Dave Grohl wanted to get back making music after the tragic end of Nirvana. He had ideas and had written some songs and put them onto tape. But he needed a guitarist. The big question was, who was he going to get in the band?

Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Grohl describes his headspace in the months following Kurt Cobain’s death.

The manner of Nirvana’s ending sent Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic into survival mode.

“I think that we all wound up in places that felt... I don’t want to say comfortable, but safe,” recalls Grohl. “And so when I went into the studio and recorded that stuff by myself, I felt safe there. And I can’t speak for Krist, but I think at that time it was like we were just trying to get our feet back on the ground. For me, that’s something that I thought, 'Okay, well, music is the thing that’s going to rescue me.'”

The Foo Fighters frontman believes Novoselic found his feet by taking a step back from music and regrouping. And Grohl didn’t push him. “We didn’t really ever have that deeper, longer conversation,” he says.

If getting a band back together was part of the process for putting his heart back together, Grohl would have to start recruiting. Everyone knew him as the drummer from Nirvana. The last full-length album he released was In Utero and that was Seattle trio at their most confrontational.

The songs Grohl was putting together, none of them sounded like Scentless Apprentice. These were, well, poppy. And he’d have asked Nirvana live guitarist Pat Smear if he wanted to play in this band he was going to call the Foo Fighters, but no way would he say yes.

“The funniest thing is like, I didn't think Pat would be our guitar player. I just sent him a tape. I sent him one of the early cassettes,” says Grohl, expecting… Well, Pat Smear is a punk at heart. Grohl expected a polite thanks but no thanks. Smear was duly shocked. But his reaction was altogether more positive than Grohl could have hoped for.

“He was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so poppy.’ And I’m like, ‘Is it? Okay, is that a good thing?’ And to Pat, that is a great thing,” says Grohl. “I was like, and I had already started jamming with Nate [Mendel, bass guitar] and William [Goldsmith, drums] and I was like, ‘Hey if you want to play guitar… I didn’t expect that he would, you know. And then he decided that he would jam with us. And it was great.”

The rest is history. The Foo Fighters returned with their 12th studio album, Your Favorite Toy, which is out now via RCA, their first to feature new drummer Ilan Rubin. Following the death of Taylor Hawkins in 2022, Grohl recorded all the drum parts for 2023’s But Here We Are.

In conversation with Lowe, Grohl reflects on what it’s like to have a back catalog that he felt was almost out of bounds, songs that he was scared to revisit – for any number of reasons but especially the obvious one, that playing something of, say, Nevermind was going to be too painful.

But he says there is nothing quite like those occasions when he, Novoselic and Smear have got together to perform Nirvana tracks.

“It’s such a weird thing to feel afraid to play songs. And for a long time it's like I was even afraid just to sit down at a drum set and play the opening riff to Smells Like Teen Spirit,” he says “It just seemed sort of forbidden. And so the few times that Krist and Pat and I have gotten together to do it, it’s a trip… the noise that the three of us make together, you don’t really get that noise anywhere else.

“The way that Krist strums his bass lines, the bass that he uses, the equipment he uses, his sense of feel and time, it’s like all of those things combined with Pat like with that crazy Germs/Pat Smear guitar thing. And then some loud-ass drums, when it happens, you're just like, oh fuck, I remember this. Shit, I haven’t heard this in 35 years. It’s a really beautiful sound and a beautiful feeling.”

You can watch/listen to the full Dave Grohl interview on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music.

Jason Falkner might not be a household name, but he's played with some of the best. Alongside being Beck's touring guitarist for years, he's recorded with Paul McCartney, Cheap Trick, and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, and has also toured with St Vincent.

Recently, he added another name to the list, having been drafted into the Foo Fighters as emergency cover for Pat Smear.

Smear was sidelined from the Foo's latest run of shows after a “bizarre gardening accident” left him with a broken leg earlier this year. Grohl and co turned to Falkner for help.

“I was getting ready to rage per usual on New Year’s Eve when Dave called me and told me about Pat's injury,” he tells Guitar World in a new interview. He was more than willing to step in.

“And then, he told me how soon everything was kicking off. I had four days to learn 23 songs at home before we started five days of rehearsals on the 5th of January, with the first show in Mexico on the 10th!”

That first show, at Velaria de la Feria, León, Mexico, went off without a hitch, as Grohl’s faith in Falkner paid off. But what made him the man to dep for Smear?

“Well, I’ve known Dave for quite a while,” Falkner says. “I’d like to think he and Pat knew I’d rock out in this situation. Dave called me back in 2018 for a single show at Warren Haynes’ Christmas Jam, where we played Dave’s opus, Play.

“So, I think he knew I would fit in quickly, but I was truly chuffed when Dave told me he and Pat thought of me for this basically at the same time.

“I’m a Pat fan going back to the Germs,” he adds. “Pat's guitar playing is direct and heavy. I don’t want much more than that!”

Between agreeing to the gig and that first rehearsal, Falkner listened to a lot of Foo Fighters as he got the songs under his fingers. But there was one small issue.

“The one mistake I made was not listening to the live versions earlier because they can be quite different from the record's arrangement,” he details. “I learned that the hard way at full band rehearsals!”

Meanwhile, Rush has credited Foo Fighters for kickstarting their reunion, while GW scribe Daryl Robertson has gone to painstaking lengths to deliver the ultimate Dave Grohl gear guide.

Falkner’s full interview will be published online in the coming weeks.

Foo Fighters have kicked off 2026 with a new guitarist, playing their first show with stand-in Jason Falkner, in León, Mexico.

Former Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, who has been a key figure in Dave Grohl’s band since their formation in 1994, is currently out of action after a “bizarre gardening accident.”

That’s seen Falkner, a respected session musician and touring guitarist for Beck and St. Vincent, sworn in ahead of their appearance at the open-air show Velaria de la Feria.

The scale of the gig, though, looked like water off a duck's back for the guitarist, who rose to prominence with Jellyfish in the late ’80s and early ’90s. From barnstorming opener All My Life, to My Hero – which Grohl dedicated to his injured compatriot – he locked in with Grohl and Chris Shiflett with ease.

It looks like he opted for a Hamer The Special Jr. for the show, despite his association with Fender Jazzmasters. Dave Grohl was, unsurprisingly, sporting the new white version of his celebrated Epiphone ES-335 signature.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but our guitar player, Pat Smear, broke his fucking leg,” Grohl said (via Loudwire) before playing the latter. “Been there, done that.”

In June 2015, the band was forced to cancel shows after Grohl broke his leg. Soon after, he returned to the stage on a specially-designed throne, à la Axl Rose with AC/DC and Ozzy at Back to the Beginning. So he can empathize with the bed-bound Smear.

“Tonight, we couldn’t have Pat here, so we called our dear friend Jason Falkner to play for you,” Grohl then adds as Falkner blows kisses to the crowd. “I’ve known Jason for decades. [He’s an] amazing player. He’s played with everybody, so he really saved us and rescued us tonight.”

Falkner’s temporary stay in the band comes after drummer Josh Freese – and successor to the late Taylor Hawkins – confirmed his departure from the Foo Fighters last year.

Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear has had to pull out of the band's upcoming live shows as he recovers from a “bizarre gardening accident” – and his temporary replacement has been announced.

In a social media post that gave a not-so-subtle nod to Spinal Tap, the band wrote, “In the classic tradition of rockstars having bizarre gardening accidents, Pat Smear has apparently rung in the new year by smashing the shit out of his left foot.

“This means he’ll unfortunately be missing a few shows while the multiple broken bones in his foot heal. We’ll miss our beloved Pat as much as you will, but we want him fully healed and back on his feet as soon as possible.”

“Smashing the shit” sounds like it could be a rather accurate medical diagnosis. A photo that accompanies the post shows the Foo Fighters guitarist strapped to a wheelchair and, what we presume, an X-Ray of his ankle.

This is Guitar World, not Medicine World, but there certainly looks to be some gnarly fractures there. If only Foo Fighters had, say, a purpose-built throne that Smear could sit on for the upcoming shows.

Oh, wait, they do. Or, at least, they did – when band leader Dave Grohl broke his leg in 2015, he famously took the stage atop a grand guitar-themed throne. That throne was later loaned to Greyhawk bassist Darin Wall.

Whatever the case, the throne is apparently M.I.A., and even if Smear did have it, there’s then the small order of having to stomp on his pedalboard. So perhaps a brief rest on the sidelines is the most sensible option.

He’ll be out for Foo Fighters’ next few shows, and the band have already hired his temporary replacement: “Beck and St. Vincent guitar wizard Jason Falkner will be filling in for Pat while he’s on the mend,” the post concludes.

Falkner will step in for the band’s upcoming shows in Mexico, California and Australia on January 10, 14, and 24, respectively.

In 2024, Guitar World caught up with the journeyman session guitarist, who looked back on the moment he unexpectedly received the call to try out for St. Vincent’s band.

Saturday Night Live! celebrated its 50th anniversary last Friday (February 14) with a Homecoming Concert that saw Nirvana reunite for the second time in two weeks – but this time they drafted in another guest musician to front the band.

For the show, Pat Smear, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl linked up with underrated electric guitar player Post Malone, who helped the band through an infectious rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Introduced by actor/comedian Adam Sandler, the quartet put on one of the celebratory concert’s standout performances, which has drawn plaudits from artists and Nirvana fans alike.

For the show, Post Malone brought grit and angst to the vocals, and proved once again he is one of the guitar world’s most under-appreciated talents as he absolutely tore through the main progression.

He was also given the chance to flex his familiarity with the fretboard of his Gibson Les Paul, blasting through the lead hook as a Gibson CS-6-toting Smear duly took on rhythm duties.

Post Malone is certainly no stranger to Nirvana’s catalog – he previously performed a 15-song set of Nirvana classics during lockdown – nor is he out of touch with the wider guitar world.

After all, while many may be quick to point to his rap, hip-hop, and R&B background, the singer-guitarist has continually proven himself to be a criminally underrated player, one that’s wholly dedicated to his six-string craft.

Last summer, for example, he surprised Bonnaroo with a pyro-fueled guest spot alongside Billy Strings. Previously, he's nodded to his rock roots with covers of Alice in Chains’ Them Bones and Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover in a guitar battle with Andrew Watt. Oh, and he’s apparently written a “phat jam” with Tom Morello.

“A special rendition,” writes broadcaster Peacock of the performance on Instagram, and many spectators are in agreement.

“How crazy would an actual tour be with this lineup,” writes one fan. “This is my dream lineup for a Nirvana reunion tour,” gushes another. “Sick!” offers Machine Head’s Robb Flynn.

As mentioned, it was the second time in two weeks that Nirvana reunited with the help of guest musicians to fill the role of the late Kurt Cobain. On January 30, the band teamed up with St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett and Violet Grohl for an unannounced FireAid performance concert.

Last night (January 30), a remarkable assembly of all-star musicians came together in LA for FireAid, a massive benefit concert that aimed to raise money for those affected by the devastating fires that tore through Los Angeles earlier this month.

The bill was stacked enough as it is, but one of the biggest performances of the night came from a band that wasn't even on it: Nirvana.

The three surviving members of the group – guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Krist Novoselic, and drummer Dave Grohl – played four Nirvana classics, each with a different singer in the captain's chair.

