by Martin James
I think everyone was uncertain whether I would come back. I know that I was,” admitted Grohl. “And I was having a blast every night playing drums with those guys. But at the end of the day I had to come back because much as I loved Queens, they’re not family. These guys are family. This is where my heart has always been. I know I’m a better drummer than anything. And it’s twelve other people [crew], not just the guys onstage.” (11)
The Queens of the Stone Age tour suitably rejuvenated Grohl so between legs of the tour he went back into Studio 606 to record another album. They subsequently wrote and recorded fourteen tracks in a matter of days. “That’s how you should make a record. I listen to it now and I think it’s the best record we’ve ever made, the first one that reminds me of the band,” exclaimed Grohl. Only one track survived the original album session, ‘Tired of You’, which featured Queen guitarist Brian May.
Still the rumours persisted that the band were on the verge of splitting. “I had no idea anyone was concerned,” claims Grohl. “Hearing the rumours about the demise of the band, we had no idea people were paying attention. We come home from being on the road and we feel like we just disappear. Unless we’re on tour in front of people it just doesn’t seem like it matters. But it was pretty funny. In some areas of the world it got blown up into a virtual scandal and it just wasn’t.”
On July 11, Foo Fighters embarked on a three-date stay in Dublin, Ireland before heading off to the T In The Park Festival in Scotland. They returned to the US for three weeks, during which time they filmed the video for ‘All My Life’, the first single from the forthcoming fourth album. Grohl was the director, as he had been for ‘Monkey Wrench’.
Following the video shoot the band returned once more to Europe where they played one night in Cologne, Germany, before going to the UK for the album photo shoot, rehearsals and then an appearance at Reading Festival on August 24. The following night they played Leeds Festival, with a gig at London’s Astoria taking place the night after.
On August 27 they played at the Kerrang! Awards where they were honoured with the prestigious ‘Hall of Fame Award’. They subsequently played a low-key show at London’s ULU.
September saw the band embarking on a six-week promo tour of UK, France, Germany, Japan and Australia. During which a limited edition single of only 2,500 copies was released on Sessions Records. The single featured ‘All My Life’ and a version of The Ramones’ ‘Danny Says’ with Shifflet on vocals.
The full release of ‘All My Life’ came a month later. A fast-paced rocker with Grohl’s breathy, tense vocals leading into a glorious anthemic chorus – all thundering drums, slashing guitars and rolling bass – it proved to be one of the band’s finest tracks so far. If Foo Fighters really had been on the verge of calling it a day, then this single suggested otherwise.
Yet another double pack single, Part 1 of ‘All My Life’ featured a version of Psychedelic Furs’ second single ‘Sister Europe’, ‘Win or Lose’ (the remake of ‘Make Bet’) and the director’s cut of the video for ‘All My Life’. Part 2 was backed with The Ramones cover ‘Danny Says’ and ‘The One’, the movie soundtrack for Orange County.
On October 22, Foo Fighters’ fourth album One By One finally hit the stores, a mere twelve months later than originally anticipated. The wait had been worth it. The album went to the #1 spot in the UK on first week of release. Ironically the much anticipated and highly controversial compilation of his previous band Nirvana only reached #3 – One By One’s sales figures of 91,500 beat Nirvana’s first week total by 7000. Nirvana would topple One By One from the top a week later.
Grohl himself was barely able to contain his excitement at the way the album turned out. After the lows of having to scrap the original effort, this new version was beyond even his lofty expectations.
“Well, I love the record… I listen to the sound and it reminds me of the four of us playing together. It’s very simple. We didn’t stray too far away from the true sound of the band so to me it’s the best one yet. The songs are more advanced and interesting. It’s lyrically more mature than anything we’ve ever done. It’s just nice. It feels like we’re growing into ourselves.”(12)
As with There Is Nothing Left To Lose, the opening track was somewhat misleading. ‘All My Life’ chugged in like Survivor’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ before turning into one of the band’s fiercest onslaughts. Hawkins ricocheting rim shots and machine gun staccato rolls created a new sense of urgency for the band.
