Foo Fighters members Taylor Hawkins and Pat Smear discussed the state of rock in a new Fuse interview. Alternative Nation transcribed their comments.
Hawkins said, “I think there’s good stuff out there, but you really have to go hunt for it. When I was in high school, Guns N’ Roses were the biggest band in the world, and the biggest thing on the radio. Obviously that’s not the kind of thing that’s happening right now.”
I always like to think that there’s a Kurt Cobain somewhere in his parents’ basement, hating his parents, hating the world, getting ready to rewrite rock and roll with a guitar, bass, and a drum set. Because I love rock and roll, and I like the feel, I know we both do, and our band in general, we like a human feel to music. I feel, no pun intended, that’s kind of missing a lot. It just so happens right now that hip hop and sort of throwaway pop music, I call it throwaway pop music, my kids wouldn’t, but I do. It just happens to be at the top of the charts for the most part, except for a couple of weeks ago when we had a number one record.”
Pat Smear added, “I don’t remember where it was, in the U.S. or somewhere, but I remember because everyone asks us ‘is rock dead’ ‘are you keeping rock alive’ and our album went to number one somewhere. There was one place in particular where the top three albums were all rock albums. I was like, what happened to rock is dead?”
Hawkins said, “They’ve been saying that since the late 90’s. I mean I remember doing interviews for There Is Nothing Left To Lose. Some German guy said, ‘So why do you play rock music still? It’s a dead form of art, you know it’s dance music now, correct? You don’t know that, you guys play dead form of music.’ We’re like, ‘Well, it’s not dead at our shows. It’s alive and well.’ Like I said, hopefully there’s some genius pissed off at the world ready to take it all up again.”