The band started off with a ferocious take on Breed, featuring St. Vincent accessing her inner punk growl.

Naturally, the alt-rock A-lister also, with a sleek, black-finished version of her Ernie Ball Music Man signature guitar, highlighted the performance with a noisy, free-spirited solo that would almost certainly have made Kurt Cobain proud.

Wielding one of her favored Jazzmasters, Sonic Youth legend Kim Gordon then took the reins for School, a scrappy highlight from the band's debut album, Bleach, using the offset's whammy bar for all it's worth.

After that it was Joan Jett's turn, for a break-neck version of the band's ultimate thrasher, Territorial Pissings, for which Jett used her sticker-adorned Gibson Melody Maker.

The mini-set was then rounded out by a powerful All Apologies with Grohl's daughter, Violet, on vocals, and Gordon returning to the stage to fill in for Novoselic – who picked up the accordion – on bass.

But for Lorde, it was the same group of frontwomen the surviving Nirvana trio played with at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction performance in 2014.

“We thought, ‘Wait, it has to be all women,’” Grohl told Rolling Stone of the lineup of singers that same year.

“‘Don’t even ask anyone else. If we can fill the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance with these incredible women singing Nirvana songs, then we’ll have achieved our own revolution.’ It also added a whole other dimension to the show. It added substance and depth, so it didn’t turn into a eulogy. It was more about the future.”

“Joan Jett, who formed the Runaways, changed rock & roll for women,” Grohl continued. “Kim Gordon, from Sonic Youth, was this beacon of light in the predominantly macho, male underground punk rock scene. St. Vincent is a wicked musician that’s pushing boundaries now.”

For Chris Shiflett, being asked to join the Foo Fighters was “a dream come true”. Then, a mere 24 hours later, he found himself going on an electric guitar shopping spree with Dave Grohl – financed by Grohl’s Amex – which compounded that dream into something beyond his wildest fantasies.

In 1999, Shiflett was busy plying his trade in the punk group No Use for a Name when he heard that the Foo Fighters were holding auditions for an extra guitarist.

Though Shiflett aced the audition, Grohl quickly realized that his new bandmate would need more than his sole Gibson Les Paul for the new gig.

“Talk about a dream come true,” Shiflett reflects in a three-way chat with Grohl and Pat Smear on Premier Guitar. “Day two of being in the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl says, ‘You’re gonna need more guitars, let’s get you some.’”

The band had just tracked their third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, and with its supporting tour fast approaching, there was no time to waste.

“So we drive over to Voltage on Sunset and the shops I have been going to since I was a little kid,” Shiflett continues.

For the uninitiated, Vintage is, in its own words, “Hollywood’s oldest, largest, and most established vintage guitar store”. This wasn’t going to be a humble spending spree – and it proved to be a poignant full-circle moment for the guitarist.

“Now I’m walking in there and I’ve got Dave Grohl with me, he’s got his Amex, and we’re going shopping. He’s going, ‘Get whatever you want,’ and I was so freaked out. I couldn’t even think straight, but luckily I got two guitars that are fucking amazing.”

Sadly, Shiflett doesn’t reveal exactly what he bought, but early footage of his Foo Fighters days suggests one may have been a Gibson Explorer in Classic White.

Such reminiscing got Shiflett wondering what that experience would have been like today. Grohl quickly quipped: “You’d be taking your own credit card!”

In the same interview, fellow Foo Fighter Pat Smear recalls how his debut show with Nirvana almost didn’t happen because of his guitar of choice.

In related Shiflett news, the guitarist has just released his long-awaited signature Fender Telecaster after a long process of rugged road-testing.

On September 25, 1993, Nirvana appeared as a quartet on Saturday Night Live. As the story goes, the band’s new guitarist, Pat Smear, had received a call from Kurt Cobain inviting him to join the group as a second guitarist for an upcoming tour. The SNL performance served as an opportunity for the public to witness the updated lineup and experience select songs from Nevermind's follow-up, In Utero.

However, before joining Nirvana, Smear had been playing with German singer-songwriter and actress Nina Hagen, and had been coaxed into acquiring a 1982 Charvel for that particular gig.

When it came to playing with Cobain and co, though, the Charvel – which Smear considered to be his “good guitar” – raised a few eyebrows.

“She had a musical director, and they were snobs, and they hated that there was a fucking punk rocker in their band. They hated it so much,” Smear recalls in a conversation with Dave Grohl and Chris Shiflett for Premier Guitar. “I mean, she didn’t, but the band did, and they’re like, ‘You need to get a good guitar.’ So I end up buying this Charvel.

“It was gorgeous,” he goes on. “I mean, this thing was so pretty. I thought, ‘Okay, now I have a good guitar.’ So we’re doing my first-ever gig with Nirvana [on] Saturday Night Live. And I’m like, ‘Well, better play my good guitar. I’m gonna play my Charvel.’

While he had considered playing his Hagstrom instead, Smear thought his newly acquired Charvel would make more sense for such a highly anticipated appearance with, as he referred to Nirvana, “professional musicians”.

“And what I didn’t know at the time – I don't even know if you [referring to Dave Grohl] were involved – but there was a discussion about me and that guitar like, ‘No, no, no, we can’t let him on stage.’”

“Kurt ended up giving me this rad fucking guitar [referring to the Mosrite Mark V in blue he ended up playing], which is not a Charvel.”

During his (albeit brief) tenure with Nirvana, Smear played several models, primarily Fender Strats purchased for him by Cobain.

According to Nirvana’s longtime guitar tech, Earnest Bailey, three of the main ones were an American Strat in Midnight Blue with a maple fretboard, another American Strat nicknamed ‘Glossy’ – featuring a black DiMarzio pickup and a locked-down Floyd Rose bridge – and ‘Flopsy’, a Mexican Strat in black that Smear further modified throughout the tour by adding nail polish in different colors.

He also played a Hagstrom III in black, a blue Hagstrom I, and a black Hagstrom XII, plus the colorful Harmony Buck Owens American acoustic, which actually belonged to Krist Novoselic, and that stood out during Nirvana’s iconic MTV Unplugged concert.

However, his relationship with that Charvel guitar didn’t end there. Fast forward to 2023, and a serendipitous, full-circle moment occurred during a Foo Fighters SNL appearance with H.E.R “I noticed she was playing a Charvel,” Smear says. “She goes, ‘Yeah!’ [and I said] ‘I have a perfect guitar for you,’ and I sent her that guitar.”

On the surface, you wouldn't think Nirvana – with their anarchic live performances, and the crunchy distortion and blistering volume of their studio recordings – had much in common with the Beatles.

The Fab Four, however, were a major influence on Nirvana's frontman and electric guitar player, Kurt Cobain, from his childhood through his development of Nirvana's world-altering catalog.

“I remember years ago asking [Cobain's hometown friend] Eric Shillinger, ‘How successful do you think a band could be if they mixed really heavy Black Sabbath with the Beatles?,” Cobain once recalled to journalist Michael Azerrad. “What could you do with that?”

If only Cobain could've seen – decades later, and almost 20 years after his tragic death in 1994 – all three of his Nirvana bandmates create, and perform, an original song with Paul McCartney.

2012 was an especially unlikely time for McCartney to join forces with the grunge legends, fresh as he was off the back of that year's Kisses on the Bottom, a stately album that saw the Mount-Rushmore-of-pop songwriter tackle standards of the '30s, '40s, and '50s – a far cry from Territorial Pissings, for sure. 

And yet, 2012 was also the year that saw McCartney, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, and Krist Novoselic create Cut Me Some Slack, a blues-grunge howler that featured McCartney riffing – and even, for the first time, showing his slide guitar skills – on one of the strangest guitars he's ever slung over his shoulder.

McCartney first played Cut Me Some Slack – a studio version of which would be released on the 2013 Grohl-led Sound City: Real to Reel album – live at the 12-12-12 Hurricane Sandy relief benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. 

His mini-set was loaded with Beatles, Wings, and solo classics, for which McCartney – among other instruments – used a couple Gibson Les Pauls, and, of course, his trademark Hofner bass guitar.

For Cut Me Some Slack, though, McCartney was armed with a “Resofiddle,“ a “paint can lid resonator“ cigar box guitar built by Matty Baratto, a luthier whose incredible clientele list includes – aside from McCartney – Prince, Josh Homme, Joe Perry, Jack White, Slash, Keith Richards, Zakk Wylde, and Johnny Depp, among many others.

According to Baratto, it was Depp who got the Resofiddle (and a Baratto wine box guitar amp, featuring a 6” Jensen speaker, to go with it) into the Beatle's hands. As soon as McCartney picked it up, it led his playing in entirely new, and fascinating, directions.

In an interview with Guitar World, Baratto recounted meeting McCartney, and the latter's wonder at the Resofiddle, and where it took him, artistically. 

“You know, I've never played slide before, but it just started doing things on its own,” the Beatle told Baratto. “I didn’t even have to try, the sound... it just did things.“

“As a guitar maker,” Baratto tells Guitar World, “you don’t really need much more of an endorsement.”

“I never, in a million years, would have thought that I’d [one day] be talking about Resofiddles one-on-one with one of the most influential musicians ever,” Baratto says. “But there I was, listening and feeling like I was watching from above in a dream state – just hoping to remember everything.”

Baratto – who, before starting his own company, cut his teeth at Ibanez's LA Custom Shop from 1994 through 1999 – outfitted his four-string (tuned D, A, D, F#) Resofiddle with a lipstick pickup and brass nut. 

Just days after the 12-12-12 concert, the Resofiddle (examples of which would eventually go on display at the Grammy Museum, after Cut Me Some Slack picked up the 2014 Grammy for Best Rock Song) made another prominent appearance during McCartney and Nirvana's performance of Cut Me Some Slack on Saturday Night Live. 

The considerably more intimate SNL stage allows for some killer, up-close looks at the cigar box four-string, particularly its beautifully retro body.

Baratto says that he told McCartney, “I always wanted to be on SNL.” To that, the Beatle smiled, playfully hit the luthier on the shoulder, and said, “You were all over it, man!” 

Perched alongside his brother Peter Stahl, Virgina-based rocker Franz Stahl founded Scream in 1981, injecting themselves into the heart of a scene that was already flourishing via the likes of Bad Brains, Youth Brigade, and Minor Threat.

Now over 40 years later and having been dormant from a studio perspective for well over a decade, Stahl and his cohorts are back with their latest record, D.C. Special, which features a host of friends and scene mates that aided in making Scream one of the most revered bands out of the D.C. area.

"We called this one D.C. Special because we've got a ton of people that we've become close with on this one," Stahl tells Guitar World. "We've got Brian Baker from Bad Religion, Darryl Jenifer from Bad Brains, and a whole bunch of others. We expect the record out in the fall, but to be honest, we haven't been given a hard date."

Of course, there's another side to Franz Stahl's guitar coin. Many will recall that he served as a member of the Foo Fighters from 1997 through 1999, joining as a replacement for Pat Smear.

Looking back on his tenure as a member of the Foo Fighters, and what set him adrift after only two years, Stahl says, "I've always wanted to be the type of player that just gets up there and delivers power. I never thought I was that great technically, and solo-wise, I can mimic some stuff, but my wheelhouse just differed a little bit."

