4. They turned an acoustic track into a rock song
‘Child Actor’ is one of the standout tracks from the new record, and Dave says that it could have sounded a lot different.
“I had this idea for ‘Child Actor’ that it was going to be kind of jangly. So I did a demo of it, [but] that seemed very sort of middle of the road, like something that we had definitely done before. I thought, ‘okay, well this could be a cool song,’ but it just seemed kind of predictable.”
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to put an acoustic thing on this record.'”
Dave explains how the track then turned into a rock number: “Oliver kept saying, what about that ‘Child Actor’ song? And so that’s why I decided that it should be a rock song. Credit to Oliver. I was caught in my own echo.”
5. The last song they record for an album is often the best
“Sometimes the songs that stay with us forever are the last ones that we record for an album,” Dave says, naming Foos classics like ‘Everlong’ and ‘The Pretender’ as being two that fit this bill.
“Gil goes on holiday to Greece, and me and Taylor [Hawkins, former Foos drummer who died in 2022] started jamming on this idea. We did a demo of it, put down all the guitar stuff, did the drums, and couldn’t wait to play it for Gil when he got back. The way Gil would produce songs is he would tear them to shreds and make you play them a hundred times – inspect every element. Taylor and I thought we had it at a really good place, like the middle section.”
“So Gil comes back and we play it for him proudly and he was like, ‘Hmm. Well, you know, maybe let’s set back up in the main room, get the instruments back up and let’s work on this.’”
Dave adds: “We had already recorded all these songs doing 10, 20, 30 takes and it was exhausting. But that demo – we used that arrangement, that template – and it turned out to be the song. It was one of those songs where it was the last one we recorded, and when it was done, we felt like we had an album.”
6. No matter how bad a show goes, ‘Everlong’ always saves it
Foo Fighters are one of the most electrifying bands to witness live, but even they admit they can have an off night. When that happens, they say a handful of classics always come to the rescue.
“There are certain songs in the set that, if it’s not a great show, will always get it going,” says guitarist Chris Shiflett. “‘Everlong’ is always one of those songs. ‘Best of You’ is always one of those songs. And ‘Pretender’ is absolutely one of those songs.”
“When we get to the last song, ‘Everlong’ – it never fails,” says fellow guitarist Pat Smear, and Chris agrees: “They only remember how you walk out and how you walk off.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.bbc.co.uk ’
