Foo Fighters started as a small creative experiment,
but they went on to become one of the most enduringly popular rock bands of all time.
After 25 years together, they're still going strong,
staging major gigs and looking back on a storied career. This is the untold truth of Foo Fighters.
After the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, the surviving members of Nirvana
dissolved the band. Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl then played some gigs with Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers and turned down the chance to be that band's permanent drummer.
"And I just felt weird about just going right back to the drums,
'cause it would've just reminded me of being in Nirvana. It would've been sad."
Ultimately, he turned to another instrument: the guitar. The idea of presenting any of his songs
to Cobain was too much for the creatively shy Grohl, but after his friend and colleague died,
he started to record some of them. He made an album's worth of songs,
playing nearly every instrument on every track. As he told CBS Sunday Morning in 2018,
"I went to the cassette place down the street, said, 'Could you make 100 of these,'
and made a little card to go in it. And I started giving it out to people.
And I called it 'Foo Fighters' 'cause I wanted people to think it was a group."
That demo became the basis for the first Foo Fighters record,
released in 1995. As for where that band name came from, it's military slang for
unidentified flying objects, a theme Grohl continued by naming his label Roswell Records.
"I've always kind of been a UFO nut."
After the first, self-titled Foo Fighters album, Dave Grohl realized that he'd have
to put together an actual band. He couldn't play all the instruments at the same time live,
after all. He briefly entertained the idea of bringing in his old Nirvana bandmate Krist
Novoselic before deciding that it would've been weird. But another Nirvana veteran did become
a Foo Fighter: second guitarist Pat Smear, who also played in the seminal 70s punk band
the Germs. Also at the time, Seattle band Sunny Day Real Estate had just broken up, and Grohl
recruited Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith, that band's bassist and drummer, respectively.
After the release of the group's second album, 1997's The Colour and the Shape, Smear quit,
in part because things had gotten weird between him and Grohl. This was after the frontman
divorced his first wife, Jennifer Youngblood, a dear friend of Smear's, though they'd eventually
patch things up. In Smear's absence, Grohl brought in Franz Stahl, with whom he'd played in the 80s
hardcore band Scream. But Stahl would lose this gig in 1999. As Grohl told Kerrang! that year,
"It just seemed like the three of us were moving in one direction and Franz wasn't."
Original Foo Fighters drummer William Goldsmith
quit the band around the time of the release of The Colour and the Shape.
Recording the album was tedious and nerve-wracking for him. As he told the Miami New Times in 1998,
"Dave had me do 96 takes of one song, and I had to do thirteen hours' worth of takes on
another one [...] I think that everyone at the label wanted Dave to play drums on the record."
And that's eventually what happened, as Grohl ultimately re-recorded every drum part on the
album. Goldsmith didn't hear about that until after the fact, and with that revelation,
he left the band. So Foo Fighters was then in need of a permanent drummer. Taylor Hawkins,
who was at the time playing drums for Alanis Morissette, wanted the job. He got Grohl's phone
number through a mutual friend. Just a few seconds into his audition, Grohl offered him the position.
The song "Big Me" was one of Foo Fighters' earliest singles. A jangly,
catchy bit of power pop, it was featured on the band's self-titled 1995 debut album,
and it was a hit on MTV thanks to its memorable video. The clip features Dave Grohl and the rest
of the band humorously re-creating the corny, vaguely unsettling 90s commercials for Mentos,
the rolled European candy known as "The Freshmaker."
The difference was that "Big Me" was ostensibly an ad for the non-existent product "Footos."
"Big Me" also established the band's reputation for funny music videos.
Later clips for the likes of "Low," "Learn to Fly," and "Walk" also showcased the
band's sense of humor. Despite all this, the Foos temporarily banned "Big Me" from their set list.
As it turns out, Grohl had grown tired of fans pelting him with
Mentos when they performed the tune. As he revealed to Gigwise in 2005,
"Every time we played it, it would just start raining Mentos,
and them motherf-----s hurt. We did a show in Canada and, in the middle of the song,
someone threw a pack, and it hit me right in the face. I was so pissed,
I picked it up and said, 'It's been 10 f---ing years since that video.'"
When major bands tour the world's stadiums and arenas, they and their management typically send
out riders to concert promoters, producers, and crews. A rider outlines the stage requirements
and schedules so that the shows will be precisely and safely executed. It also
lays out a band's backstage needs, like what kind of drinks they want in their dressing room
or what their pre- and post-show meals should include. Foo Fighters have turned their riders
into an art form. They clearly have a lot of fun with the document, as they include jokes,
Easter eggs, and silly supplemental materials. In one 2000 rider, the band claimed that "any
misspelling or other stupid typos" in promotional materials would earn the promoter a fine of $100:
"...to be paid to Foo Fighter's tour manager."
That sentence itself included a typo, as it should read "Foo Fighters'" instead of "Foo Fighter's."
And one 2008 rider requested a selection of boxed cereal, unopened and not leftover
"from last night's Dio show," four bottles of Gatorade in "wacky colors please," a bag of
Pirate Booty ("Not Johnny Depp's"), and a soup selection at lunchtime. It further requested,
"Please try to make it a vegetarian selection. Meaty soups make roadies fart."
And when Foo fighters hit the road in 2011,
their rider even included coloring pages to illustrate their requests.
In April 2006, Brant Webb, Todd Russell, and Larry Knight were working their usual jobs in a deep
underground gold mine in Beaconsfield, Tasmania, when an earthquake hit. That triggered a cave-in,
which trapped all three men. Knight died, while Webb and Russell had to wait until they could
be successfully rescued. People on the surface could lower objects to the miners, and Webb had
one particular request: an iPod loaded up with Foo Fighters songs. He wanted this to both cheer
himself up and to overpower the sound of constant drilling as rescuers worked to free him and
Russell. The iPod made its way down, as did a note from Dave Grohl, who had learned about the miners'
plight. It promised two tickets to a Foo Fighters show, as well as two cold beers once they got out.
Webb and Russell were successfully freed, and about six months later, when Foo Fighters played
an acoustic show at the Sydney Opera House, Webb was in attendance. Grohl was a man of his word,
as he invited Webb and his guests backstage for some beers.
And the legacy of this story lives on in the Foo Fighters' 2007 album Echoes, Silence,
Patience & Grace, which includes an instrumental track called "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners."
"It's a bond that we're going to have with us for the rest of our lives, and that won't change."
In December 2011, Foo Fighters played one of the southernmost shows of their long career,
as they brought their worldwide concert tour in support of their album Wasting Light to Western
Springs Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. About 50,000 fans attended the show to get
rocked out by Dave Grohl and company. They didn't expect to also make scientific history that day,
but that's exactly what happened. According to data collected at two research stations,
each about a mile from Western Springs Stadium, seismic measuring equipment picked up a strong,
low-grade frequency coming from the show. As GeoNet reported,
"The first vibrations were recorded around 7:30 PM,
part way through the [opening act] Tenacious D set, but the biggest shakes started at 8:20 PM
when the Foo Fighters took the stage, and then it all went quiet at 11:00 PM when
the gig ended [...] The ground was shaking 3 times per second in a nice rhythmic motion."
GeoNet also compared the level of ground shaking from the show to that of a volcanic tremor.
How explosive, and how totally rock 'n' roll!
The Westboro Baptist Church is a small but vocal religious group that protests military
service member funerals and other occasions with large signs citing their belief that God hates
the LGBTQ community and is punishing the United States for its acceptance of same-sex marriage.
In September 2011, Westboro staged a protest outside Sprint Center in Kansas City,
Missouri, where Foo Fighters were scheduled to play a concert that night. But that day,
there was also a counter-demonstration. It consisted of the members of Foo Fighters
riding up to the Westboro protesters on the back of a flatbed truck,
wearing fake beards, trucker hats, jeans, buffalo plaid, and other such working-class
signifiers to disguise themselves as a country music band. The band played from the truck,
with Dave Grohl singing a down-home ditty about how they wanted, quote, "hot man muffins."
Then in August 2015, Foo Fighters returned to Kansas City for another concert,
and once again, the Westboro Baptist Church showed up ahead of time. And also once more,
Foo Fighters drove up to their foes on a truck, but this time they "Rickrolled" the crowd,
as they blasted Rick Astley's meme-inspiring hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up."
"Was I the only one that had to look that up? In the Urban Dictionary, Rickroll."
When Foo Fighters hit the stage in Gothenburg, Sweden in June 2015,
Dave Grohl may have rocked out just a little too hard. In an instrumental break during
the song "Monkey Wrench," the frontman tried to jump to a ramp near the stage,
but he fell into an open area instead. He then told the audience,
"I think I just broke my leg. I'm going to go to hospital.
I'm going to fix my leg. And then I'm going to come back. You have my promise right now."
Grohl sought medical attention while the rest of the band performed cover songs with
drummer Taylor Hawkins on vocals. About an hour later, Grohl made his triumphant
return as he took the stage with the assistance of crutches and announced,
"I may not be able to walk or run but I can still play guitar and scream."
While Grohl was able to complete that show, the Foos ultimately had to cancel two subsequent tour
stops in the Netherlands and Switzerland. But he was able to return for a 20th band anniversary
and Fourth of July show in Washington, D.C., as he sat atop a throne made of amps and guitars.
In what might go down as the biggest, loudest, most rocking event in modern history,
a band called the Rockin' 1000 convened in the northern Italian city of Cesena
in the summer of 2015. The collective's 1,000 guitarists, drummers, bassists,
and singers proceeded to perform Foo Fighters' 1999 hit "Learn to Fly." It took organizer Fabio
Zaffagnini an entire year to organize the event, and a video of the powerful moment went viral,
amassing more than 50 million views. As Zaffagini said in the video,
"Italy is a country where dreams cannot
easily come true but it's a land of passion and creativity."
"What we did in here is just a huge, huge miracle."
The goal of this event was actually to lure the Foo Fighters to play a concert
in Cesena. And as it turned out, it worked. In November 2015, just a few months after the Rockin'
1000 video hit the internet, Foo Fighters indeed descended on Cesena and played a lengthy concert.
At one point, Dave Grohl recognized a drummer from the video and brought him up
onstage to play on a cover of Queen's "Under Pressure." He also declared to the audience,
"To see you people, singing our song for the whole f---ing world, to me,
it's the greatest moment of my life."
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