“That song suits us and the album well,” explained Grohl. “Sometimes it’s angry and dark in a romantic, but not necessarily depressing, way. It’s important that the band do something different every time. One of the reasons why we threw away a lot of the songs from the first sessions was because they sounded too much like singles that we would write: big chorus, fast tempo, sweet melody over hard guitars. It didn’t challenge the band or the listener. The idea is to try and stretch your days, your life and try to make everything last as long as possible.” (13)
If ‘All My Life’ was misleading, then what followed was clearly put there to send the listener in completely the wrong direction. ‘Low’ represented the band’s heaviest and hardest record to date. A slab of angry pulsing hardcore with guitars, bass and drums careering like a runaway eighteen-wheeler, burning rubber across scorched earth, with bitter sweet melodies teasing like a sneering, contorted nursery rhyme. It was even better than the opening track.
And then just as the energy seemed to be getting cranked up even higher, ‘Have It All’ came in with a dislocated, springy guitar melody that sounded like UK punk outfit Wire covering ‘My Sherona’, before walking dangerously close to middle of the road territory with super smooth chorus harmonies, only to be rescued with a blinding display of drum and guitar interplay bringing the song to a close.
“I thought ‘Have It All’ was going to be the most screaming, fucking rock song we’ve ever done,” laughed Grohl. “And then I came up with that beautiful melody like fucked-up Beach Boys or something. That’s always what happens. And maybe that’s what our band sounds like. Those two ingredients complement each other well. Maybe that’s what we do the best. I can’t write something that sounds like White Zombie, or Slayer, or Motörhead. I just can’t do it.”(14)
‘Times Like These’ followed with Grohl singing “I’m a one way motorway” over a backing that verged on latter-day Manic Street Preachers delivering an AOR take on Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child of Mine’. Surprisingly, however, the track worked, with Grohl’s impassioned vocals pushing the band into gloriously emotional waters. A song about positivity, about finding the light in a dark place, it could have been the soundtrack to the previous year.
Of the next track, ‘Disenchanted Lullaby’, Grohl suggested that unpredictability was the key to the album, thanks to the way the song’s smooth windswept verse melody erupted into a chest-beating chorus. “It’s always nice to have a little jab at the end of a chorus. That’s the melancholy, the bittersweet. This album is less predictable than anything we’ve ever done,” he said. (15)
If people were looking for any signs of Grohl’s time with Queens of the Stone Age having a long-term influence on him, it came with ‘Disenchanted Lullaby’. On ‘Tired Of You’ the track that followed however, the band sounded like tight-rope walkers traversing the thin line between love lost and found. They were deep in Neil Young territory, delivering a hopelessly melancholic love song. It was the only track to have survived the original sessions.
“What we do is not conducive to a grounded, stable life. You’re cursed by this love of what you do,” explained Grohl of the nature of the lyrics. “We’re just wanderers, which would make anyone write songs about wanting to be in love forever. It’s just the nature of what we do – but shit, it makes for good songs.” (16)
‘Halo’ featured Hawkins’ drum again thundering from wall to wall, underlining the song’s epic grandeur with hyperactive energy. Indeed, this album amply displayed just how grea
t a drummer Hawkins really was. He had clearly enjoyed the process. “You pray you’re gonna make it/And then when you’re done you keep fucking up,” sang Grohl in what could have been a typically self-depreciating comment on his life in music. Never able to sit still, always moving from album to scrapped album to finished album, project to project, leaving in his wake a trail of solid and at times stunning work. But none of it living up to his own expectations. Witness the number of times Grohl had scrapped Foo Fighters albums for not achieving the levels he required. Each one a “fuck up” in Grohl’s perfectionist mind.
‘Lonely As You’ was the sound of the Beach Boys playing with, well Queens of the Stone Age, all sweetness and psychedelia with a haunting underbelly of utter darkness. ‘Overdrive’ followed with what was the most formulaic song on the album thanks to its hum-a-long guitar hooks, head-bobbing pop melody and stadium-sized chorus hook.
