This is a Call

by Paul Brannigan

  It would be eleven months before Foo Fighters paused to draw breath again. On the evening of 29 August 1998 Grohl’s band brought down the curtain on their The Colour and the Shape world tour with a main stage performance at England’s Reading festival. The weekend was a special one for Dave Grohl, surrounded as he was by familiar faces. His friend Greg Dulli’s Afghan Whigs had a main stage slot on 28 August on a bill topped by ex-Zeppelin duo Page & Plant. Washington DC’s Girls Against Boys, featuring former Lünchmeat men Scott McCloud, Johnny Temple and Alexis Fleisig, were to open up the main stage on 30 August, on a day headlined by Butch Vig’s Garbage. But even as he enthused to friends about his fourth appearance at the legendary weekender, Grohl’s mind, typically, was racing ahead.

  ‘Now I’m looking forward to our next record more than I ever have been,’ he said. ‘For a while I was thinking, “God, what are we gonna do for our next record?” But Taylor plays piano and guitar and writes songs and sings. Nate writes stuff. It’s just gonna be the freak-out record. And now with Franz I just know it’ll be this big, strong … rock opera! We have to do it. It’s time for our version of The Beatles’ White Album.’

  It was spring 1999 before Foo Fighters regrouped to make their third album. By now Grohl had tired of living the bachelor lifestyle in Los Angeles and had relocated to Virginia, where he purchased a family home at 1800 Nicholson Lane in Alexandria, just minutes from his former high school. It was in the basement of this house that the third Foo Fighters’ album was created. But before the band arrived at this stage, Grohl had some painful housekeeping to attend to.

  Issues with Franz Stahl began to arise as soon as the quartet reconvened to begin writing for the new album. Grohl had booked the band into Barco Rebar, a small rehearsal space in Falls Church, Virginia, just minutes from the site of his very first Scream audition with Stahl, but the sessions were stilted and unproductive … or at least they were when the band jammed as a quartet.

  ‘We didn’t have any songs so we had a rehearsal space in Virginia and everyone would fly out and we’d jam for a week or two and write, and then break off for a month and then come back and do it again,’ Grohl recalls. ‘And in those rehearsals Taylor, Nate and I really started to click, we really started to play together, and it was the first time our band started to feel like a band, where everyone was contributing and it was starting to sound like Foo Fighters. There’s a song off that third record called “Aurora”, which is still one of our favourite songs, and it means a lot to us because that was one of the first songs we wrote for the third record and it just came out of nowhere: the three of us pulled it together and it really seemed like a new beginning for the band, so that I didn’t feel responsible as the composer any more. I was like, “Wow, this is a band, we could do beautiful things together.”

  ‘But Franz had a really hard time finding his way into that equation. He was having a hard time jamming with us and he was having a hard time remembering the things that we’d been jamming on; he’s a fucking amazing player but for whatever reason it just wasn’t really jelling with us. And we did one rehearsal session and then we came back after a month and had another rehearsal session, and again Nate and Taylor and I were locking in pretty well and Franz was still having a hard time fitting in. And so I was on the phone with Taylor after we did another two weeks of writing and I said, “Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with Franz but I’m sure he’ll get it, and I’m sure it’ll all pull together.” And Taylor said, “Well, actually dude, Nate and I, we’re not really so sure it’s working out with him.” And my heart kinda sank, like, “Oh fuck, okay, let’s talk about this.”

  ‘And then the three of us started talking about it. And we decided we were going to go in and make the album as a three piece. And so we had to tell Franz. And that was another fucking drag, because here were our options: Franz was living in Austin, Texas at the time and we could have either flown to Austin under the guise that we were just going to hang out with Franz, which would have seemed unusual, or we could have Franz fly all the way to Virginia so that we could fire him and fly him all the way back. Or we could all have a conference on the phone and call him and tell him. And we decided that we were going to call him.

  ‘This didn’t happen quickly, this happened over the course of a few months, of really thinking about what to do and talking about it. And so we called him and we told him that we didn’t know if it was working out musically. And he was really fucking upset.’

