“I had no idea how good of a guitar player he was when we started recording. Most of the guitar on the records is him”: Foo Fighters super-producer Nick Raskulinecz on the most surprising thing about Dave Grohl's guitar playing

Before Nick Raskulinecz became the go-to producer and engineer for bands like Rush, Alice in Chains, Ghost, Deftones, Evanescence, Halestorm, and Mastodon, it was an encounter with Dave Grohl that opened up the opportunity for him to produce the Foo Fighters' 2002 album, One by One – followed by 2005’s hugely successful In Your Honor – which subsequently led to work with a huge roster of A-list bands.

“I had recorded the Foo Fighters at Sound City [Studios, the LA studio which has seen the likes of The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, and Bob Dylan record there],” he tells Rick Beato. “I was an assistant on a session they had done. I was an assistant a couple of times because Dave really loved Sound City, because he recorded there with Nirvana.

“We just kind of became friends. [We come from] very similar backgrounds. He grew up in Virginia, I grew up in Tennessee. We had a lot of the same common interests. So a little budding friendship started along with the recording thing.”

He continues, “I wouldn't see him again for a while, and then he'd come in and record, and we'd have a blast, and then, totally randomly, I ran into him one day, and he was looking to make a record at his house in Virginia, in the basement.

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“He had built a basement studio, and coincidentally, I had just finished assistant engineering a record in a house. And I was just like, ‘I'm down.’ He was like, ‘I can't find anybody that wants to come to Virginia to make a record in my basement,’ because he was talking to all the big producer guys, and none of them wanted to do it.

“He was willing to take a chance. Making that record changed everything for me.”

As for Grohl's guitar playing, Raskulinecz agrees with Beato in his conviction that he's “such a tight guitar player.” The producer even asserts that, “I had no idea how good of a guitar player he was when we started recording. I was just blown away at how good of a guitar player he was.

“Most of the guitar is him on the records, and then Chris Shiflett comes in and kind of adds his bits and solos and stuff. But all the core foundation of that stuff is Dave.”