He continues, "As a performer and writer, I definitely do not come from the technical side; it's more about the joy of just writing music and then going out and ripping up. A solo doesn't need to be involved; give me power, great riffs, and inspiration. That's what I've always been after. That's what I'm still after."

In support of D.C. Special, Franz Stahl dialed in with Guitar World to dig into being labeled as a hardcore player, the writing and recording of landmark album Fumble, his tenure with the Foo Fighters, and the enduring love affair with his well-worn '78 Les Paul Goldtop.

Tell me about your new album, D.C. Special. Why the long lag in-between records?

"The last thing we did was the Complete Control Recording Sessions in 2011, so I guess we're on a once-a-decade schedule [laughs]. But the main reason is that we have other jobs outside of the band now, so a lot happens behind the scenes that slows the process down. But we still managed to get together yearly for at least a handful of shows, and we worked on the album around those other things."

How does your process differ from your early days?

"We used to do it by recording in a basement studio in Arlington, Virginia. I remember doing the Fumble record there, and we mixed it there, too. And after we'd written everything for D.C. Special, we went back to that same studio, which is called Inner Ear Studios. Being there brought back memories and got us back to doing things the way we used to. It's a celebration of the D.C. hardcore scene that we came up in. Aside from Fumble, I'd say it was one of the most remarkable sessions I've ever participated in."

You noted the D.C. hardcore scene, which you guys are integral to, but you also habitually inject other sounds. Does being labeled explicitly as a hardcore band drive you to create more expansive sounds?

"That music made me want to expand my guitar work. In terms of what we were called, it never really bothered me. People will always want to put labels on things, but like you said, we were never strictly a hardcore band, even if we did come up in that scene. We were kids that grew up in Virgina, which is very southern, so we grew up listening to a lot of southern rock. The punk thing didn't come into play until later. All of that informed my guitar approach."

And you made a note of Fumble earlier, which is an example of Scream wandering from its hardcore roots. What was your mindset like then?

"I'll start by saying that Fumble is one of my favorite records that I've been a part of. It was a moment when the band had really come together after all the changes that we had experienced. We had been through some lineup changes, and Dave Grohl was a part of the band, which changed the band sonically in a big way. We also had more money to record than we'd had before, so we could go into a big studio and sit down and look at things in ways we hadn't been able to before. I always jokingly say that Fumble is like our Exile on Main Street because we threw everything in there."

What type of guitar sounds were you looking for with Fumble?

"It's hard to describe, but we finally got the guitar sounds we wanted. They sound bigger and better. When we made Fumble, Dave and I were listening to a lot of Voivod, Van Halen, the Melvins, and Metallica, and I think that came out in the guitars. The heaviness of Fumble is partially attributed to Metallica, as in most of the tracks, I had us tune down a half step from E as Metallica did to achieve a heavier key. It’s definitely the most raucous album we ever did."

How did your tenure with the Foo Fighters inform your approach?

"Playing bigger venues and learning how that all works sonically was big. I had to learn how to do the things I did on a larger scale, which was an intense learning curve. If you're on a massive stage like that, just standing there and playing guitar is not going to cut it. So, joining the Foo Fighters was a whole different animal, you know? In that setting, thousands of people were watching you, which was just mind-blowing."

I imagine the dynamic was very different within the Foo Fighters than Scream.

"From the second I got the phone call from Dave to join, I hit the ground running. We went supporting the first two records, and we did that for two years straight. There wasn't really any writing, but we did jam during soundchecks. I had to learn this pre-existing body of work, and that was different because I wrote most of the stuff in Scream. But this was Dave's band, and I was the new guy, so it was more about not stepping on toes. I went from being in fanzines to being on the cover of Guitar World with Dave."

You're known as a Les Paul guy, but you played a Strat in the My Hero video!

"You will very rarely – if ever – see me holding a Strat, so that is weird [laughs]. I don't really remember the reasons behind it aside from maybe they wanted me to have a different guitar from Dave, who had a Les Paul there. I assume I came down to shoot the video, and they gave me whatever they had in the props department. Somebody probably bought some guitars, decided who would hold what, and handed me the Strat. That's the only thing I can think of because I didn't own a Strat. I don't think there was a single Strat in the Foo Fighters guitar arsenal."

Why has the Les Paul remained your weapon of choice?

"I saw Gibson Les Paul guitars in magazines as a kid, and they became ingrained in my DNA. That was the guitar that I thought of when I envisioned myself on stage, and it ended up being one of the first guitars that came to me. I've never really deviated from that."

What can you tell me about your Goldtop that you've had since the early '90s?

"I've had that since around '94. I believe it's a '78 Goldtop, and it's been my main workhorse. It has a really nice Bill Lawrence pickup that I've been obsessed with since I first heard it. I've changed amps over the years, but no matter what, that guitar always shines through."

I've seen photos of you playing Les Paul Studio models early on. How did you come upon the Goldtop?

"I had a white Studio model that I used for many years. But the way I got the Goldtop was Scream was on the road in Pennsylvania, and I came upon this Goldtop for like $450. I was like, 'Man, what a fucking deal,' but I always figured it was probably hot [laughs]. The guy was probably trying to get rid of what I figured was a stolen guitar, but I was like, 'Whatever,' took the deal, and thankfully, nothing ever came of it. It’s been a fantastic instrument. I could throw the thing out of a second-story window and pick it up, and it'll be in tune."

You have a couple of Epiphones that date back to the Foo Fighters days, right?

"I do have a couple. When I was with the Foo Fighters, I got a nice little deal with Epiphone after we played David Letterman. I played an Epiphone acoustic on TV, and Epiphone called me and said, 'We saw you play an Epiphone on TV – would you want some hollowbody guitars?' I told them, 'Sure,' and they sent me a few. They will never replace the Goldtop, but they’re nice for when I need to switch to something a little lighter."

How has your amp configuration changed over the years?

"It’s mostly changed because of finances. I did the first Scream record with a Fender Twin Reverb and a solid-state bass cabinet. I still can't believe I ran a Fender into a fucking solid-state bass cabinet, but that's what I had. What can I say? When you're a poor kid from Virgina, you do what you have to do. But things definitely got better with the Foo Fighters; I recall a deal with Mesa/Boogie, but I'll be honest; I don't really like Mesa/Boogie stuff."

Why's that?

"Those things are so damn expensive, and they always seemed too sizzly for me. But I was working a job, and the Mesa stuff came with it. But later, I got a nice Marshall, and an Orange, too. I've never been too crazy amp-wise; I'd rather keep it simple. I don't want to deal with a thousand knobs. But Marshall stuff always seems to have trouble when you bring it on the road, but that Fender Twin Reverb could really take a beating."

How would you describe the guitar player you are today? 

"I'm very song-oriented in my writing. I'm more into writing songs and riffs that fucking move me instead of being technically masterful and noodling all over the place. I can pull off a solo here and there, but for the most part, I think I'm a hack when it comes to guitar. There are so many people who are better than me at guitar, but I have my strong points."

And what are those strong points?

"Improvisation. When you see me on stage, for the most part, the solos that I'm coming up with are off-the-cuff. I don't like to do a song the same way twice, you know? Aside from a couple of the essential songs for us, most of what I'm doing is totally in the moment and improvising. I'll nail the important ones, but still, a lot of times, I fuck it up, but whatever [laughs]. I don't care.

"I just love to have shit blasting behind me, and to not be so fucking vain about my playing. There's so much fucking power in just turning up and striking a chord. That's more powerful than any solo."

The 1990 Gretsch White Falcon electric guitar that Dave Grohl used in the Foo Fighters' Monkey Wrench music video has sold at auction for over $53,000.

Once owned by Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear, and used extensively with the band both onstage and in the studio, the Japanese-built model – serial number 906593-39 – was the subject of a number of modifications, and eventually sold by Smear on Ebay in 2003. 

You can see the guitar – which was sold by Gardiner Houlgate – in action in the Monkey Wrench video below.

Earnie Bailey, Smear's guitar tech during his time with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, made a number of after-market mods to the instrument. 

First, he swapped out the guitar's original tailpiece with an original 1950s Gretsch Cadillac example that was found by Smear in a junk shop, then, he put a pillow inside its body in an effort to rein in feedback, while covering the guitar's F holes with black velvet. 

"I had to have a White Falcon after seeing the great Matthew Ashman use one with Bow Wow Wow in 1981," reads an accompanying note – written in 2002, and sold with the guitar – from Smear. "The guitar looked amazing but the early ones were super rare and expensive and the '70s models had all that extra crap like dampeners and stereo switches. 

"When the '90s reissues came out," he continued, "I could finally get one without worrying about banging around some overpriced museum piece on the road... or so I thought. It instantly became one of my favorites, getting special treatment and was usually the one to pull out to play in hotel rooms and show off to visiting friends.

"Earnie made modifications while on tour, eventually creating my ultimate Falcon. I played this guitar on several Foo Fighters tours and on The Colour and The Shape album. It was also used by Harlow on their Harlowland album. Enjoy!"

The Gretsch was sold with a Polaroid picture of Smear holding the guitar, and three photos of Rancid's Tim Armstrong, actress Drew Barrymore and film director David Markey, respectively, playing the guitar, each dated February 19, 1996.

Incidentally, this very White Falcon also made an appearance in Guitar World's 1997 feature with Grohl and Smear, after the latter used it during a rehearsal attended by Guitar World writer Alan di Perna.

For more on the guitar, visit Gardiner Houlgate.

The following interview with the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl and Pat Smear was originally published in the August 1997 issue of Guitar World.

In the dank half-light of a North Hollywood rehearsal room, Pat Smear strokes his chin meditatively as he selects a guitar for the night's work ahead. Hmm, should he go with his opulent Gretsch White Falcon or his el cheapo Asian SG copy? Decisions, decisions. 

Only a mind as unconventional as Smear's could hold the two instruments in equal esteem. Towering over his guitar rack in a pair of red plaid trousers that accentuate his tall, slim frame, Smear opts to go Gretsch this time.

A few paces away, Taylor Hawkins sits on the floor in front of his drum kit, shirtless and pale-skinned like some schoolboy gone savage in a scene from Lord of the Flies. The drummer, who'd been regaling his bandmates with an a cappella medley of tacky Eighties pop hits, pauses to belch resonantly. Wonder how his former bandleader, Alanis Morissette, would've enjoyed that? But it takes more than a rude noise to disrupt the guy world of the Foo Fighters. 

Over in a corner, Nate Mendel fiddles with his bass rig, with the serene, astute air of a class nerd with his pet science project.

Suddenly, Dave Grohl bursts through the door. Just off the plane from Japan, the chief Foo is still running on crazy, jet lagged energy. Tall, lanky and sporting a full goatee these days, he bounds across the room and straps on a tobacco sunburst Les Paul. In an instant, the three other musicians are all focused and charged up, like their leader. 

They launch into Everlong, a guitar-fueled, quintessential alt rock Nineties tune from the new Foo Fighters album, The Colour and the Shape. Grohl obligingly pauses to show me the chords: a series of barre shapes against an open sixth string tuned down to D.

"I have no idea what these chords are called," he declares with punky aplomb. He sure can play `em, though. A multi-faceted talent, Grohl did the drumming that propelled Nirvana to Nineties rock supremacy. But he started out on guitar at age 10. Not long after, he was playing in Washington D.C.'s thriving mid-Eighties hardcore punk scene. 