  ‘I remember being up in my studio upstairs taking the call and I just couldn’t even believe what I was hearing,’ says Stahl. ‘I was like, “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” Everything that they were saying to me, there was just no validity in any of it. It was complete bullshit. I couldn’t believe that I was having this conversation and I couldn’t believe that this phone call even existed. I just remember at the end, assuming that I could talk to them later, going like, “Yeah, alright, I’ll talk to you later.” And I remember hanging up and going downstairs and lying on the bed next to my wife going, “You wouldn’t believe what just happened,” and then explaining to her what had happened. So then I caught the first plane I could, flew up to DC and banged on the door at his house to ask for an explanation.

  ‘They were fucking completely surprised. They couldn’t believe that. They answered the door and I was like, “What the fuck’s going on?” and they proceeded to give me the biggest load of bullshit I ever heard. And I just broke down in tears, man, I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe it.’

  ‘It sucked,’ says Grohl flatly. ‘Again, here’s this person that I love, this person that I’ve known my whole life, and I have to make a decision like this, which is based on music more so than the history of our friendship, to preserve or take care of the reason why we’re here, which is the music. And I’ve really tried to explain that to him. But I don’t think he understood where I was coming from … because still to this day we don’t talk.’

  ‘It’s awkward, it’s very awkward,’ Stahl admitted to me in 2010. ‘To be honest, I’ve never really had any closure on the whole affair and there’s a lot of it that I’ve kinda had to blot out of my mind and out of my memory. I came into the band and was thrown right into this tour which lasted forever, and then all of a sudden it’s like, “Okay, let’s try to write stuff.” And I don’t think anybody had really decompressed from that tour. In hindsight, I was the new guy and maybe I should have voiced my opinion more, but at the same point I was really hesitant to step on anybody’s toes: it’s Dave’s band and he writes the songs, so I held back. I was just wary of forcing my ideas, so I really didn’t come up with too much stuff.

  ‘By the second time we’d gotten together we had changed everything. And then I left to go home to Austin and I was going to come back up. I thought we’d be working on it deeper, and I thought everyone would go home and figure some things out. So I kept asking Dave to send me a tape because I didn’t have a copy of the new stuff. But I didn’t get one. And so when I came up there the next time I was kinda lost, because I’d be like, “Okay, that’s right, shit, we changed it to that …” And so I ended up looking kinda like an ass. I don’t know why he never sent me the stuff, but in hindsight I think maybe the rumblings started back then, because why wouldn’t he send me the stuff? I mean, I’d been in a band with him years before this, we’d written whole records together, and it wasn’t like they were under any deadline either. So I think there were other variables involved leading to my departure, I don’t think it was because of that. And even if it was, why wouldn’t he talk to me about it? Dave was my bro, who I’d known and been in a band with … That was one of the things that always bugged me about the whole thing: it’s like, if you’ve got an issue with me or anybody, just come and talk to them, and say, “Listen, this or that, and if we can’t work this out then here’s the door.” But I wasn’t even afforded that …’

  With the situation with Stahl unhappily resolved, it was then Nate Mendel’s
turn to drop a bombshell of his own: he too wanted to quit the band.

  In 1998 the members of Mendel’s old band Sunny Day Real Estate had started speaking to one another once more. The arguments that had caused such bitter conflict in 1994 no longer seemed so important, and soon enough old friendships were rekindled, creative sparks were re-ignited and the quartet had written a clutch of beautifully intense new songs. Jeremy Enigk, Dan Hoerner and William Goldsmith were keen to give the band another go; so too was Mendel, but doing so would necessitate leaving Dave Grohl’s side. ‘We waited about a year for him to do it,’ recalled Goldsmith, ‘and finally he did.’

  ‘I had this kinda high school crush irrational attraction to that project,’ Mendel admitted in Back and Forth. ‘And I was tortured. And I called up Dave …’

  ‘I was pissed,’ Grohl admitted. ‘I think I told him, “Okay, you know what, you call up everyone and tell them you quit, I’m gonna go fucking get drunk …”’

  The following day, a hungover Grohl got a call from Mendel at his mother’s home in Kathleen Place. The bassist apologised for his rash resignation and asked if Grohl might take him back to the band.

  After all this drama, the making of what became There Is Nothing Left to Lose was an absolute breeze.

  ‘The three of us moved into my house in Virginia,’ Grohl recalls, ‘the three of us, my buddy Jimmy and our producer Adam Kaspar. We bought a mixing desk from Nashville, put it in my basement, bought a 24-track machine, put it in the corner, bought three or four compressors and ten microphones, put sleeping bags on the walls for soundproofing and started recording.

