(Roswell/RCA)
On the veteran band’s first album since drummer – and Dave Grohl’s best friend – Taylor Hawkins’ death, every anguished, searching and sometimes triumphant song is about death
In 1995, Foo Fighters released their eponymous debut album, recorded by Dave Grohl alone the previous year in the months after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. The contemporary press was revealing: the album was not greeted with the universal warmth one might have expected. Interviewers and critics seemed to be suspicious and combative. There was a consensus that the album was selling well due to residual affection for Nirvana, or as a kind of mass sympathy vote; that either way, it was unlikely to be a project with legs. One frequent line of questioning involved picking over its lyrics for references to his former band and its late frontman, despite Grohl’s repeated insistence that almost all the songs predated Cobain’s death and that the album was not an act of posthumous reflection or mourning – whatever grieving he had to do was done in private.
How times change. Twenty-eight years later, Foo Fighters are enshrined as a dependable rock institution. Dave Grohl’s charm and affability mean his name seldom appears in print unaccompanied by the phrase Nicest Guy in Rock; his image long uncoupled itself from the darkness and angst that consumed Nirvana. And the death in 2022 of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins was marked with very public grieving: tribute concerts in LA and London – billed by Grohl as “gigantic fucking nights for a gigantic fucking person” – their bills featuring everyone from Rush to Liam Gallagher to Miley Cyrus, their conclusion emotionally charged performances by Foo Fighters themselves, Grohl fighting back tears as he sang.
