On January 8, 1995, Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder broadcast two songs, one a canopy of an Offended Samoans monitor, from a demo tape by a brand new Seattle-based rock band, on his Self Air pollution Radio present. “I’m simply going to let these songs fly,” mentioned Vedder. “They’re actually good.” This was the world’s first publicity to the Foo Fighters, a brand new group led by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl.
In fact, on the level at which these songs have been recorded, simply three months earlier, there was no band, for Grohl had performed each riff, pounded each beat and sang each be aware on his new challenge’s demo tape himself.
On February 19, 1995, the Foo Fighters – now that includes ex-Germs guitarist Pat Smear, who’d joined Nirvana for his or her truncated In Utero tour, plus Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith, rhythm part of the just lately defunct Seattle emo group Sunny Day Actual Property – took their first faltering steps in (semi) public, acting at a keg social gathering for buddies above a boating retailer on Seattle’s Mercer Road. It was weeks earlier than Dave Grohl obtained round to listening to a recording of his new band’s first present.
“I used to be fucking mortified!” he advised Rolling Stone journal, 20 years on. “I believed we sounded nice… [then] I heard the recording. [I was] like, ‘Oh… that’s the Foo Fighters? We’ve obtained to observe!’”
As soon as dismissed as ‘The Grunge Ringo’ by a caustic UK music press, Grohl can afford to snicker. In 2023, his band exist as one of the vital profitable rock acts on the earth, however their path to the highest has not been with out turbulence and tragedy. The straightforward-going and charmingly charismatic Virginia-born musician has been unafraid to take daring and unpopular managerial choices in pursuit of his desires, however his band have retained credibility whilst their industrial enchantment soared.
After Nirvana’s abrupt demise, Grohl was supplied a place enjoying drums with Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers: onstage, he shares a number of the late singer-songwriter’s everyman appeal, serving to his group safe a place within the coronary heart of mainstream American rock.
“I keep in mind there have been individuals that basically resented me for having the audacity or gall to fucking maintain enjoying music after Nirvana,” Grohl mentioned in 2009. “It was essentially the most ridiculous factor. I used to be fucking, what, 25-years-old? I used to be a child. I’m certain that the factor I used to be purported to do was grow to be this brooding, reclusive dropout of society and that’s it.
“Nirvana’s finished, I’m finished, that’s the top of my life,” he mentioned. “Fuck that… When Nirvana ended, I wasn’t completed. I’m nonetheless not fucking completed.”
In 2022, after all, he needed to make the selection once more, and this time it was his brother-in-arms, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. However after a respectful pause for grief, reflection and tribute, the band re-emerged with an album that was as a lot celebration because it was eulogy.
New man Josh Freese finally stepped into Hawkins’ impossible-to-fill sneakers, however in Could 2025 he was dismissed because the band determined to “go in a special path.” Their journey is way from over.