Dave Grohl just keeps piling on the responsibilities. While hopping around a geographically diverse range of studios to record the new Foo Fighters album, the frontman was pulling double-duty with production of a new HBO series centering on the album, as well as an ambitious effort to create a landmark moment in American music.
“It was tricky because it’s not just a series, it’s an album,” the Nirvana drummer told The Hollywood Reporter of his upcoming show “Sonic Highways”. “And so when you’re sequencing the series, you’re sequencing the album, so what do you sequence first? And how can you write the music before you shoot the episode? How do you know what the theme is going to be and how can you tell the story? These things would keep me up at night. I’m not only thinking about the lyric I have to spin the next day, I’m thinking about how it fits into the overall arc of the history of American music.”
Grohl continued, giving a strong hint of some musical sleight of hand in the works: “It’s meant to be the musical equivalent of the finale of Usual Suspects. Like that scene where he’s sitting there, you’re going back through the whole episode. It’s basically that.”
While promising that the new Foo record – recorded to analog tape – wouldn’t be “some crazy, bleak Radiohead record,” Grohl also suggested that there will only be only eight new songs in store – but it will likely be the band’s longest album thus far.
“You’ll recognize Foo Fighters in this record but you’ll also be surprised by us,” he said. “We’re doing things that we’ve never done before. And I want to say that it’s only eight songs but I think it might be our longest record because, as I was writing these songs, I had to take a cinematic approach. Like I couldn’t just write a three-and-a-half-minute long KROQ jingle and film it for the finale of an episode about the history of music in New Orleans, ya know? We really had to step up what we do.”
The train just doesn’t ever stop for Grohl, who’s already cooking up new plans. “I mean, I already know what we’re doing for the next Foo Fighters record and that’s even fuckin’ crazier!” he told THR. “I came up with this idea a month and a half ago. The guys were, like, ‘Dude, we have to finish this first.'”
Photo: Johnny Firecloud
