Biography of Foo Fighters

While he was drumming with Nirvana, Dave Grohl was recording original songs at home which never received public exposure. Those tapes would become the foundation of the Foo Fighters, the band he formed in 1995, after the death of Kurt Cobain. Like Nirvana, the Foo Fighters melded loud, heavy guitars with pretty melodies and mixed punk sensibilites with a sharp sense of pop songwriting. They might not have had the revolutionary spark of Nirvana, but they satisfied the immediate desires of many Nirvana fans, as their platinum success shows.Dave Grohl began playing guitar and writing songs in his early teens, as well as performing with a variety of obscure hardcore punk bands. In the late '80s, when he was still in his teens, he joined the Washington DC-area hardcore band Scream as their drummer. During the final days of Scream, Grohl began writing and recording his own material in the lo-fi basement studio of his friend, Barrett Jones; the drummer also helped Jones record his own material. Some of Grohl's songs appeared on Scream's final album, Fumble. In the last days of Scream's disasterous 1990 summer tour, Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins advised Grohl to audition for Nirvana, who were currently searching for a new drummer. Grohl left Scream and headed to Seattle. When he had a spare moment, he would continue to write songs and occasionally headed back to Virginia to record with Jones. After Nirvana recorded Nevermind, Dave Grohl went back to the DC-area and recorded a handful of tracks that would appear on Pocketwatch, a cassette released by Simple Machines, an independent label run by Tsunami's Jenny Toomey. Pocketwatch contained early versions of "Marigold," the only Grohl song recorded by Nirvana, and "Winnebago," which appeared on the first Foo Fighters album. For most of 1992, he was busy with Nirvana's phenomenal success, but when the band stayed off of the road, he recorded solo material with Jones, who had moved to Seattle. The pair kept recording throughout early 1993, when Grohl returned to Nirvana to record In Utero. Grohl had toyed with the idea of releasing another independent cassette in the summer of 1993, but the plans never reached fruition, as he was busy touring with Nirvana. After Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, the drummer kept quiet for several months, as he mourned and decided whether to continue performing. Booking time in a professional studio, Grohl and Jones recorded the album that became the Foo Fighters' debut album in a week. Boiling down his backlog of songs to about 15 tracks, Grohl played all of the instruments on the album (Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs plays guitar) on one track. He made a 100 copies of the tape, passing it out to friends and associates. In no time, Dave Grohl's solo project became the object of a fierce record company bidding war.Instead of embarking a full-fledged solo career, Grohl decided to form a band. Through his wife he met Nate Mendel, the bassist for Sunny Day Real Estate. Shortly before the pair met, the leader of Sunny Day Real Estate had converted to Christianity and quit the band, leaving Mendel free to pursue other interests. Not only did Mendel join Grohl's band, but so did Sunny Day's drummer, William Goldsmith; former Germs and Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear rounded out the lineup. The band was named the Foo Fighters after a World War II secret force that allegedly researched UFOs and signed a contract with Capitol Records. Before releasing their debut, the Foo Fighters went on a month-long American tour opening for Mike Watt. At that time, few listeners knew who the band was, but the tour earned the group good word of mouth reviews. The band's self-titled debut, consisting solely of Dave Grohl's solo recordings, was released on July 4, 1995. It was an instant success, as "This Is A Call" garnered heavy alternative and album rock airplay. For the second single, "I'll Stick Around," they shot their first video, which pushed the album into gold status. By the time of their third single, "Big Me," was released, the album was certified platinum. (In England, the third single was "For All the Cows," making "Big Me" the fourth single pulled from the album.) ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine