Foos' guitarist Chris Shiflett (far right) says he never suffers from nerves.
Foos' guitarist Chris Shiflett (far right) says he never suffers from nerves.
Their latest album was a road trip across America, but now they're taking it to the world. Chris Schulz chats to the Foo Fighters ahead of their two Auckland shows.
It's the middle of the afternoon, yet there's a Foo Fighter still in bed. There's a very good reason Chris Shiflett is lying down - and it has nothing to do with rock star excess.
"I am lying in my bed right now," the lead guitarist admits sheepishly on the phone from his Los Angeles home.
"I don't want to give you the wrong impression ... my house has that thing where your phone doesn't work in the places you'd normally do interviews, so this is the best spot [for reception]."
No one would blame Shiflett if he was taking a rest. The Foo Fighters' lead guitarist has just returned from a run of stadium shows across South America, the start of the longest world tour yet for the Dave Grohl-led rockers.
It's a demanding schedule that sees the five-piece on the road throughout 2015 and into next year, and comes after gruelling sessions for their latest album Sonic Highways. They set up shop in eight different American cities, giving themselves just a week to record a song - and just a night for Grohl to write his lyrics - before moving on to the next. As added pressure, they filmed an eight-part HBO documentary at the same time.
Right now, the Foos are in New Zealand: last night they kicked off their three-date New Zealand tour in Christchurch; they'll perform an Auckland Town Hall show tomorrow night, before Saturday's supersized Mt Smart Stadium show.
If Shiflett's worried about the demands of being the lead guitarist in one of the world's biggest bands, he's not showing it.
In fact, he claims the Foo Fighters are playing some of the best shows of their career - and they're being rewarded by their fans.
"We had the weirdest stuff going on in South America. In all the years I've been a Foo Fighter I've never seen this happen before. Fans organised these special little moments. I don't know how they did it, but when we played Learn to Fly, thousands of people would throw paper airplanes in the air. There would be these specific moments they had worked out where where everyone would throw confetti. At one show, we walked out and they'd organised the colours of the Colombian flag in balloons," he says. "It was pretty wild. When you play these big shows and something like that happens, it's powerful. It's like, 'Wow that's a lot of people figuring this out on their own, making themselves a part of the show'."
The Foo Fighters rock the crowd at Auckland's Vector Arena, 2008. Photo / Wayne Drought
As part of the Sonic Highways tour, the Foos will perform some of their biggest shows - including two sold out gigs at London's 80,000- capacity Wembley Stadium. It's enough to make most men shiver in their shoes, but Shiflett says he never suffers from nerves.
"I get a rush, it's a kick. It doesn't make me nervous because people are so far away. As a musician, you have to blow it really hard for anyone to notice with that wall of sound. Unless the spotlight's on you and it's your little moment to shine and you fall flat on your face, no one's going to hear a mistake," he says.
Trainspotters take note: if he misses a chord, Shiflett says it will likely happen during new songs from Sonic Highways, which they'll play "four or five songs from". That depends on what Grohl wants when he chooses the setlist.
"If he's a dictator he's a diplomatic dictator. He's good at it. He writes it out every night and makes the show ebb and flow and go up and down, and it works. The ones that are always my favourite are the most obvious ones: Everlong every night is great, we usually close the show with that and it's a good moment with the crowd; and All My Life, sometimes we open with it but I don't like that to be honest. I like it when there's a lull in the set and we come in with that riff."
It's likely to be among the highlights of both Foos shows in Auckland this weekend. Around 30,000 people are expected at Mt Smart Stadium, with 2350 packing the Town Hall on the Friday show. That show is so secretive TimeOut wasn't allowed to talk to Shiflett about it, but as for whether the Foos can top their last show here at Western Springs in 2011, when crowd activity registered on nearby nearby seismographs, Shiflett says that's "a lot to live up to".
"I don't want to give away any surprises but the show has definitely evolved since then. Every time you make a new record you wind up packing more tunes into the set list. It gets a little bit longer and things change ... the show looks great, it's a long show, a lot of songs. "Hopefully people will be happy."
What: The Foo Fighters Where: Friday, Feb 20, Auckland Town Hall; Saturday, Feb 21, Mt Smart Stadium Gates open: 5.30pm. Miss June : 6.20pm Rise Against: 7.05pm Foo Fighters: 8.15pm Curfew: 11pm New album:Sonic Highways, out now
