Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear reacted to ‘not playing’ on Foo Fighters’ debut album, yet how Dave Grohl found a way to include his bandmates in the making of process anyways.
That band hit the road to support what was essentially Grohl’s solo record, but Smear reveals to Guitar that there was a bit more to it than that. “The first thing we did in the studio as a band was actually mixing the first album,” he tells us, “Which Dave had recorded by himself. It was a pretty cool thing to bring us in on, and we spent a week or so in the studio doing that, so in a way that was our first record, even though we didn’t play on it.”
Smear’s first studio recording with the band would yield the acclaimed 1997 album The Colour And The Shape. The band used several studios, going from what Smear describes as, “Practising recording as a band” in Seattle to finishing the project at Grandmaster in Hollywood. “I think that’s probably where Dave got the idea of recording different things in different studios to see how the environment affects what we record, because we did that so much on that first album together,” Smear tells Guitar.
Smear himself then left the band, but has returned for Wasting Light, Sonic Highways, Concrete and Gold, and Medicine at Midnight.