A personnel shift in his very first band, Freak Baby, led him to get behind a drum kit. He pummeled the skins for a variety of D.C. bands – Mission Impossible, Dain Bramage and Scream – before being asked out to Seattle to join Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic just in time to record Nirvana's landmark Nevermind.

But Grohl always kept his guitar handy, and eventually began writing songs on it. "When Nirvana was on tour, I'd bring a guitar with me," he says, "so in hotel rooms, late at night, I'd have something to do. I love playing the drums, but you can't really sit down at home with a snack and play the drums. So I've never been without a guitar. Eventually, I was living with a person who had an 8-track in the basement. And these songs just started coming out."

Those songs eventually formed the basis for the first Foo Fighters album. Recovering from his initial shock and grief at the death of Kurt Cobain and the end of Nirvana, Grohl went in the studio and recorded Foo Fighters almost entirely on his own. But somewhere between the tracking and the mixing of the record, the Foo Fighters went from being an imaginary band to a real one. 

Grohl didn't have to look far for a co-guitarist. Pat Smear had played with Nirvana during the band's final phase. A punk rock originator, he'd played guitar with the legendary Germs, which made him a rock and roll hero to both Cobain and Grohl.

Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith – who had played with Sunny Day Real Estate and whom Grohl knew from around the Seattle scene – became the Foo Fighters' rhythm section. Goldsmith dropped out of the band during sessions for The Colour and the Shape, leaving Grohl to finish up the drums on the record. Shortly after the disc was completed, Morrisette alumnus Taylor Hawkins was recruited as the Foo Fighters' new drummer.

"I just have so much faith in those guys," says Grohl of his bandmates. "If I come in with the most ridiculous three chord, verse/chorus/verse idea, I know they can make it into something great. Without them, this album would have sounded thinner and less interesting. That's why I'm so proud of it. Everybody threw in their two cents and it came out as this big sound."

What's your take on the current state of rock, post-grunge, late Nineties? There's no single reigning style right now, which allows all kinds of sounds to come through.

Dave Grohl: "Yeah, it's kinda nice. Hopefully, eventually, the whole brooding, Fender Jaguar grunge style will go away. It isn't gone yet. It will be soon, though. And it'll be time for some good old Les Paul, southern rock." [laughs]

The Foo Fighters have always maintained a balance of pop melodicism and harder, "grunge" elements. Is that just a natural combination of things for you, or a very carefully worked out mixture?

"We all love music, whether it's the Beatles or Queen or punk rock. I think the lure of punk rock was the energy and immediacy; the need to thrash stuff around. But at the same time, we're all suckers for a beautiful melody, you know? So it is just natural. I loved the Beatles when I was a kid, but I loved the Bad Brains too. And there were a lot of bands in the early to mid Eighties that were a perfect blend of those things. 

"Hüsker Dü had a searing guitar sound and breakneck speeds, but they'd do that as they were covering the Byrds' Eight Miles High. It was just beautiful and powerful. I think that's probably where it all comes from. It's not necessarily blueprinted or calculated. It's just the way we like to play."

Pat Smear: "Punk was the first music I played in a band. But it wasn't the first music I was into. I was into Queen, Bowie and Alice Cooper – that Seventies pop/rock/glam kind of thing."

Dave, was Kurt Cobain was a big influence on you as a songwriter?

"Kurt was definitely a big influence and inspiration. When I first moved up to Washington state, I lived with Kurt in this tiny apartment. For the longest time, we didn't have a television. We didn't have anything to do. So we'd spend these gray Olympia, Washington, afternoons just playing guitars and messing around with a 4-track, or working on harmonies. 

"Through Kurt, I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down. That's more powerful, because it's just so... almost desperate."

A sense of stark contrasts is one common element between Nirvana and the Foo Fighters. Sweet verses that give way to abrasive choruses, the whole loud/soft dynamic that set the blueprint for Nineties alternative rock – where did all that come from?

"From Kurt, Krist and I liking the Knack, Bay City Rollers, Beatles and Abba just as much as we liked Flipper and Black Flag, I suppose. The dynamics thing specifically came out of this four-month period before Nevermind was recorded, where we were rehearsing maybe five days a week for three or four hours a day, just writing songs and jams and stuff like that. And we just started experimenting with these really extreme dynamics. 

"It's not like we were the first band to do it. You listen to any Pixies record and it's all over there. Or even Black Sabbath's War Pigs – it's there: the power of the dynamic. We just sort of abused it with pop songs and got sick with it – silly with it. It was fun: feeling good in some mellow verse and then smashing your way into some big, huge, distorted chorus. I suppose it's a cheap way to make the chorus seem a lot bigger than it really is."

You joined Nirvana kind of "in progress," Dave. Kurt and Krist started it.

"Yeah, I was their seventh drummer."  

So did you really feel fully a part of where they were coming from?

"Where they were coming from, yeah. But I always felt kind of expendable. When you're the seventh drummer, it would be pretty big-headed of you to imagine yourself being the final drummer."

Was that a factor in your always writing songs on your own – why you had a musical life and identity apart from Nirvana?

"Not really. When you're in a band with somebody like Kurt, who was an amazing songwriter, you do anything you can to keep from polluting the songwriting process. I thought, 'I don't want to be the person responsible for ruining these songs.' There's a famous old joke: What was the last thing the drummer said before they kicked him out of the band? 'Hey guys, I got a new song I just wrote.' Why fix it, if it ain't busted?

"I was in awe of what was happening. I was in awe of Kurt's songs. And intimidated. I felt it was best that I keep my songs to myself." 

You didn't play them for anyone?

"Yeah. I was always really freaked out about singing and my voice. I still am, kind of. But every once in a while I'd play a tape for a friend and try to have them guess who it was. They'd be like, 'Is this the new Sloan record? Who is this?' 'No, it's me.' There are probably seven or eight people in the world that heard any of this stuff before the album came out. It was really just because I was embarrassed and shy. 

"When you play big loud drums in a rock band five days a week, hitting them as hard as you can, when it comes to something as delicate as an acoustic melody, it's a little scary. You're really putting yourself on the line."

Would you two say your approach to guitar playing is similar?

Smear: "It seems like our intentions are a lot different when we play, but in the end it comes out pretty much the same. The only way you'd be able to know isn't by our songs but when we're just fucking around in the studio. Dave can actually pull off the rock leads and stuff like that."

Grohl: "Pat's nuts. You think of Pat as being the punkest of the punk, but he taught me how to play Blackbird. [laughs] It's really hard. He's a great guitar player."

So, when you're coming up with guitar arrangements you don't really see it as a lead/rhythm thing?

Smear: "I'm all about rhythm. I'm anti-lead. I've been in bands before where I had to pay lead. I've had enough of that. Rhythm guitar players get no respect."

Grohl: "I think there's maybe only one lead on the record. I don't really know how to do leads. I think if a song doesn't need a solo, then why put one in? I've got nothing to show off, that's for sure."

Do drummers tend to be intimidated by working in a band with you?

Grohl: "Yeah, for whatever reason, I don't know. I'm so incredibly overrated as a drummer. I'm just a minimalist drummer. I am. I swear. I'm not there to do anything but propel the song."

But you do it in a way that no one else does.

"I dunno. Since Taylor's in the band, I don't even get behind the drum set `cause he makes me feel like a fool. I watch him do all this crazy stuff, then I sit down and do an AC/DC beat! He's so far out of my league, it isn't funny. Being a guitar player who's also a drummer, I understand the relationship between the two instruments. And Taylor is a drummer who's also a guitar player, so he understands it too. So there's not much I really need to explain to him. 

"People who understand song structures and riffs don't have much trouble feeling their way through a song. They can just sense when things need to come down, when things need to repeat, and when there needs to be an accent."

There's such a thing as rhythmic intelligence.

"Yeah, look at someone like J Mascis, who is an amazing drummer and a wailing guitar player too. He understands the relationship between the two. Look at Prince – same thing."

All those guys understand the rhythmic potential of the guitar.

"I wonder if James Hetfield knows how to play the drums. Because, basically, he's taking care of the percussion and the melody of Metallica's songs with his guitar."

That chunking.

"Yeah. And it's great. There's the relationship right there."

A Gretsch White Falcon that was previously owned by Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear and used by Dave Grohl in the video for the band’s 1997 single Monkey Wrench is up for sale via auction.

The classic hollowbody electric guitar was built in 1990 in Japan before Pat Smear acquired it around 1996. The Foo Fighters and former Germs guitarist quickly put it to good use in early 1997 during sessions for The Colour and the Shape, his first record with the band. It also saw extensive use on tour in the late-’90s.

Smear reportedly requested that his tech Earnie Bailey make several modifications to the guitar, most notably swapping out a Bigsby vibrato for a ‘Cadillac style’ tailpiece and incorporating feedback limiting measures, including pillow stuffing and black velvet over the f-holes.

In addition, Smear had the selector switch swapped out in favor of a rotary dial, which replaced the master volume.

The listing page states that Pat Smear sold his White Falcon as part of a larger clear-out (via eBay) in the early 2000s and the original note of provenance from the guitarist is included in the sale. 

“I had to have a White Falcon after seeing the great Matthew Ashman use one with Bow Wow Wow in 1981,” reads Smear’s note. 

“The guitar looked amazing but the early ones were super rare and expensive and the '70s models had all that extra crap like dampeners and stereo switches. When the '90s reissues came out I could finally get one without worrying about banging around some overpriced museum piece on the road... or so I thought. 

“It instantly became one of my favourites, getting special treatment (note the 'Stays on the bus' sticker on the case) and was usually the one to pull out to play in hotel rooms and show off to visiting friends. 

“Earnie made modifications while on tour, eventually creating my ultimate Falcon (as seen in the Monkey Wrench video). I played this guitar on several Foo Fighters tours and on The Colour and The Shape album. It was also used by Harlow on their Harlow Land album.” 

The note is then signed: “Enjoy! Pat Smear, 2002”. 

The instrument is up for sale via UK auction house Gardiner Houlgate and carries an estimate of £15,000-30,000 (approx. $12,495-25,360). Bidding is now open with the auction set to end on September 8. 

For more information, head to Guitar Auctions at Gardiner Houlgate.

Foo Fighters rhythm guitarist Pat Smear joined NHC – the new band formed of Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins, and Jane's Addiction guitarist and bassist Dave Navarro and Chris Chaney – during their show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood last night (November 23).

New fan footage shows the band opening their set with I Know a Place – an original which is yet to receive an official studio release – before offering up renditions of their four singles to date – Feed the Cruel, Better Move On, Devil That You Know and Lazy Eyes – as well as a host of other new originals, closing with a cover of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.

The band teased Smear's addition to their lineup for the Troubadour show in a series of Instagram posts earlier this week, which show Hawkins, Navarro, Chaney and Smear practicing at the band's rehearsal space – which is decorated to the nines with electric guitars, framed band photos and other musical memorabilia.

While Pat Smear joined NHC at the Troubadour – and at their October 2 show at Ohana Festival's Encore weekend at Dana Point, California – Rolling Stone report that he's already told the band a “soft no” to taking part in any future tours.

