FOO FIGHTERS

“IT WAS LESS STRUCTURED THAN YOU THINK. THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF HAPPY ACCIDENTS”
PAT SMEAR

When Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear first heard drummer Dave Grohl listening to the music that would become the Foo Fighters’ debut record in his car, he was impressed and intrigued. Soon he was asking to get involved and, after those demos had become the eponymous first Foos album, Grohl knew he was going to need a band to perform this stuff. Smear climbed aboard with bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith from Seattle act Sunny Day Real Estate and Foo Fighters, the band, was born.

“One day, we were leaving a Nirvana rehearsal, and Dave was sitting in his car playing some music that appealed to me,” Smear recalls. “He told me it was some tapes he’d been making and I remember really liking it and saying that I wanted him to play me more. That was the first I heard of it. The second time I heard it was when we were at my house in Los Angeles and he said, ‘Oh, I made this tape’ and gave me a cassette that was essentially the first Foo Fighters album. I absolutely loved it and it made me want to play music again.”

If Foo Fighters had originally been an outlet for Grohl within Nirvana and, subsequently, a place for him to go to deal with the dissolution of that band following Kurt Cobain’s suicide, it became something much bigger by the time he’d given Smear that cassette. Smear knew it too; it was clear that there was serious potential here.

“Dave didn’t have to ask me to join the band,” says Smear. “I asked him! After I heard the tape, I went to him and asked if he was going to make a band, because I wanted in.”

That band hit the road to support what was essentially Grohl’s solo record but Smear reveals that there was a bit more to it than that. “The first thing we did in the studio as a band was actually mixing