by Mick Wall
But while Franz was struggling to cope with his newfound status (‘In my mind I was more concerned about trying to remember songs than fucking giving people a show’) Dave’s performance had reached a whole new level, partly through trying to compensate for the loss of Pat’s louche onstage presence, partly just through his own soaring confidence as a frontman. If the first Foo Fighters world tour had been about establishing the band as a legitimate musical vehicle in its own right, the second Foos tour was all about projecting Dave Grohl Superstar.
In a nod to his illustrious past, the new show would begin each night with Dave on his own drum kit, bashing the hell out of it, as Taylor tried to keep up, before jumping down from the rostrum, grabbing his guitar and going hell for leather into ‘This is a Call’. These were high-energy freak-outs. Standing next to him, in the spot where Pat used to command his own aura, on the early months of the tour Franz seemed subdued by comparison, out of his depth, lost. Though not on certain TV shows. Clearly, though, this is very much the Dave Grohl show now.
Dave still did his best to talk the whole thing up though whenever he was questioned about the new guy. ‘The thing with Franz is, it’s so easy,’ he gushed to the NME. ‘I’ve known him since I was seventeen. So it’s like having your brother or sister come out on tour.’ Adding, ‘The time I was in Scream was the time when I was learning to play guitar and write songs. Franz was my teacher, in a weird way. So songs like ‘Monkey Wrench’ or ‘Enough Space’ or ‘Hey Johnny Park’ sound like Franz wrote them anyway, because our guitar-playing is so similar.’
Things would improve for Franz – especially on smaller stages, particularly those of the various TV studios the band would find themselves on throughout 1998, where he would occasionally persuade Nate to swap sides with him, as if trying to gain as much physical as well as mental distance from his predecessor as possible – but he admits now he never really felt entirely at home. ‘It was great. It was an amazing experience. [But] as far as my whole stage thing, I was a nervous wreck and for the most part I felt like I was always trying to get the gig. Even though I was on tour, every show was me trying to get the gig. At the same time I don’t wanna fuck up because I don’t wanna get the stare-down from Dave or any of the other guys. The whole Foo Fighters thing was just a whirlwind for me. On tour constantly, no time for this, no time for that. And that’s the way it went. One minute I’m in the band travelling around the world, playing every night, and then the next minute I’m not.’
Nothing he’d ever done before had prepared him for this. At least with Will and Nate, who also shared the feeling of being out of their comfort zone for much of that first tour, they had begun small. Tiny clubs, support slots, modest college halls and theatres. For Franz, who had only ever really known the back of the van with Scream, it was straight into an arena-headlining US tour, followed by the same in Europe, then a week in Japan, two weeks in Australia, more high-profile dates in New Zealand, then back to America, and more summer festivals, plus radio, TV, press, photographs, always smiling, always up. It was everything he’d ever dreamed of and yet he’d never felt so alone.
‘I think everybody has that, especially on that level,’ he says. ‘You’re travelling around constantly and you’re in hotel rooms – individual hotel rooms. The whole twenty years of being in Scream, I’m in a van. We’re sleeping at squats. I’m sleeping right next to you. I’m hanging out with you. In the whole Foo Fighters bubble you’re never really hanging out unless it’s these arranged moments like, oh, we’re in Australia, we’re gonna go to the dolphin farm and swim with dolphins.’
His only real buddy on the tour was Taylor. ‘On many an evening Taylor and I would go out and party and drink and hang out. I hung out with Taylor more than anybody else in the band. Not by anybody’s else’s fault, especially Dave. It always seemed like Dave was busy doing an interview or this and that, because he’s constantly being hounded about the whole Nirvana thing. He doesn’t get a fucking moment’s rest. And I sympathise. I was like, “I’m glad I’m not him.” He probably could enjoy himself the least out of all of us.
‘There’s just so much going on. It’s such a different level. But I don’t know I was so much lonely as I was … isolated. You know, in order to groove with somebody you’ve got to be with somebody, got to hang with somebody and it just happens. And if you don’t, it never happens.’
