In an interview with Warren Huart on Produce Like A Pro, recording engineer Bradley Cook touched on putting together the legendary Foo Fighters track My Hero and his work with Dave Grohl. He also revealed that the iconic Foo Fighters song is about the death of Grohl’s fellow Nirvana brethren, Kurt Cobain. Grohl has been secretive about the song’s meaning despite speculation for years. Alternative Nation transcribed Cook’s comments.
Huart: So, My Hero, what can you tell us about this track?
Cook: It’s about Kurt Cobain.
Huart: Oh it is, oh I never knew that.
Cook: That’s what he [Grohl] told me, yeah. The cool thing about this is that he wanted to do double drums, like let’s do double drums on this. So we had recorded the first set in the cement drum room, then we moved the double drums to the back parking garage where was a big stage. We just got such a huge sound out of it, it was such a massive room and with those tom-toms coming, you can hear that parking garage.
Huart: So it’s two drum kits?
Cook: Yeah, did you not know that?
Huart: No, I do now. [laughs]
Cook: Yeah and it’s no pro-tool so it’s all on tape. Just to tell you how tight he is with himself.
Huart: So it’s two drum kits?
Huart: Yeah, twenty-four tracks too. So, I must have busted him down to a smaller amount of tracks. The second kit was busted down to kicks in their top kit room or something.
During another interview, Cook looked back on engineering the Foo Fighters classic The Colour and the Shape, and working with Dave Grohl. He also revealed the very sad story behind a mysterious part of “Everlong.”
Using the song “Everlong” as an example of some of the band’s recording techniques, the two go through a number of interesting moments during the sessions. One involved Dave telling a which Huart and Cook can hear on the playback of the original tapes. Alternative Nation transcribed Cook’s comment.
“So [the] assistant Ryan Boesch told us the story that his dad would come home from his night job and when him and his brother were too loud, his dad would give him military punishment and have him hold [up] his boots at the foot of his bed. Hold them up as he slept. If he made a noise, he would make him hold his boots up.”
Listening to more of the playback, they hear Grohl saying on tape with Cook paraphrasing, ‘I would cry because the boots were so heavy.’ – Cook then adds: “They must have been little kids or something.”
As Dave is telling the story on the original tape, “Everlong” is playing in the background just as it kicks into ‘if everything could ever feel this real forever.’