  ‘It was springtime in Virginia; all the windows were open, there was beer and BBQs and we would record all night and sleep until noon, listen to what we’d done the night before and maybe re-record it. It was the most relaxed and simple and perfect recording session I’ve ever been in in my life. It was everything you would want making an album to be. When I listen to that record I honestly think it’s my favourite Foo Fighters record because of all of those things: every one of those songs feels that way to me. It’s such a relaxed, honest, organic and real album, and it was a really good experience for all of us. It was fucking great.’

  While living chez Grohl, Foo Fighters made a short documentary film about the making of There Is Nothing Left to Lose. There’s one brilliant scene in the film where Grohl, clutching a bottle of whisky, pretends to drunkenly berate one of the studio engineers about the sound of the recordings.

  ‘Don’t tell me how to make a record!’ the singer mock slurs. ‘I was in Nirvana! I was in the greatest rock ’n’ roll band of the nineties! We changed the course of rock music!’

  Ironically, the inspiration behind There Is Nothing Left to Lose came not from the punk rock which had informed Nirvana’s game-changing rage, but largely from the AM radio hits Grohl, Mendel and Hawkins first heard blasting from their parents’ car stereos in the 1970s – the music of The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Wings and Peter Frampton, ironically the very music against which the original punks were so keen to rebel. This was a punk rock gesture in itself, and Grohl was wholly unrepentant.

  ‘Having grown up in that punk rock scene, I’ve been so inspired by so many people, so many different bands and so many different experiences,’ he told me in 2009, ‘but one of the things I refuse to subscribe to, or buy into, is the guilt that most people are tortured by in that scene, the musical guilt.

  ‘I think about it sometimes. I think about the reasons I fell in love with punk rock when I was 12 or 13: it was because of the music – the sound of what these people were doing was so fucking powerful that it moved me and totally changed my life. I didn’t even need to know their intentions, I just loved the feeling that I got when I listened to the Bad Brains or when I listened to AC/DC, it was the same energy. But, along with that punk rock background or foundation comes this obligatory guilt. I guess when you state your intentions so clearly early on it becomes hard to negate that if you move in another direction.

  ‘Personally, I don’t feel like I’ve ever moved in another direction. I joined Freak Baby because I wanted to fucking jam, and we turned into Mission Impossible because if I played the drums it would sound better than Freak Baby. I joined Dain Bramage because I wanted to play more. I joined Scream because they were fucking amazing. I joined Nirvana because of Bleach and because there was no more Scream. But the guilt that a lot of those people from that scene still carry with them – musical guilt, does that make any sense? Fuck no! I should be able to do what the fuck I want to do!

  ‘And so the only thing from that whole experience that breaks my heart is that that musical guilt kept people from doing some of the things they could have done. I understand, like, the political boundaries that the punk rock scene had, but for me that was never the idea; maybe it was being from Virginia, and not being from Washington DC, but my motivation was much more musical than anything. And I feel like our band has always remained true to that ideal, just to do whatever satisfies us musically. If it feels right and instinctive at the time, then we should do that and not have anything keep us from it. Because that guilt, that fucking guilt, is what killed Kurt.’

  Though its sound might be rooted in the past, at its core There Is Nothing Left to Lose is a record about new beginnings – new relationships, new ambitions, new dreams. Dave Grohl once described the inspiration behind the album’s first single, the soaring, elevating ‘Learn to Fly’, as being informed by ‘the search for something real, something that’s going to make you feel alive’; that mood echoes throughout its eleven tracks. On the Foo Fighters’ most organic, unified record, there’s only really one song – the fuzzed-up opener ‘Stacked Actors’ – rooted in anger and disillusionment; elsewhere there are songs of hope and contentment, love and aspiration, making There Is Nothing Left to Lose the most romantic, accessible album in the Foo’s canon.

  In terms of tone then, ‘Stacked Actors’ might be a red herring, but it’s a startlingly effective introduction to the album. Riding in on a filthy, ultra-distorted riff, it lashes out against fakes, phoneys and wannabes (‘Line up all the bastards, all I want is the truth’) in a lyric the author admitted touched upon his fraught relationship with Courtney Love, but more broadly concerned the vacuous nature of fame and celebrity in Hollywood.

