Dave Grohl has some pretty ambitious plans for Foo Fighters’ 20th Anniversary, including the release of the band’s much-anticipated eighth studio album and a new HBO series documenting the entire process.
Recorded in historic recording studios across multiple American cities with an impressive roster of A-list guest musicians, the follow-up to 2011’s Wasting Light is touted to be their most risk-taking effort yet, but if you were worried of the new LP being a case of too many cooks spoiling the traditional Foos rock broth, Grohl says not to fret.
The chief goal of the new album is to “make stadium anthems that startle,” Grohl reveals in a recent interview with Billboard. “As we were coming down from the success of the last record, I thought, ‘Now we have license to get weird’,” Grohl explains. “If we wanted, we could make some crazy, bleak Radiohead record and freak everyone out. Then I thought, ‘F- that’.”
Rather than settle for “banging out these big choruses, because that’s what we do, we’re banging them out in the middle of instrumental sections that will take you by surprise,” the 45-year-old notes. “The music is a progression or an evolution, for sure, but it’s a Foo Fighters record.” “After making Sound City, I realized that the pairing of music and documentary works well because the stories give substance and depth to the song.”
As previously mentioned, the as-yet-untitled new album was recorded across eight different studios in Chicago, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Washington DC, and New York, the band joined in each studio by a musician associated with their musical capital in what Grohl describes as a “love letter to the history of American music.”
Guests on the new Foo Fighters album include Austin Texas guitarist Gary Clark Jr, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Kiss frontman Paul Stanley, Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and Dischord Records, Heart’s Nancy Wilson, Australian-bound Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans, adding horns and jazz tones to Foos’ stadium branded rock.
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Each episode of the accompanying TV documentary series will also feature the musicians as it focuses on each US city and its music history in what is essentially a spiritual sequel to Grohl’s Sound City rockumentary.
“After making Sound City, I realized that the pairing of music and documentary works well because the stories give substance and depth to the song, which makes for a stronger emotional connection,” Grohl tells Billboard. “So I thought, ‘I want to do this again, but instead of just walking into a studio and telling its story, I want to travel across America and tell its story’.
“It’s basically the history of American music broken down to the cultural roots of each place: Why did Chicago become a blues capital? Why did country go to Nashville? Why did the first psychedelic band, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, come from Austin? How did the second line rhythm make its way to New Orleans? It’s crazy,” says Grohl, who is not only directing the new series but also handled all the interviews.
Nevermind and Wasting Light producer Butch Vig, who’s also working on the new Foo Fighters album, is likely to also make an appearance in the new Foo Fighters TV series, along with fellow legendary Nirvana producer Steve Albini, whose Electrical Audio studios in Chicago was visited as part of Grohl and co’s all-star journey.
Other studios include Don Zientara’s Inner Ear studios in Washington DC and a session at Joshua Tree, California’s Ranch De La Luna – the infamous desert studio frequented by Queens Of The Stone Age and frontman Josh Homme’s Desert Sessions and Eagles of Death Metal side-projects, as well as Arctic Monkeys.
The new Foo Fighters album is more than “halfway done” and Grohl confirms it will be out “this fall” (that’s Australia’s spring).
