The Foo Fighters’ record company first asked them for a greatest-hits collection a few years ago. “We thought, ‘Yeah, someday, that could be kind of funny, but let us have some hits first,”’ Grohl said. “But now that we did it, I drove around listening to this album, and I got kind of emotional. Now I know where those 15 years went.”
After the release of the album Foo Fighters will take a break, as Grohl begins his own next chapter with Them Crooked Vultures, which he formed with two of his numerous occasional collaborators. Since Nirvana, he has maintained something of a parallel career as a one-man bridge between the worlds of alternative rock and classic rock, performing with superstars like David Bowie, Tom Petty (who once asked him to become the permanent drummer in the Heartbreakers) and Queen.
“Dave is a great drummer and a fine fellow to boot,” said Paul McCartney, who asked Grohl to play with him at a Liverpool concert and at the Grammy Awards in February. “It was totally fab working with him.”
This year Grohl set up a “three-way blind date” with Homme and Jones, to see what might transpire. “Only a few minutes passed before it felt like not only a band but a really good one,” he said.
Them Crooked Vultures’ music — long, twisting songs with multiple sections and tempos, shot through with a scuzzy menace and dark humor — is more complex than the sounds of the Foo Fighters. Grohl called it “the most musical band I’ve ever been in,” and said that he was happy to be working as a drummer again: “You’re the goaltender, the buck stops with you.”
Homme said that he considers Grohl a great frontman, but that “when he plays the drums, he always leaves my jaw dropped — that’s really where the world needs him.”
The band has been playing shows, even major festivals, for months prior to the album’s release, leaking song snippets and hints on the Web as if leading some hard-rock scavenger hunt. “People had serious expectations but no clue what the band actually sounded like,” said Grohl. “So it only made sense to take everyone by surprise and go stealth.”
He said that spending these few weeks toggling between Them Crooked Vultures and Foo Fighters has illustrated more of the similarities in his various musical roles than their differences. “It’s a good example of all the lessons I’ve learned,” he said. “I know what it’s like to be a drummer and what it’s like to be a lead singer, what it is to sit down and shut up and what it is to make 80,000 people stand up and sing.”
Grohl has made an unlikely life for himself by keeping all of his interests in play. Unlike the burning intensity of Jack White, say, who juggles different bands to keep up with the music pouring out of him, Grohl just seems to stay open to what he calls the “happy accidents” that have kept his career going.
“I wouldn’t want the nostalgia to ever keep me from coming up with something new,” he said. “I definitely look ahead more than I count trophies.”
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