As long as it all came together when the band met onstage each night, everything was doable, allowable, complete. The real trouble came after the band returned home at the end of the tour and went into rehearsal to write together for the first time.
‘We got together and did a little jamming in DC,’ recalls Franz, ‘But it was just very … for me, I don’t know how everybody else felt, I was just completely wiped from touring. It’s a strange thing for me, because I wrote the majority of the Scream stuff and now here I’m in this band where Dave is my boss and just … you know, I’m leery of pressing my ideas, because it’s Dave’s show, it’s his stuff, it’s his name, it’s his band, it’s his music … there was a lot of trepidation for me. I really wasn’t sure of how to push it – there was never anything organic because, you know, we all lived in different cities, you’re not hanging out and grooving. It’s: “Okay, we’re going to get together and rehearse on this weekend.” You fly in and it all has to happen on this weekend because you’re flying out again. And it’s just…’
Horrible. Adding to the pressure was that Dave was also facing a crisis of sorts. Now living in LA and, in his own words, ‘just being a drunk, getting fucked up every night and doing horrible shit’, he wasn’t in the frame of mind to over-concern himself with anyone else’s problems. ‘Living in Hollywood always seemed transitional to me. Truth be told, I fucking hated Hollywood, hated the whole life, hated most of the people we met.’ To complicate matters further, Gary Gersh had also just been ousted as president of Capitol after months of behind-the-scenes friction between the 43-year-old executive and his new boss, EMI’s US Deputy President, Roy Lott, unhappy with Capitol’s sluggish domestic market share under Gersh, which was then hovering at a meagre 3 per cent.
The good news was Gersh was now heading for a new career in management – in partnership with the Foos’ manager, John Silva. On paper, this would potentially have great benefits for Dave. Together, Gersh and Silva were talking about negotiating a new, much bigger package deal for the Foos and their Roswell label, which eventually entailed leaving Capitol in favour of RCA. It also represented a new gamble. Gersh was the key man in Dave’s recording career, both with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, and if Dave had kept the Foos with Capitol, the risk was that with Gersh gone no one there would care as much and the band’s still relatively new recording career might wither on the vine. Going with Gary to RCA also came with its own risks though. The only way to ensure the Foo Fighters would be taken as seriously at RCA as Dave Grohl wanted them to be was to make damn sure their next album was a slam-dunk hit. Suddenly it wasn’t about making a statement of intent, as the first Foos album had been, nor a way of confirming the Foos were more than a one-hit wonder, as the second album had been. This next album would have to stand or fall by its own merits. The novelty of seeing the Nirvana drummer fronting his own band had long since worn off. The fallout over first Will then Pat was also no longer an issue. The only question that mattered now was: how much did Dave really want it? Megastar status? Oh, he would still drop names like Bad Brains into interviews, still drone on about punk rock and yadda-yadda. But what he was really aiming for was rock immortality, and that would mean aiming straightforwardly for the mainstream, dead centre. And that would mean no more second chances. Suddenly everything was up for grabs.
Dave had also begun a new phase in his personal life, leaving LA behind to buy the house in Alexandria, Virginia, where he’d gone to school all those years before, which would become his new permanent home, and along with it a new long-term relationship with Melissa Auf Der Maur, then bassist for Courtney Love’s H
ole, who’d released their first US Top 10 album the year before with Celebrity Skin. Given the increasingly tense relationship between Dave and Courtney, the couple tried to keep their affair quiet for as long as possible. But when the story finally filtered out it proved too much – and Melissa left Hole in 1999, just as Dave was finishing There is Nothing Left to Lose.
Not a great time then for the Foos’ newest member, Franz Stahl, to be feeling insecure about his place in the scheme of things, especially not when it came to coming up with new, commercially viable material. ‘It was a very strange moment for me,’ admits Franz. But equally, as he points out, ‘It was a very strange moment for them. Not too long ago they’d gotten a new drummer in Taylor. Then they lost the guitar player. So it wasn’t an easy time for them as well.’ Hardly surprising then that the initial ideas they worked on were, in the view of both Dave and Franz, ‘complete shite.’ Unlike Dave, though, Franz didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t his call any more.
