For The Deaf’.

“We’ve known those guys for a long time…” Grohl explains. “I was a fan of their band before, Kyuss, and we had Queens come out on the road with us. Queens Of The Stone Age’s always been about Josh (Homme, guitarist/singer) and Nick (Oliveri, bassist/singer) and this revolving cast of musicians that come in and play slide guitar, different drummers on every record, Mark Lanegan (ex-Screaming Trees) comes in and sings some songs, some he doesn’t… It’s more musical than really about a group of people… I always joke around and say it is like the Rock’n’Roll Wu-Tang Clan, you know, it don’t matter how many will f**king show up!

“So, I played on a few songs on their new record, then they went to record their new album with their other drummer, Gene (Troutman), and it didn’t work out and they asked me to come in and play on the rest. We did it in few weeks and that was that… And then, we were trying to help them find another drummer but I thought, before they find another drummer, I’d do another show. Then I played one show and it was fun; and by the time we were winding down making our record I thought I should go and play some shows with them for a while.”

Worm of Love

Once the Foos reassembled, it was the usually natural songwriting that produced 12 new songs, recorded with only guest, Brian May of Queen, on a Nirvana-like ballad, ‘Tired’. (The band had collaborated with the clog-wearing guitarists before when they reworked Pink Floyd’s ‘Have A Cigar’ for the ‘Mission Impossible 2’ soundtrack.) Aside Grohl’s QotSA episode, guitarist Chris Shiflett worked with his brother on ‘Viva Death’ album (due in August) as well as on another, as-yet-unnamed, project; Mandel contributed music to ‘Our Burden Is Light’ film still looking for a distributor) and a new side-band, Sanatists…

Hawkins hooked up with the former Jane’s Addiction bassist (currently playing with Alanis Morissette), Eric Avery, to can an EP that should see the light of day shortly. Grohl also guitar-enhanced one track on David Bowie’s current album, ‘Heathen’.

All this variety of life and art is poisoned with continuous legal problems over Nirvana’s rights.

“It actually doesn’t frustrate me that much anymore,” Grohl sighs. “It did at first, maybe six months ago, eight months ago but now it just seems so – in outer space. It’s arbitrary; it doesn’t make any sense to me at all, that… It just seems like nonsense sometime. I realised that there is some aspects of it that are very important I have to fight for because I need to stand up and have my say. But, for the most part, all of that shit is ridiculous, it has nothing to do with music. The reason I do what I do…”

“So, you know, I’m not gonna write open-letter song to all of the lawyers in the word. It’s kinda ridiculous and, if anything, it just makes me realise that again, we are pretty lucky that we have it as easy as we do. You know, our band is pretty uncomplicated, we are pretty easy band and it’s complications like that that ruin the heart and soul of music in the first place. In a lot of ways it is a just like a big, rotten, f**king piece of fruit that was once delicious and juicy and now it’s got an ugly warm in a middle.

“You better stop there,” Hawkins interjects.