Foo Fighters members Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins discussed recording There Is Nothing Left To Lose in a recent Louder Sound interview.
“It was so great,” smiles Grohl. “We were in a basement in Virginia with sleeping bags nailed to the wall. There’s no record company, there’s no suits knocking on the door, there’s no one telling you what’s good or bad. It was four months of the most mellow recording.”
The relaxed conditions were reflected in the music which was softer than anything they’d produced to that point. “It’s easy to fucking stomp on a distortion pedal and make a chorus blow up,” explains Grohl. “That’s easy. It’s easy to turn up to 10 and scream your balls off. What’s not easy is to write a song that’s a mid-level linear dynamic that moves from beginning to end with melody.
“So that was the idea with a lot of that record, whether it was Learn To Fly, Ain’t It The Life, Gimme Stitches or Next Year. We were more focused on melody and songwriting, and it took a lot of people off guard. A lot of people thought Foo Fighters were selling out or going soft. It was more about getting into the music and writing. That album opened up doors for us to make anything possible.”
Trying to recording the next album wasn’t as easy, for a variety of reasons.
One was Hawkins’s increasing drug use, which culminated in him overdosing during a trip to London.
“After that I started getting my shit together,” says Hawkins. “I wanted to get over that hurdle and start working. I think we all wanted to start working, but in hindsight we jumped into it a little quick.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” agrees Grohl.