Hawkins, Navarro and Chaney announced the formation of NHC back in September, kicking things off with two debut singles: Feed the Cruel and Better Move On. The tracks showcased the trio's versatility from the off, the former being the more high-octane of the pair and the latter dabbling in more down-tempo arrangements.

The band doubled down with two new tracks earlier this month – Devil That You Know and Lazy Eyes – a cathartic, wah-laced ballad and a more intense, proggy number, respectively.

Hawkins and Navarro first met at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1995, where Alanis Morissette and the Red Hot Chili Peppers – the musos' respective gigs at the time – both performed. The impetus to start NHC arrived when the trio – joined by Slipknot's Corey Taylor – delivered a rendition of Man in the Box during Alice in Chains' MoPOP Founders Award virtual celebration last year.

The group – minus Corey Taylor – reportedly gathered at Hawkins' house to jam prior to the performance, during which they began to work on new original material based on some of Hawkins' pre-recorded demos. Though Navarro says: “What we ended up with sounds nothing like those demos.”

Outside the realm of NHC and Jane's Addiction, Dave Navarro has been active on social media as of late. Earlier this month, the guitarist got in touch with a YouTube guitar teacher to correct his lesson of Jane's Addiction's Been Caught Stealing, telling Matt from Let's Play All: “It's actually easier than you're doing it.”

Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett has been posting some pedalboard snaps taken at the band’s recent LA Forum show (yep, the one where they jammed with Nandi Bushell).

Among the various shots of his guitar racks and some stunning line-ups of sizeable Vox and Friedman guitar amps, are three pics of the band’s very different pedalboards.

Dave Grohl’s 2021 pedalboard

As a busy frontman and arena rock tutor, it’s clear Dave Grohl likes to keep things simple. Despite the blurry shot, it’s easy to see that he’s restricting his ‘board to a couple of Boss DD-3s (one ear-marked for the song Aurora), an MXR Phase 90 and an Xotic FX SP compressor, alongside his amp switching.

Pat Smear’s 2021 pedalboard

Smear’s no-nonsense punk roots (as a founding member of the Germs) shine through on his board. He keep it pretty basic, too, with an EHX Neo Clone Chorus pedal, a (tape-covered) MXR Carbon Copy and a Boss BF-3 Flanger. Finally, there’s a bit of tech thrown in, in the form of the RJM LT Mastermind midi switcher. 

Chris Shiflett’s 2021 pedalboard

You might have guessed it, but the prize for fanciest Foos board goes to dedicated gear-nut Chris Shiflett, whose mighty board features an inspiring blend of hard-to-find stompboxes and off-the-peg gear, all routed into custom remote-switching controls at the front.

Going left to right, starting at the top we can spot an Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, JHS Muffuletta Fuzz, MXR M117R Flanger, EVH Phase 90, Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb, JHS VCR (Volume, Chorus and Reverb), Boss CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus, Strymon TimeLine delay x2 (one for his Friedman amp, one for his Vox AC30), a Lehle Little Dual II switcher (for moving between amps), a TC Electronic PolyTune, Klon KTR Professional overdrive pedal, plus Xotic Effects EP Booster, a Boss FS-5L footswitch, an Xotic SP Compressor and Xotic XW-1 wah pedals.

You can check out the full range of shots over on Chris Shiflett’s Facebook page.

For more information on the band’s upcoming tour dates, head to the Foo Fighters site.

Foo Fighters electric guitar player Pat Smear recently told Howard Stern that he and his former Nirvana band mates, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, still sometimes get together in private to run through some of their old band’s tunes.

Now, in another new interview with Stern, Grohl has revealed that the trio not only jam together on old material, but have also recorded some “really cool” new music.

“Krist Novoselic is a pilot, he flies his own plane,” Grohl said. “He lives up in the Pacific Northwest and whenever he comes down to Los Angeles, we always love to see each other and we’ll have dinner.

“Last time he was here I made dinner for us and we hung out. Pat‘s always around and the three of us, you know we like to just, we like to be together. We like to see each other and if there are instruments around or a studio that’s available, we’ll just get together and kind of jam, you know?

He continued, “We don’t, like, run through a big old Nirvana setlist but we do like to fool around and sometimes as we’re fooling around, songs happen. And you know if we’re in a studio we’ll record them. So we’ve recorded some stuff that’s really cool. But we’ve never done anything with it… it’s more just like friends, jamming around, it doesn’t really seem like any sort of like big official reunion.”

As for whether he handles vocals on the jams, Grohl said, “Well, no I’m just playing the drums. We don’t have a singer. So, it’s like, we kind of record these instrumentals and just mess around. It’s very casual. There’s no pressure on us to do something that the world will have to hear.

“It’s more really just for fun, and a lot of it’s really cool. It reminds you that when the three of us get together in a room and start playing, it sounds like it did. It sounds like it used to. When we put the three of us in a room and it makes that noise, it still does.”

“It was the Foo Fighters’ 25th anniversary, so it was going to be a big year,” Dave Grohl says. “We thought, it’d be great to make an album, our 10th studio album, and I started planning around that – ‘Let’s circle the planet! 

“Let’s release this documentary thing that we’ve made! Let’s do these van tours! We’ll play the same cities 25 years to the date that we did on our first-ever tour… and in the same van we did the tour in!’ Just all this shit, you know? Basically coming up with this world-domination-celebration thing.” 

Spoiler alert: 2020 did not work out the way anyone – Grohl and the Foo Fighters included – had planned. Which is why the singer and guitarist, rather than telling this story to Guitar World from the back of a beat-up van in some far-flung locale (that van tour, scheduled to begin last April, was cancelled as the world went into COVID-19 shutdown) is, like everyone else, at home, talking about his aborted world domination plot over – what else? – Zoom.  

And when our narrative is enriched with brand new anecdotes courtesy of Dave’s Foo Fighters co-guitarist, Chris Shiflett? That interview takes place over Zoom as well, with Shiflett safely confined in his home.

The final piece of the Foos guitar triumvirate, Pat Smear, meanwhile, is clearly not taking any chances. He speaks with GW via a crackly cellphone connection from the east coast of Canada, where he’s holed up, he reports, “in the snow in a little cabin deep in the woods, with no mail delivery or garbage pickup.”  

“He’s turned into a Canadian frontiersman,” Shiflett says with a laugh. 2020, to say the least, was weird. But while the Foos didn’t get to spend the year circling the planet delighting fans, they did manage to get some real work done. 

For starters, Grohl finished his documentary, What Drives Us, which finds him exploring the psychology behind why musicians drop everything to spend their lives traveling in, yes, a van, to bring their music to people. And the Foo Fighters – which is rounded out by drummer Taylor Hawkins, bassist Nate Mendel and keyboardist Rami Jaffee – recorded that celebratory 10th studio album. 

It’s called Medicine at Midnight, and it’s a killer. It’s also unlike anything you’ve heard from the band before. Sure, there are all the Foos trademarks – indelible riff-rockers (Cloudspotter, Holding Poison), tightly coiled ragers (No Son of Mine), soaring ballads (Waiting on a War) and hooks (Making a Fire) upon hooks (Medicine at Midnight) upon hooks (Love Dies Young). 

But there’s also something else going on: an adherence to groove and atmosphere – and a very particular sort of early-'80s-pop-rock-new-wave-dance groove and atmosphere – that lays out a fresh sonic and stylistic launching pad for these songs.

You hear it in the slinky, heavily syncopated rhythms of the album’s first single, Shame Shame, and you hear it even more in the bubbly, synthy riffs that power Love Dies Young. 

And you hear it maybe the most in the sultry, heated funk of the title track, which nods heavily to David Bowie’s 1983 pop-exotica classic Let’s Dance in sound and style – and even the guitar solo, which finds Shiflett paying tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan’s bluesy work in the Bowie original. 

“I’m sort of aping Albert King through the lens of Stevie Ray,” Shiflett says of his lead work on Medicine at Midnight. “I even said to our producer, Greg Kurstin, ‘We might want to mix these licks up a bit, because it’s really a homage.” 

He laughs. “But, hey, that’s rock ‘n’ roll!” Shiflett approached the Medicine at Midnight solo not only from a unique perspective playing-wise, but also in his choice of guitar. 

“The Foo Fighters are generally a humbucker kind of group,” he says. “I remember a few years ago I showed up at something we were doing with a Strat and Dave looked at me and said, ‘Now there’s something I never thought I’d see in my band!’ 

“Because we don’t really do the single-coil thing. But for Medicine at Midnight’ that’s where we wanted to go. So I grabbed one of my Strats and worked out the solo stuff and it was really fun. And I love that about our band – that we still have these moments of getting to jump into things we’ve never tried before.” 

Grohl lays it out in more general terms. “After 25 years, and now we’re making our 10th record, I wanted to be sure we didn’t make Learn to Fly again. Or Best of You again. Or My Hero again. We’ve done those already. If we want to be a band for another 25 years, then we have to be able to find something new. So the greatest reference I had for this record was everything we’ve done in the past. And it was, ‘Let’s not do that.’” 

Or, as Smear puts it, “We just said, ‘Fuck it, let’s get weird on this one.’” 

That weirdness began, in a way, much like past Foo Fighters records have begun – although that process is somewhat weird in and of itself. After coming off a 16-month world tour in support of their 2017 album, Concrete and Gold, the idea was, as it often is with the Foo Fighters, to take a break. 

“We kind of work this cycle where we’ll go into the studio and make a record, then we run around playing clubs and doing promo for a couple of months, and then we release the record and tour for a year and a half,” Grohl says. “By the time we’re finished with that cycle, we’re all exhausted and we promise ourselves we’ll never put each other through that fucking hell ever again.”

He laughs. “I say it every fucking time. You should ask my wife. She’s like, ‘I hear it every time – I’m exhausted. I’m never doing this again. This is the last record, blah, blah, blah.’”

“We always claim we’re going to take this break and then… we miss it,” Smear says. “We miss each other, we miss making music together.”

“So within two and a half weeks, I’m demoing shit and sending it to the band,” Grohl continues. Smear concurs. “It’s never more than a few months after we’re home that we’ll get a group text from Dave saying, ‘Hey, I’ve been writing songs…’ Then it’s on.”

The Foos began recording Medicine at Midnight before the pandemic hit. But whereas in the past they’ve tracked at various facilities, including the band’s own Studio 606 and, for Concrete and Gold, EastWest, located in the heart of Hollywood, this time they took a different approach, taking up residence in a 1940s-era home in Encino, California, not far from Grohl’s own house. 

“The weird thing is, I actually lived in that house 10 years ago,” Grohl says. “I was going through a remodel at the time and needed a place close by to move into while my house was completely bulldozed. This place looks kind of like an old mansion, with these big iron gates out front. 

“It sounds beautiful, but really it’s a dilapidated, rundown, spooky old house in the middle of Encino. Amazing neighborhood, though – you can jump some fences and go be in Slash’s yard, or walk six houses up and there’s Steve Vai’s place. Within, like, 75 yards, there’s all this guitar-hero wizardry. It’s insane.”

As for how the non-traditional environment affected the recording process, Shiflett says, “it was a really different vibe than Concrete and Gold. That record was made at a beautiful, classic studio with multiple rooms, so you have that thing where, you know, one day you walk in and Lady Gaga is sitting on the couch in the lounge or whatever. 