  ‘Nothing seems sacred here,’ he raged at the time. ‘Music is something real and beautiful, and it is sacred, but it’s just being dragged through a trench of shit right now. The whole thing here in Hollywood about fame and beauty and the glorification of the celebrity just made me want to go fucking crazy and kill everyone.’

  Standing in stark opposition to Grohl’s apoplectic anger at the outset of the album, the shimmering ‘Aurora’ is There Is Nothing Left to Lose’s most beautiful, affecting song. Named after the road leading from downtown Seattle to Grohl’s former marital home in Shoreline, Washington – a road lined with strip malls, gun shops, thrift stores and porn shops – it’s a song displaying Grohl’s capacity to find magic and wonder in the most mundane of surroundings. Its creator would later hail it as ‘probably the greatest song we’ve ever written’. Elsewhere Grohl expanded upon the country-blues sound he first explored on the Touch soundtrack with the twanging ‘Ain’t It the Life’, ‘Breakout’ takes a tongue-in-cheek look at a dysfunctional relationship and ‘M.I.A.’ is a rather sweet plea for space and solitude from a man who’s spent the greater part of his life in the public eye.

  With the album in the can, at the tail end of the summer Grohl and his bandmates returned to Los Angeles to hold open auditions for a new guitarist. They were initially dismayed by the calibre of the musicians who turned out: one unfortunate soul wasn’t even capable of taking his guitar from its case before being gently led from the room. Finally, as they were abandoning hope of finding a suitable candidate, Chris Shiflett walked in through the door.

  Born on 6 May 1971 in Santa Barbara, California, Christopher Aubrey Shiflett first picked up a guitar at age 11: by
14, his first band, the cutely titled Lost Kittenz, were playing garages and backyard parties in the wealthy beach town. Originally a fan of Kiss, Dio and the sleaziest rock ’n’ roll bands strutting on Sunset Strip, by his mid-teens Shiflett had discovered punk rock; one of his early bands, Rat Patrol, actually supported Scream in Santa Barbara. The guitarist landed his first ‘serious’ gig in rather fortunate circumstances: he was working in the San Francisco office of Fat Wreck Chords, the punk rock imprint owned by NOFX mainman Fat Mike, when he heard that guitarist Ed Gregor from No Use for a Name, one of the label’s most popular acts, had quit the band; one noisy audition later Shiflett was a professional punk rocker. Four years on, he heard a similar rumour about Foo Fighters.

  ‘I was a huge Foo Fighters fan,’ says Shiflett. ‘My friend had a cassette of the first album way before it was even out, and I loved it. And when the second record came out I was an even bigger Foo Fighters fan. Of all the big rock bands of that era they were by far my favourite. In the summer of 1999, No Use for a Name had just made a new record and we were getting ready to go on tour, when I heard from a friend that Foo Fighters were looking for a guitar player. I was like, “Dude, you gotta get me an audition.” He knew somebody that worked at their law firm and he actually managed to get me an audition. Then I just sat down in my room and played along with those first two records for a week.’

  One week after his first audition, Shiflett received a call from Dave Grohl inviting him back down to Los Angeles for a second try-out. That evening he joined the band at the Sunset Marquis hotel to drink into the small hours. The following day he received a second phone call from a hungover Grohl.

  ‘Say goodbye to your friends,’ said Foo Fighters’ frontman. ‘You’re going on tour.’

  With Foo Fighters dates in Australia, Canada and the USA under his belt, Shiflett had clocked up significant air miles even before There Is Nothing Left to Lose dropped. Released on 2 November 1999, the album débuted in the Top Ten in both the United Kingdom and United States, and in the Top Five in Australia and Canada. Not everyone was taken by the band’s new blissed-out atmospherics, however. ‘The artist formerly known as Grunge Ringo remains stuck in the generic grunge mediocrity mire,’ snipped NME. Kerrang! was rather kinder: ‘Grohl has seemingly discovered where his biggest strength lies – tugging at heartstrings rather than slashing at powerchords.’ Falling somewhere between the two, Rolling Stone rather meekly commented, ‘There Is Nothing Left to Lose is distinguished by its punky guitar-bass-drums directness. In almost every way it is a more modest effort than its predecessor.’