‘Burn Away’ was a mid-tempo classic rock stomper featuring bottom heavy guitars winding around Grohl’s melody, while closing track ‘Come Back’ found the band at their most expansive, pushing the boundaries of the Foo formula to their very extreme and fusing them with Lynard Skynard (again). The chorus cry of ‘I will come back’ also found Grohl re-deploying his James Hetfield growl.
Perhaps not their best album, One By One did however contain some of the band’s best songs. It also showed the Foos gaining a new maturity which hovered between the downside of simple acceptance of their own limitations, and on the positive, the ambition to take their sound far beyond the Nirvana straight jacket; their historical references owing far more to US rock than UK punk. Indeed, of all of the Foos’ records, this one had the least to do with Grohl’s previous band.
The media were impressed. “Grohl’s task, which he has taken on with grace and persistence, is to make rock that sets its own stakes high and doesn’t get stuck looking back,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Jon Pareles. “Whatever their genesis, the songs are stronger and broader than autobiography… It’s rock that draws power from its determination to struggle onward.”
This single-minded determination lay at the heart of the making of the album. That the initial album was dropped, that he even went on tour with the Queens, had as much to do with his need to let everyone know that he could do these things, as any desire to rejuvenate his love of music.
“One of the things I love about being in Foo Fighters is we really call all the shots,” he says. “We take advice from people when we want to know how to go about touring but at the end of the day we have this veto power that a lot of other bands don’t and I think that’s what kept the band alive as long as it has and will keep us for years to come in the future hopefully. So long as you do it on your own terms and your pace you can make it last a lifetime. And as long as you’re doing it for the right reasons.”
The release of One By One was marked by an in-store gig at Virgin Megastore in Hollywood. During the mixing of the album and through all of the Queens time, Grohl had lived in Los Angeles again. However this time round he had come to terms with the nature of the city.
“There are things about Los Angeles that I like now,” he admits. “I’ve just discovered neighbourhoods whereas before it was this swingin’ singles fuckin’ tequila party every night. And my sister lives here now so I have family here. Just mellowing myself, it seems Los Angeles has mellowed as well. I don’t really go out any more – every once in a while I’ll come down to a bar down the street and hang out with a bunch of friends, but when Queens of the Stone Age aren’t in town there really aren’t many people to hang out with. Nobody fun… or that much fun.”
In the months that followed, Grohl and the Foo Fighters would find themselves once again traversing the globe, this time in support of One By One. February 23, 2003, would see them once again winning critical recognition at The Grammys, scooping the ‘Best Hard Rock Song’ gong for ‘All My Life’.
In March, Grohl would embark on another guest appearance. This time it was with his teenage heroes Killing Joke, whom he had met in New Zealand. The resulting album The Death and Resurrection Show proved to be Killing Joke’s finest since their debut self-titled collection. Grohl’s drums added a power that many felt had been missing on the band’s latter 1980s recordings.
“He’s such a powerful drummer,” says Killing Joke guitarist Geordie. “He really added a lot of energy to the songs. It was good for me to have that kind of power ‘cos it meant my guitars could get even more fired up, y’know what I mean? It’s a fucking huge album, and Dave’s a big part of that.”
“The drums in Killing Joke are always Killing Joke drums,” singer Jaz Coleman explained to Metal Hammer. “They’re always played a certain way… big tom-tom patterns.” Despite Killing Joke embarking on a world tour, there were no plans for Grohl to join them.
Besides, Dave Grohl’s crammed diary was already filled with Foo Fighters dates on a tour that would find the band finally headlining their own stadium and festival dates. They had come a long way since that low turn out at V97! Most notable perhaps was a forthcoming truly barn-storming set at V2003, when anyone present would struggle to disagree that the Foos stole the show from under the noses of other huge bands such as Coldplay and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It had been a long and at times treacherous path to mainstream, stadium-filling acclaim, but Foo Fighters had finally made it.