“But this time, because you’re in a house, you remove all the sort of Hollywood entertainment elements of it. Which was great. You’d show up in the morning and, depending on where we were in the recording process, you might be working or you might just be hanging out in the kitchen, drinking coffee and shooting the shit. It was real laid back.” 

But if the band members themselves were relaxed, the house itself had a fair amount of activity happening. “I started demoing things there by myself around June of 2019, and it felt creepy,” Grohl says. “But I thought, well, you can creep yourself out if you’re alone in an old house at night recording rock songs. 

“But then as we moved in, weird little things would happen here and there, whether it was guitars being detuned, settings moving around on the board or shit happening in the Pro Tools session that wasn’t supposed to happen.” 

“It was a bit of an oddball house,” Shiflett acknowledges. “It has that look that’s sort of like it’s being reclaimed by the mountainside, and everything’s cracked and the pool is nasty and there’s vines everywhere. It had a vibe.”

“Beyond that, there was this feeling that you were either being followed or being watched all the time,” Grohl goes on. “And when more than one person is feeling that way but they don’t tell each other, and then all of a sudden everyone starts confessing, ‘Oh, this room in the house? This room is fucked up.’ Or, ‘That stairway? That stairway’s fucked up.’ When it all starts coming out you’re just like, ‘Oh my God…’”

Even Smear, who asserts that he “doesn’t really believe in magic and that kind of stuff,” admits, when pressed, that “there was a lot of odd and creepy goings-on happening.”

“So we recorded nine songs and got the fuck outta there!” Grohl says with a laugh. In fact, at just nine songs and 37 minutes, Medicine at Midnight is the Foo Fighters’ most concise full-length to date. But not because they were trying to flee from supernatural forces. 

Rather, Grohl says, “we intended on making a record that was short and sweet, because it’s inspired by a certain type of album that we all loved when we were young. Like an '80s Bowie record – tight, full of grooves, lots of melodies, that’s it. Let’s go.” 

While the band ultimately traveled a very specific stylistic road, that intention wasn’t set in stone right from the beginning. “There were a few things that got recorded that didn’t see the light of day,” Shiflett confirms. 

“It was a bunch of songs and they were all great and they were all very ‘Foo Fighters,’” Smear says. But then, he continues, “we did Shame Shame, and that just changed the direction of the whole process.” 

Indeed, Shame Shame, built on a stark, repeating five-note figure that is adorned with handclaps, keyboard accents and other sonic ephemera, is among the biggest stylistic departures on Medicine at Midnight, and maybe even within the entire Foo Fighters catalog. 

“It was the first left turn,” Grohl says. “And it’s such a simple riff. When I did the demo I had that rhythm, and then I overdubbed this hand-clapping thing over it. Then we put the drums in a stairway, which sounded so fucking killer. Did more overdubs. 

”Now all of a sudden it was a groove that we had never done before. And not only that, it had this tone and dynamic that we had never really gotten into. That really inspired us to start loosening the reins and just let shit fucking happen.” 

This change in attitude and approach resulted in songs such as the closing track, Love Dies Young, which, according to Grohl, started out as a “strummy sort of song we’ve done a million times.” But that’s not where it wound up. 

“Taylor [Hawkins] was like, ‘What drum beat should we do? How about a 16th-note thing?’” Grohl recalls. “And I went, ‘Fuck that! What about an Abba side-high-hat-disco thing? We’ve never messed with that before!’ And then the guitar riff turned into a Keep Yourself Alive type of thing.” 

Of course, one man’s Queen is another man’s… um, Survivor? “The galloping rhythm part that I did in that song, it’s like Eye of the Tiger, ” Shiflett says, bringing the musical references back around to the early Eighties. “It was almost like a joke. But we listened back to it and we were like, ‘Hmm… that actually sounds pretty good!’” 

That wasn’t the only Eighties guitar reference Shiflett brought to the song. “I was also hearing General Public,” he says. “You remember the guitar sound in Tenderness? That twang? Well, I went for that same sort of Gretsch-y thing.” 

“Each instrument we put on, we were just sitting on the couch laughing because we’re doing the things we’re not supposed to do,” Grohl says. “We’re not supposed to do the galloping flange guitar! We’re not supposed to do the Abba beat! But we’re just like, ‘Fuck, load it up, man!’ And then at the end of the day, we had something we’d never done before.”

But no matter where a song ultimately ended up, for Grohl it generally always started in the same place – with the rhythm. “I basically wrote all of these songs on an acoustic guitar,” he says. “As a drummer, when you’re jamming with someone, you watch their hand and the accent of the way they strum their guitar.

“And what I do is I base the groove on the way a person strums a guitar – if the ‘up’ is harder than the ‘down,’ if the ‘down’ is harder than the ‘up,’ if there’s focus on the lower strings… I don’t read music so I don’t know the proper terms for any of this shit, but I watch someone’s feel on the guitar and I base what I’m doing on the drums from that.

“So if I’m sitting on the couch doing this whole thing by myself,” he continues, “I’m already clicking my teeth when I’m playing and I know, ‘Okay, here’s the groove of the song and here’s the accent. And this is the feel.’ So a lot of the songs began with a specific feel more than a specific riff. It’d start with a kind of rhythmic foundation and then I’d go from there.”

 As for that other key component of the Foo Fighters sound – the melody? “To me, that’s the most important part of a song,” Grohl says. “And that comes from growing up with Beatles records and sitting down with a chord book, trying to understand why those harmonies do what they do and why the melody moves the way it does and why the composition and arrangement is like this. 

“That’s the Rubik’s Cube, right? Screaming bloody murder and playing as many notes as you can, that’s fun. But to me, the complicated puzzle of braiding those things together in a way that seems simple is the greatest challenge. It’s like, ‘Okay, great, I’ve got a groove – that’s cool. I’ve got riffs – that’s cool. But none of it’s going to work unless there’s a fucking melody.’ And then you realize nobody’s going to care about any of it unless you’ve got a lyric. So now you add your words. It’s like baking a cake backwards.”

To continue a metaphor, that cake also requires a few additional ingredients – chief among them, gear. And on Medicine at Midnight, the guys used a lot of gear. “As is usually the case with making a Foo Fighters record, everybody brings in their special stuff,” Shiflett says. “So we had a room full of our favorite guitars and everybody’s favorite amps.” 

In Shiflett’s case, that meant several Master Built versions of his signature Fender Telecaster Deluxe, as well as various Strats and Teles and a ’57 Les Paul Gold Top with “old PAFs.” Amplifiers, he says, included a vintage tweed Fender Champ and Vibrolux, the latter loaded with a Celestion Greenback speaker, as well as a recent hand-wired Vox AC15 that he calls his “magic, go-to” amp. 

“And then one of our crew dudes brought some old Marshalls, an old Park head,” Shiflett adds. “And there was also some really weird stuff that I wasn’t even familiar with, like a kooky, regional amp that was made for harmonica players.

“I’d be lying if I tried to say what amp went on what song, because you’re just kind of putting stuff together and trying different sounds and trying to add to things that are on the track already,” he continues. “A big part of it is just finding something that sits where it needs to sit. And that’s going to be through combinations of different guitars, different amps, different pedals. Like, I remember we used Greg’s old space echo a lot, which I loved. It was like instant Clash when you plugged that in.”

Adds Grohl, “There was a bedroom full of these things and it just came down to us deciding where we wanted to go sonically. And then we would blend different amps together – my guitar tech, Ali, brought in a lot of cool shit that we had over at [Studio] 606.

“As for guitars, for the most part I relied on my Trinis [his Gibson Trini Lopez models] – I had my number one, which is an old red one, and then a Pelham Blue one. I prefer Trinis because I feel they’re more dynamic than most guitars. 

“And a lot of it has to do with that tailpiece that almost rings like a snare – it gives the guitar a percussive element that, depending on what you do with your hands, you can bring it up and down almost as if it were a drum.” 

He continues, “But, you know, I also had an old ’73 Tele that I was using. Because it’s all just a process – ‘How do you hear the sound? What do you think it should be?’ And you say, ‘I think I need something that cuts, and has a little top end to it.’ Okay, cool. My tech runs off, he comes back, puts the Tele in my lap and we’re off.” 

As for Smear? “I tended to just play whatever guitar I felt like playing that day,” he says simply. “Pat collects guitars – don’t be fooled!” Grohl says with a laugh. “That dude has hundreds of fucking guitars!” 

Indeed, Smear acknowledges that he’s “more of a guitar guy than I am an amp guy, so I kind of don’t really pay attention too much to amps. I’ll say, ‘Oh, I like the way this guitar sounds with that amp. By the way… what was that amp?’”

As far as his guitars on Medicine at Midnight, Smear will at least acknowledge that there was a “wobbly” Gibson SG in the mix. “You know how SGs can have a tendency to be very wobbly?” he asks. “Well, I have this one SG that’s particularly wobbly, and I put light strings on so it would be extra, super-wobbly.

“I remember putting that on a couple of things because I wanted that warble. But other than that, it was just, ‘I feel like using this here.’ Or somebody would say, ‘Hey, play something with P-90s there.’ We’re not that organized, it’s just kind of, ‘That’s right there. Let’s use it.’”

At the end of the day, all three guitarists affirm it’s all about just getting a good sound and then going for it.

“Nobody’s a real technical diva in this band,” Grohl says. “To this day, we’re perfectly comfortable just grabbing a bunch of combos and putting them in the back of a truck and taking them to a pizza place and plugging them in and playing. We still operate on the level of, like, a weekend fucking keg party band.” 

That said, in 2020 there were, of course, no weekend keg parties – or, for that matter, 50,000-fan-strong stadium rock spectacles – to be had. Which certainly put a dent in the Foo Fighters’ plans as far as releasing and touring behind what Smear characterizes as a “happy, fun party record.” 

Says Grohl, “As time went by, I wondered not only when, but how we would release the album, knowing that a big part of the Foo Fighters world, the touring and the shows, was taken away.” And in fact, Medicine at Midnight was delayed from its original release date, which was scheduled earlier in 2020. 

“Everything ground to a halt,” Shiflett says, “and plans kept getting pushed further and further back. But then at a certain point I remember Dave just kind of putting his foot down and saying, ‘No, we have to get this record out and start doing stuff.’” 

“I was like, ‘Okay… I guess we’re just going to release a new record,’” Grohl says. “Because it became clear that there was no use waiting for things to go back to normal. It just wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.” 

Interestingly, after an extended period apart (“I went seven months without seeing Taylor Hawkins – that has just never happened in 20-whatever years!” Grohl says with mock outrage), when the band got back together, “we were really learning the new songs for the first time,” Shiflett says. “Because we didn’t do any pre-production or anything going into the record. But it was cool to come back to it with fresh ears and be like, ‘It still sounds really good!’” 

That said, adds Smear, “From the first rehearsals for the livestream show [in November the Foo Fighters performed a benefit concert, sans audience, from the Roxy Theatre in Hollywood], it was immediately ‘home.’ And I’ll tell you, even the livestream – which, before we did it, it seemed like, ‘Oh, this is so weird, we’re gonna play a concert for roadies and cameramen?’ – I can’t tell you what a fun show it was. I don’t remember the last time I had that much fun playing!”

Despite how much they enjoyed jumping around on a stage for a few cameramen and roadies, the Foos are steadfast in their determination to eventually bring Medicine at Midnight’s considerable grooves to life onstage, in front of thousands of sweaty, dancing fans. 