‘Like I say, I was real leery of what buttons to push and just kind of let Dave come up with stuff. And on top of that just being kind of burnt [from touring] and just not knowing my place in the band. And me just wanting [Dave] to do the right things so they don’t think they’ve made a wrong decision. I want to keep my job as well so I’m just like a yes man. Maybe I should have been a little more … whatever. But the headspace just wasn’t right at the time. But Dave scrapped all that shit and wrote that next record after that.’
Not cool. ‘I was in an impossible situation, and maybe their unhappiness with me was actually the fact that they were so unhappy with the music they’d just written. Cos I didn’t like it either. I mean, I never said it. But that’s the way it was. Dave changed a bunch of shit, which is fine, it happens. Then we left town. We were gonna all go home and sit on it and come back and try it again.’
In a virtual repeat of what had happened with Will, the first indication Franz got that something was up was when Dave simply stopped returning his calls. ‘For weeks I was trying to get Dave to send me the tapes of the new rearrangements of everything. I never got ’em – and I started to wonder why.’
When, weeks later, they reconvened in the new basement studio – named 606, ‘because it sounded like a cool number’ – Dave was putting together in the house he’d bought back in Alexandria, Franz was appalled to learn he was the only one who hadn’t been sent the new tapes. ‘We came back after that down time and I wasn’t familiar with this stuff they’d made all these changes to. So I looked like a complete fucking idiot! I said, “Dude, I kept telling you, send me this shit. Why didn’t you send me this stuff?”’
Franz was back home with his wife in LA when he got the phone call that broke his heart. Unlike the phone call he got when Dave asked him to join the band it wasn’t just Dave on the line this time. ‘I got a fucking conference call, dude. It was the band! And … you know, when it’s not in person like that, it’s kind of suspect to me. If you can’t come to me and talk to me in person there really is no validity here in your issues or whatever. They can’t face me face-to-face so obviously they’re not … their convictions are not that strong. Something else is pushing this whole situation.’
He breaks off, still lost. Did Dave do most of the talking or was it the other two? ‘I don’t even fucking remember. You can imagine how I felt. I really couldn’t believe what was going on. I was like, “All right, all right, I’ll talk to you guys later.” I said, “I’m gonna come up.” They didn’t believe me. They thought that I would just walk away and be done with it. I remember getting off the phone and just going in my bedroom with my wife and telling her, “You wouldn’t believe what just happened.” I was stunned. I couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t even comment on it. I didn’t know what to do. I was shocked.’
Finally, ‘I was like, “Fuck this. I’m going up there. I wanna know why.” Everybody just couldn’t believe it happened. Like, what the fuck? It wasn’t my personality. I had no problem with drugs. I was a complete, you know … the perfect employee.’
He chuckles self-consciously. ‘I flew up there and they’re fucking sitting in there jamming just like nothing had happened. And I fucking bang on the door and they open the door and they couldn’t even believe that I flew up there. They were stunned! It goes back to … guys in bands are a bunch of fucking kids, children, that really never learned to communicate with people. Or are the worst at communicating, I should say.
‘So I basically go in there and just kind of break down in tears. And Nate says some stupid shit that I just couldn’t believe. Just like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? But anyway … it was a very strange moment and I don’t entirely hold them responsible for it. I mean, I do and I don’t. They’re a product of the whole situation as well.’
Pause. ‘Taylor, who I really connected with … I could see the bullshit because I could see it in him. That he really wanted to fucking say something on my behalf but he couldn’t because he was the new guy as well. Not only is he the new guy but he’s the drummer underneath this insanely amazing drummer who’s his boss! So he’s not gonna say anything. It’s his job too. And that always bugged me cos I could see it.
‘What really fucked me about the whole thing is, if you’re having issues, whether perceived or not, let’s go hang out, let’s talk about it and you either suss it out or you don’t and that’s it. That never even happened! Which I attributed to this whole machine that Dave’s behind, you know. It’s just cut the head off the snake and move on. Where it’s a much deeper emotional attachment for me, because we’re brothers, we’re from the same town. It’s about communicating with each other. That never fucking happened.’