Ever the modest type, Grohl admits to being surprised by their success. “We’ve been perfectly happy in our own little corner of the world. I’m surprised at the response we’re getting in England especially. I just never imagined it getting to that point. Having it happen later rather than sooner is surprising to me. The fact we’re doing this arena tour that’s sold out is a surprise, because I’ve always felt that this band would remain in its own comfortable corner forever. The ambition is more inward than that. The aspiration is just more about making records and performing. Be it to 700 people or 70,000 people.”
As the Foo Fighters’ stadium and festival tour wound round the globe, they released two more singles from One By One. On January 6, 2003, ‘Times Like These’ was issued. As was customary for Foo Fighters singles, it came as a double pack. Part 1 included unreleased track ‘Life Of Illusion’ and a live rendition of B-52s ‘Planet Claire’ – with Fred Schneider paying back Grohl’s respectful and accurate imitation on ‘Watter-Fred’, by providing vocals. Part 2 included another unreleased track ‘Normal’, along with a live version of ‘Learn To Fly’. Both CDs included enhanced parts.
The summer 2003 tour was supported by the release of ‘Low’. This time Part 1 included a live version of ‘Enough Space’ and the video for ‘Low’. Part 2 included live song ‘Never Talking To You Again’. There was also a DVD release of the single taking full advantage of a controversial, MTV-banned video.
This notorious promo featured Grohl and Tenacious D’s Jack Black as two rednecks on a drinking session in a motel. Events gradually degenerate until the duo end up dressed in women’s clothes. Like a low budget fusion of the ‘Squeal piggy squeal’ scene in Deliverance and the motel scenes in Reservoir Dogs, the video was both funny and sad at the same time. The guilty looks on the men’s faces the next day was the perfect side-splitting climax.
According to Grohl, his new fiancée – MTV producer Jordyn Blum – thought the movie was very funny. She even helped pick out his clothes for the cross-dressing part. Whatever the truth, the sleazy goings-on in the promo didn’t put her off him and on August 2, 2003, they were marred at Grohl’s house in Woodland Hills, near Los Angeles. The ceremony was typical of Grohl. The guests were his friends and family. The band was present, as were crew and Krist Novoselic. However, the only person who could be remotely described as a celebrity was basketball player Codi Bryant. This was one wedding that wasn’t destined for the pages of Hello.
“My biggest hero is Neil Young. He’s living the life I hope I can have one day,” explained Grohl to USA Today. “He’s living on a beautiful farm with his beautiful children and his
beautiful wife. He plays concerts now and then. He still makes records. His love of music hasn’t diminished. And he’s remained a real person.”
Notes
1. Men Behaving Badly author unkown (Kerrang!) June 2000
2. Eat, Drink, Breathe (and Sometimes Sleep) Music An Interview with Dave Grohl by Fish Rock and Tim Holsopple (www.manateebound.com/features/grohl.html) 2001
3. ibid
4. news item, no bi-line (NME) 2001
5. news item, no bi-line (Kerrang!) October 27 2001
6. We Have Lift Off, author unknown (Kerrang!) June 2001
7. ibid
8. ibid
9. Nick Oliveri counts his blessings as Dave Grohl rocks the royal family by Joe Rosenthal (Rolling Stone) May 3, 2002
10. ibid
11. Dave Grohl His Life So Far by Tommy Udo(Metal Hammer) 2003
12. Foo Fighters feature by Paul Hagen (Big Cheese) January 2003
13. One by One Review sidebar, author unknown (Rock Sound) November 2002
14. One by One Review sidebar, author unknown (Rock Sound) November 2002
15. One by One Review sidebar, author unknown (Rock Sound) November 2002
16. One by One Review sidebar, author unknown (Rock Sound) November 2002
8
LOOKING FOR RELIEF IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE?
What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.
“When I was 16 I wasn’t the singer of the Foo Fighters or the drummer of Nirvana. I was a fan of heavy music. I still am!” (1)
There comes a time in every successful artist’s story when they feel compelled to explore fresh avenues. Not necessarily for artistic reasons, rather more the need to recapture the essence of why they started playing music in the first place.