“As soon as we get the green light, we’ll hit it,” Shiflett says. Until then? Well, the idea of unleashing a “party” record during a pandemic maybe isn’t as incongruous as it might sound. 

“To be honest, one of the things that really inspired me was this drum battle that I was having with this 10-year-old girl in England [Grohl and the 10-year-old, Nandi Bushell, struck up a competitive friendship that went viral on social media],” he says. 

“What I realized during this funny exchange, which we were posting online, was that it was making people happy in a time when you open up your computer and you’re just waiting for the bad news. Or you pick up your phone and someone’s texting you and you’re just waiting for the bad news. 

“But this thing that was happening with Nandi served one purpose, which was to bring people joy and happiness at a time when there’s a great shortage of joy and happiness. And at some point I thought, okay, well, isn’t that what music is supposed to do? So what are we waiting for? We wrote this music for people to hear – they should hear it if they want to.”

Grohl laughs. “And sure, when we made it I imagined a stadium full of people bouncing around and dancing their asses off to it. Now maybe it’s one person in their living room with a bottle of Crown Royal on a fucking Thursday night. So what? It’s time!”

We’ve seen Foo Fighters front man Dave Grohl and electric guitar player Pat Smear reunite with their former Nirvana band mate, bassist Krist Novoselic, onstage several times.

Now, in a new interview with Howard Stern, Smear revealed that the three musicians sometimes get together in private to run through some Nirvana tunes as well.

Foo Fighters stopped Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show on Thursday (February 11) to promote their recently released 10th studio album, Medicine at Midnight.

Asked by Stern if he ever missed playing with Nirvana, Smear, who joined in 1993 for the In Utero tour, replied, “Every once in a while, me and Krist and Dave get together and we do play as if we’re Nirvana. So I don’t have to miss it – we do it. If we’re in the same town together, or whatever, we’ll get together and jam.”

Smear also added that the most recent get-together took place at the house where the Foo Fighters tracked Medicine at Midnight. Chimed in Grohl, “We actually recorded some stuff.”

Outside of the occasional private jam session, Grohl and Smear acknowledged that it often hurts too much to look back on Nirvana and revisit the music. However, Grohl revealed that he had recently gone on a drive with his daughter, and was surprised that she knew all the words to Come As You Are when it came on the radio.

“I never played that record,” Grohl said. “We don’t talk about Nirvana and stuff, and she’s singing every word of the song. That, to me, that feels good.”

The Foo Fighters also performed a three-song set during their Stern appearance, including a cover of Mountain’s Mississippi Queen, which they played in tribute to Leslie West, who passed away at the age of 75 in December. You can check it out above. 

During their eighth performance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, Foo Fighters decided to change things up a bit.

Ostensibly there to promote their new album, Concrete and Gold, the band kept things pretty normal with their first performance of the night, a blistering rendition of the Concrete and Gold single, "The Sky is a Neighborhood."

At first, it seemed as though they would keep things simple for their second performance as well, as it began with Grohl alone on stage performing the band's 1997 hit "Everlong." Grohl ditched the act though, as soon as his bandmates suddenly joined him onstage.

All sporting their ugliest Christmas sweaters, the band rocked through a couple of Christmas classics, among them "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" and "Linus and Lucy."

You can watch the raucous performance above.

Tuesday night—during their performance at the Matthew Knight Arena in Eugene, Oregon—Foo Fighters welcomed a very special guest onstage; former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic.

Together with former Nirvana (and current Foo Fighters) members Dave Grohl and Pat Smear, the appearance constituted a mini-reunion of Nirvana's three surviving original members.

After an introduction from Grohl, the group launched into "Big Me," a single from Foo Fighters' self-titled, 1995 debut album. You can watch fan-filmed footage of the performance above and below.

"I just feel like there’s a bit more of a relaxed confidence that comes with age," Grohl told Guitar World in September about the Foo Fighters' evolution over the decades. "I mean, I never thought that I’d be doing this past 30 years old. And that was a long fucking time ago! But when I walk backstage now and see the fresh faces of all the new bands, and I’m the guy with fucking grey hair in my beard, I feel kinda proud. Proud that we’re still here."

The Foo Fighters—who we profiled in the December issue of Guitar World—have announced a 2018 North American tour in support of their new, chart-topping album, Concrete and Gold.

The tour will contain two legs, a Southern leg in the spring—running from mid-April through early May—and a Northeastern/Midwestern swing in the summer—taking place throughout the month of July. The second leg of the tour includes a two-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden, two nights at Boston's Fenway Park, and a show at Chicago's Wrigley Field.

You can check out the full itinerary below.

Speaking to Guitar World about touring, Grohl said "It’s weird when you come home from that much touring (the band's lengthy 'Sonic Highways' tour, during which Grohl broke his leg during a performance in Sweden) and that much traveling and that much performing."

"You’re dropped silent onto your back porch with this big question mark, like, ‘Okay, who am I? What am I doing here?’ It’s strange. It can turn into that Apocalypse Now scene with the mirror and the bloody hand if you’re not careful, you know?”

Concrete And Gold North American Tour 2018

• Apr. 18 - Austin, TX - Austin360 Amphitheater
• Apr. 19 - The Woodlands, TX (Houston) - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
• Apr. 21 - Dallas, TX - Starplex Pavilion
• Apr. 22 - Bossier City, LA - CenturyLink Center
• Apr. 25 - Tampa, FL - MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
• Apr. 26 - West Palm Beach, FL– Coral Sky Amphitheatre
• Apr. 28 - Atlanta, GA - Georgia State Stadium
• Apr. 29 - Jacksonville, FL - Welcome to Rockville
• May 01 - Lexington, KY —Rupp Arena
• May 03 - Memphis, TN - Fed Ex Forum
• Jul. 07 - Philadelphia, PA - BB&T Pavilion
• Jul. 12 - Toronto, ON - Rogers Centre
• Jul. 14 - Wantagh, NY - Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
• Jul. 16 & 17 - New York, NY - Madison Square Garden
• Jul. 19 - Pittsburgh, PA - PPG Paints Arena
• Jul. 21 & 22 - Boston, MA - Fenway Park
• Jul. 25 - Cuyahoga Falls, OH (Cleveland) - Blossom Music Center
• Jul. 26 - Noblesville, IN (Indianapolis) - Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center
• Jul. 29 - Chicago, IL - Wrigley Field

It’s just after nine a.m. in Los Angeles when Guitar World catches up with Dave Grohl, who has already been moving at full speed for hours. “Dude, lemme tell you,” he says with mock exasperation. “My morning starts…at night. Like, it’s already the afternoon for me!”

Grohl’s get-up-and-go attitude likely can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that he lives in a house crammed full with a wife and three daughters—“I usually wake up around 4:30 or something like that,” he reports, “and I get a good hour, hour-and-a-half to myself before my house explodes into a tornado of activity.”

But it’s also just the 48-year-old’s naturally energized demeanor.

To that end, the Foo Fighters—whose last album, 2014’s Sonic Highways, was a transcontinental endeavor that was paired with an eight-part HBO docuseries—recently finished up work on their ninth full-length, Concrete and Gold, and just returned from a slew of overseas shows where they headlined arenas, stadiums and festivals from Reykjavik to Roskilde.

Furthermore, they’re about to embark on a U.S. tour that kicks off in San Bernardino in grand fashion with Cal Jam 17, a 12-hour “rock superfest” that is Grohl’s reimagining of the legendary 1974 festival of the same name.

In place of the original’s lineup of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and the Eagles, Grohl has put together a bill that includes, among others, Queens of the Stone Age, Cage the Elephant, Royal Blood and, of course, his own band.

After that, the Foo Fighters will continue on, crisscrossing the globe on their own full-scale headlining tour over the course of the next year or two.

Needless to say, this would constitute a pretty full plate of activity for any band—much less one, that, for all intents and purposes, is supposed to be on a break.

“I know, right?” Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett says about the November 2015 announcement wherein Grohl, in an open letter to fans, opined that he and his bandmates “could use a nice wander through the woods right about now,” hinting at a hiatus that was later confirmed by various members. “Like, what the fuck happened?” Shiflett asks. “I was on vacation.”

He laughs, then continues. “But the truth is, I never really put too much faith in the whole ‘hiatus’ thing, because, you know, in this band it’s usually shorter than is stated.

But we wrapped up touring for the last record, with Dave with his leg broken and everything [in 2015, Grohl fell off a stage during a performance in Gothenburg, Sweden, resulting in his finishing the tour with his leg in a cast, and singing and playing while seated in a self-designed throne], and it was a little before Thanksgiving 2015. And at that time Dave was talking about wanting to take two years off. That was sort of the stated goal. “Which,” he points out, “I never really believed…”

As it turns out, Shiflett had good reason to doubt Grohl’s intentions. According to Pat Smear, the former Germs and Nirvana guitarist who comprises the final third of the Foos' three-ax attack, “The last time we were going on a long break, Dave started making [the 2013 documentary film] Sound City. And we were like, ‘What about us, man? We wanna do it too!” So we ended up making that album [Sound City: Real to Reel] and touring for that. That’s how Foo Fighters breaks go.”

That said, the band members, who also include bassist Nate Mendel, drummer Taylor Hawkins and keyboardist Rami Jaffee, did get a bit of time off. They spent the holidays and early part of 2016 at home, and Hawkins and Shiflett even managed to squeeze out solo albums (KOTA and West Coast Town, respectively). But soon enough, Grohl came calling. “The beginning of the summer of 2016 was the first sort of text from Dave implying things were gonna pick back up soon,” Shiflett recalls.

In Grohl’s defense, initially he didn’t know how soon “soon” would be.

“At the end of the last tour [for Sonic Highways] everyone was completely exhausted—mentally, physically, emotionally,” he explains.

“We were like a rag that got squeezed dry. It was time to stop, and we knew it. We finished the tour, I still wasn’t walking 100 percent yet after breaking my leg, we had recorded the Saint Cecilia EP just as kind of a thank-you to the fans…and then we got home. And it’s weird when you come home from that much touring and that much traveling and that much performing. You’re dropped silent onto your back porch with this big question mark, like, ‘Okay, who am I? What am I doing here?’ It’s strange. It can turn into that Apocalypse Now scene with the mirror and the bloody hand if you’re not careful, you know?”

Indeed, Grohl soon began to get restless. “About once a month I would walk up into my home studio and look at the guitar and look at the drum set and then turn off the lights and walk out,” he recounts.

“And then a month later I’d look at the guitar, look at the drum set, maybe sit down in front of the drums for 15 minutes, and then turn out the light and walk out. A month after that, I’d started setting up microphones. Six months went by, and I just hit this vein where riffs and melodies started coming out. So I would record demos by myself and then send them to the guys and say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Is this cool?’ And after maybe 15 or 16 of them I realized that, if we wanted to, we could walk into the studio and make the record.”

Initially, the band reconvened at keyboardist Jaffee’s studio to work on music, but it wasn’t until they paired up with producer Greg Kurstin and entered East-West Studios in Hollywood that Concrete and Gold really took shape. The Foos have worked with a variety of producers over the years, including Gil Norton (Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen) and Butch Vig, whose relationship with Grohl extends back to Nirvana’s Nevermind.