Another long pause while he collects his thoughts. ‘So anyway, I was like, enough of this shit, I’m out of here. You know, there’s a good buddy of mine in DC, Joey Picuri, a great soundman, did Fugazi, now works for Frank Junior [Sinatra], old friend … he was one of the first guys to call me and he said, “Dude, the bottom line is if they don’t have your back then why do you want to be a part of it anyway?” I was like, “You’re right.”’
Years later, Dave would describe this turbulent period in the story of the Foo Fighters as ‘growing pains, played out in the public eye’, adding that all bands went through the same shit. Which is true to one extent, but in another, greater sense, the fact is the Foos were always in the spotlight. And Dave, whose reputation for always handling any situation well, actually handled things badly, when it came to both Will and Franz.
But, as Paul Brannigan points out, ‘You’ve got to have a certain amount of steel at your core in order to do what Dave’s done – when it comes to it he can be quite ruthless when making decisions in the interests of his band, or indeed his own interests. The Stahl thing was probably even more of an example of where something wasn’t working, Dave took action to rectify it. This was someone he’d grown up with. But when push came to shove…’
As Brannigan says, the Foo Fighters had always been ‘very much Dave’s band. There’s a certain amount of collaboration in that band but Dave says constantly that this is my band, and that what I say goes, really. I think it’s also just part of growing up. After The Colour and the Shape, Dave’s a successful rock star in his own right. There’s no question about that now. He’s on the front covers of magazines, he’s living in California. He’s living the dream, as it were. So by the time it came to making [the third Foos album] he’d been divorced, he was living in Los Angeles, his whole life was changing. I guess maybe at that point in his life there wasn’t an awful lot to be unhappy about.’
Not such a nice guy after all, then. Certainly that seems to have been the conclusion Nate now came to when he became the next Foo Fighter to bail out. Dave was laying up at his mother’s house in Springfield, in January 1999, when he got the phone call from Nate telling him he was leaving too. Dave was bummed, pissed off, past caring almost. Livid. He told Nate he could tell Taylor himself, that he was going out to get drunk. Dave
and his pal Jimmy took Dave’s rental car to the nearest bar and got hellaciously fucked up. Then they ‘rallied’ the car over neighbourhood lawns, threw bricks threw the windows and smashed it to smithereens.
As soon as Nate got off the phone with Dave he knew he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life. The next morning Nate called Dave again and begged for his spot back. It was 6 a.m. and Dave was still drunk. Nate was beside himself, almost in tears. Dave said yeah, okay, then went to throw up. According to some, Dave has never really forgiven Nate for that. Yet in a strange way it also freed Dave to make the decisions he needed to make in future alone and without any trace of guilt attached any more. What was the point worrying about people who were just as likely to walk out on you at a moment’s notice, expecting you to pick up the pieces? Fuck that shit. Dave would never make that mistake again. All three of the original ‘band’ had bailed for one reason or another. Sooner or later two would come crawling back – but this time entirely on Dave’s terms.
In a strangely paradoxical sense, given its tortured origins, the third Foo Fighters album, There is Nothing Left to Lose, remains one of the most mellow, upbeat, certainly calmest-sounding recordings they have made. It was also – with a couple of notable exceptions – their most dull. ‘Moderate rock’ is how Paul Brannigan politely describes it. A fair summation of an album where only two of its 12 tracks approach the ferocity, aplomb and good humour of their more punchy predecessors.
The raunchy, attitudinal ‘Stacked Actors’, which opened the album, was good enough to have been on the first album, but only if Dave hadn’t written a better song about the same stuff in ‘I’ll Stick Around’. This time though he didn’t try very hard to hide the fact the song was about Courtney Love. ‘I wrote ‘Stacked Actors’ about everything that is fake and everything that is plastic and glamorous and unreal, so if that pertains to anyone that comes to mind then there you go,’ he said at the time. Courtney Love herself weighed in a few weeks after the album was released in November 1999, telling Howard Stern that she knew for sure the song was about her.
