Foo Fighters revealed that they ‘never had a hit record’ but managed to find big success anyways in a new EW piece.
Bassist Nate Mendel said, “That’s a thing that people sometimes misunderstand about Foo Fighters. We’ve never had a hit record. Some of our records have sold a million copies, which is not a small number, of course, but it’s also not 3 or 7 million, which rock bands were selling at the time in the ’90s. Even ‘Everlong’ was not one of those songs. The video was played on MTV a lot, but it didn’t propel us into immediately being an arena band. That took a few more years.”
Dave Grohl added, “I remember there was a point where I realized that we represent something, which was funny, because I never thought that we did. I thought, ‘Oh, we’re a band that you can drink beer and bounce around to.’ But at this MTV Awards in Spain in 2002 or 2003, Puff Daddy, f—ing Diddy, was hosting — it was us and Coldplay and Kylie Minogue and a lot of other R&B and pop artists.
We were the only hard rock band there. It was at that moment I realized, oh wait, we’re that band now where someone says, ‘We need a rock band. Does anybody have a rock band? Oh, Foo Fighters? Yeah, just put Foo Fighters on there.’ That was what I imagined was happening.”