But they’ve never worked with someone like Kurstin, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who, in addition to forming one half of the indiepop duo The Bird and the Bee, has crafted studio productions for the likes of Adele and Sia, among others.

It was an unlikely pairing, to be sure—a fact that wasn’t lost on Grohl’s bandmates. “One day, Dave said, ‘Hey, I invited Greg down to come see what we do,’ ” Smear recalls. As for whether Smear was familiar with Kurstin’s résumé? “Yeah, Dave probably mentioned it before he came down,” he says, then laughs. “Which was confusing.”

But, Smear continues, “then Greg came to the studio and I realized, Oh, you’re like us! You were some punk rock kid who played in weirdo bands, and somewhere along the line you happened to do that thing that now everyone knows you for. So Greg may have veered off into other directions like jazz and pop and stuff, but I got it. And we immediately got along.”

For Grohl, there was intentionality in pursuing Kurstin, who has a particular talent for crafting lush—and often left-of-center—harmonies, melodies and instrumental arrangements. “I think we all knew from the way Dave was talking even in the early stages that, sonically, musically, he wanted to do something different this time,” Shiflett says.

“I don’t know if it was super clear what that ultimately was going to mean, but certainly a very big part of that would be his decision to bring in Greg Kurstin. Because we had a guy in the studio producing us who brought something very different from what is normally a Foo Fighters record. And I think that, through Greg, Dave was able to realize things…there are things on this record that Dave has talked about wanting to do for a long time. We just never did ’em. But Greg was able to facilitate some of that stuff.”

Explains Grohl, “Greg and I, we’d hung out for years, but I didn’t imagine that he would ever make a Foo Fighters record. At the same time, I always imagined, what if he did? I knew that he would be able to stretch us in those directions—melodically and sonically, and also in terms of production and composition—farther than we’ve ever gone. Because he’s a fucking genius. And I do not say that lightly. I’ve met a lot of brilliant musicians, and Greg Kurstin, without a doubt, is the most brilliant musician I’ve ever met in my entire life. And I knew that we were about to make an album that was gonna push out in a direction we’ve always wanted to go, but never fully explored.”

The result is an album that, at its core, at least, still sounds like a Foo Fighters album, chock full of explosive, smack-you-in-the-face riffs, whisper-to-a-scream dynamic shifts, massive, stadium-shaking choruses and insanely catchy hooks and melodies. From the shapeshifting first single, “Run,” to the lurching, punkish “La Dee Da,” the anthemic “The Line” (Shiflett: “that’s the sound that made me fall in love with this band”) to the Beatles-esque acoustic fingerpicker “Happy Ever After (Zero Hour),” Concrete and Gold boasts some of the Foos' strongest work together.

But there is also a depth of sound and instrumentation previously unheard from the band. Whether it’s the bloated distorto-bass that powers “La Dee Da,” the swirling miasma of background vocals that lifts the chorus of the otherwise cock-rocking “Make It Right,” or the lush, practically monolithic wall of sound that fortifies the title track (“the heaviest and most beautiful thing we’ve ever written,” says Grohl), virtually every song on Concrete and Gold offers up a twist on the characteristic Foo Fighters sound, and often in a way that requires repeated listens to fully absorb.

Grohl with his custom Gibson Trini Lopez guitar, also known as the DG-335 (photo: Jen Rosenstein)

“A lot of the harmony stuff, the countermelodies, a lot of that was Greg and Dave working that out. And Taylor, too,” Shiflett says. “And Greg was really instrumental in things like the orchestrated layers of vocals. We’ve never had, like, three- and four-part harmonies on our records before. So he definitely brought something new.”

Perhaps the finest example of the sonic fruits of the collaboration between Kurstin and the band is a song called “The Sky Is a Neighborhood,” arguably Concrete and Gold’s centerpiece. Built on a spare, almost bluesy framework, the track is centered around Grohl’s anguished vocal, which is then fortified with all manner of instrumental ear candy to create a kaleidoscopic sonic picture. Says Shiflett, “There’s super-arranged strings, keyboards, all these harmonies and different guitar things going on.” Adds Grohl, “There’s no way we would’ve done that song without Greg.”

Interestingly, for all its production, “The Sky Is a Neighborhood,” Grohl says, actually came together pretty quickly, and somewhat at the last minute. “It was the last song we recorded. We had finished the record and we had two weeks off before we were supposed to mix. I went down to Hawaii, and I came back and I said to everybody, ‘I think I’ve got one more in me.’ Because I always feel like I have one more in me. You know, ‘Everlong’ was that one more song. ‘The Pretender’ was that one more song. So I wrote that song and I came back and we recorded it really quickly. And, I mean, the bare bones of the song are really simple. Taylor and I recorded the drums and guitar live in maybe two takes. And then we just started piling stuff onto it.”

“It was sort of a free-for-all because it was so fast,” Smear adds. “Like, ‘Come up with something, we’re recording. Go do it!’ ”

Grohl continues, “After listening to it, I said to Greg, ‘I feel like this bridge could have some sort of string section.’ And Greg said, ‘Okay, give me 15 minutes. I’ll write something up.’ And so I walked out of the room. I came back and he goes, ‘Check this out…’ He hit play, and he had done a keyboard string section demo. And I laughed so fucking hard because it was what I’ve always wanted to do. It was perfect.”

In addition to stepping outside of their comfort zone with Kurstin, the band also changed things up when it came to gear.

“The way Greg records, we knew there was this opportunity to branch out and get some different sounds,” Grohl says. “So one of the ideas before we even went in to make the record was that we’d use equipment that we don’t normally use. There were a few times where I used my number one [Gibson] Trini [Lopez] and Fender Tone-Master amps, but typically for the more jangly stuff we would lean toward a vintage Gibson or Tele. And we were literally grabbing old P.A. systems and keyboard amps and things that were just on the verge of exploding and piling them up. We were throwing stuff together to try to find the coolest sounds we could.”

“Dave said, ‘Just don’t bring your normal gear. Bring something different,’ ” Shiflett recalls.

“So everybody showed up with their wacky stuff that they don’t normally play. And that was kind of the spirit of the record. For me, I normally do a lot of Les Paul through a Friedman. I don’t think I played that at all. It was all guitars with P-90s, little combo amps, shit like that. I got a hand-wired Vox AC15 right when we were doing the demos, and that was kind of the magic amp for me throughout this thing. I had my little Fifties tweed [Fender] Champ. I had a bitchin’ tweed Vibrolux, and I’m sure there was a Deluxe Reverb, maybe a Super Reverb. Then I have a ’68 non-reverse [Gibson] Firebird that I played probably on most of the record. That was kind of my go-to guitar. I also played my signature [Fender Tele Deluxe] model when I needed something with a little more crunch, and I had a couple Teles and a 12-string Rickenbacker that I put on some stuff as well.”

Adds Smear, “I brought in some Les Pauls and other big, cumbersome weird guitars. And I fell in love. Like, ‘I get it! These are great guitars!’ And then for my amp I was using this weird combo that Dave’s guitar tech came up with, which was basically an old Seventies vocal mixing board that you might have in your rehearsal place, and that we ran into an old transistor bass head. And that became my sound for most of the record, along with some other things, like an Orange, which I had never used before.”

Effects-wise, Shiflett says that “There’s a lot of warbly things like phasers and flangers, an [Electro-Harmonix] Memory Man, that kind of stuff. And there’s some fuzz—I think I used that Jack White pedal, the Bumble Buzz, and there’s a [JHS Pedals] Muffuletta on ‘The Sky Is a Neighborhood.’ ” Smear also reports that Kurstin often took the reins when it came to manipulating guitar sounds. “Greg loves effects,” he says. “And sometimes while you were tracking he’d be playing an effect. Just turning knobs and things.” Smear laughs. “And I’m watching him like, ‘Oh, he’s playing, too!’ ”

Outside of Kurstin and the band members, Concrete and Gold also features a slew of guest musicians, from Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, who, after meeting Grohl in the EastWest parking lot, laid down a ridiculously massive stack of backing vocals on the chorus of the title track, to Kills frontwoman Alison Mosshart to jazz saxophonist Dave Koz. Pop icon Justin Timberlake makes an appearance as well, though even his star power is eclipsed by another guest, Paul McCartney, who contributed, of all things, a rock-solid drum track to the Taylor Hawkins–sung “Sunday Rain.”

“I think it was Dave’s idea to have him play drums,” Shiflett says of McCartney. “And he’s solid. You know, it’s a very different approach to Taylor or Dave. Those guys are very modern, and Paul’s got that old school thing, where he’s not killing the drums. It’s a very different, loosey-goosey kind of feel. And the coolest thing about it was that afterward he just wanted to hang out. It turned into an hour of just kind of noodling around with Paul McCartney. Which blew my mind.”

“He’s exactly how you’d hope he’d be,” Smear adds of McCartney. “He just loves music and loves to play. He came in, never even heard the song before, didn’t know it at all. He did, like, two takes. And then we just jammed. So that was a good day.”

Overall, Grohl says, “With this record, we just had time. We had space.” Due to the fact that the general public believed the Foo Fighters to be on a hiatus, he continues, “We didn’t tell anybody that we were even making a record. So we had no deadline, you know? We had no pressure. And because of that there was a lot more freedom to try different things.” At this point, of course, that has all changed. “Once we go in and we make the record, it’s like starting up a fucking steamroller,” Grohl says. “Once it starts, it doesn’t stop.”

And it all started pretty quickly once the sessions for Concrete and Gold wrapped. Following the recording, the band almost immediately began rolling out new songs onstage. Says Smear with a laugh, “We actually started rehearsing for the tour, and all we did was play the new songs. And on like the second-to-last day someone said, ‘Hey, we should probably go over the old songs, too!’ ”

As for whether they believe there’s been a big change in sound and feel from those old songs to the new ones?

“I wouldn’t say [the shift] is, like, gigantic,” Shiflett says. “It’s more like a natural progression. And probably a lot of that is just, like, as the years go by, everybody gets more comfortable doing their thing. I also know Dave always likes to change it up and keep things moving and do things a little different from record to record. It doesn’t hurt to have that spirit in there.”

“At the very least, I know that we couldn’t have made this record 20 years ago,” Grohl says.

“There’s a freedom in this band now that feels like a weight lifted off our backs, because we know exactly who we are. I remember when we came back from this last break and did our first show, at the BottleRock Festival [in Napa Valley, California], everybody was a little nervous because we weren’t in the mindset of going out and bringing the party to 40,000 people. Right before we went out, we were standing on the side of the stage with our instruments strapped on. And I looked at everybody and I was like, “Hey!” They looked at me and I said, ‘We’re the Foo Fighters, goddammit!’ And then we just laughed. Because you know, to us, we know exactly what that means.”

Grohl continues. “So I just feel like there’s a bit more of a relaxed confidence that comes with age. I mean, I never thought that I’d be doing this past 30 years old. And that was a long fucking time ago! But when I walk backstage now and see the fresh faces of all the new bands, and I’m the guy with fucking grey hair in my beard, I feel kinda proud. Proud that we’re still here. And I also don’t think that we could have made an album like Concrete and Gold without a little bit of grey hair thrown in there, you know what I mean? Because each album is like a rung on a ladder. And you just keep climbing.”