Fighting talk from Foos

Foo Fighters: Nate Mendel Chris Shiflett, Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl is a metronome. His drumming is the stuff of rock'n'roll legend. He's also a frontman, and a good laugh. Look at him - with his cheesy clenched grin, the Foo Fighters leader could be a cartoon.

But despite Grohl's dominant personality, he ain't no control freak. "He just has a clear vision about what he wants and you're best working with him as opposed to working against him," says Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.

"Sometimes someone will have an idea that they feel strongly about and Dave will be like, 'No'. You have to eat shit every once in a while but for the most part we see where he's going with it."

Since Grohl formed the Foo Fighters - following Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994 and the demise of Nirvana - he's been the band's boss, singer and songwriter.

Hawkins even seems surprised that a song he wrote actually made it on to the new Foo Fighters double album, In Your Honour.

"I got a song on the record, that's pretty amazing to people," he says in a nasal drawl.

There are also a few brief moments on that song, Cold Day In the Sun, that would've haunted the hell out of Grohl. When Hawkins sings some of his more gravelly lines he sounds like Cobain.

"I love Kurt Cobain," he says. "I think in a way he was our John Lennon. People have said different stuff about my singing and one friend said that to me and I can't help it, it's how my voice is.

"But someone also said Don Henley," he laughs.

On In Your Honour the Foo Fighters have done a Beatles and released a double album. "But it's not really a double record in what people consider a double record, like blips and blops all over the place, and 'Number nine, number nine, number nine'," says Hawkins, referring to the Beatles' sprawling and challenging White Album from 1968. "You know? Shit like that. It's not like that."

He's right, it's not like that at all. In Your Honour is far more simple. The first album is a rockin', balls-out pack of songs that start triumphantly with the metal-meets-The Who pomp of the title track.

The second album is a quieter, more gentle and acoustic Foo Fighters set featuring Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones on mandolin and piano, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age in an acoustic guitar duel with Grohl, and Norah Jones singing on Virginia Moon.

Apparently, Grohl wanted female vocals to accompany him on Virginia Moon and by chance he heard a Norah Jones song. "His wife was listening to Norah Jones or something," laughs Hawkins.

"People think of her singing backing vocals on Monkey Wrench or something. But that's not what it is, is it? The one thing about the two records, especially the rock record, there's no, 'We're really cool' vibe to it. And that kinda crosses over to using Norah Jones. Some of the really hip, alternative snobs will think that's really lame, for whatever reason, but in the end it's only music and it's all about emotion and performance."

Although, Hawkins admits, some people don't like the acoustic album. "It's a grower and it's still growing on my girl actually. She thinks the rock record is amazing and the acoustic one is [in a girly voice], 'Kinda boring'.

"And it is kind of, but it's not supposed to be in your face. A lot of my favourite records are mellow. Like the Byrds records like Sweetheart of the Rodeo, they don't catch you right away. So with the double record it's really more like two records.

"We could have put them out separately, but that would've been more expensive for people. I think a lot of people will listen to the rock one mainly and put the acoustic one aside and hopefully kind of discover it, maybe a year from now. Maybe their girlfriend will discover it, or they'll put it on while they're making breakfast. I like listening to mellow music in the morning."

The Foos, whose other members are bass player Nate Mendel and guitarist Chris Shiflett, spent more than six weeks recording the rock album before starting the acoustic album. The acoustic tracks took just two weeks to finish, and because they happened more naturally the band decided to scrap nearly all the rock tracks and start again.

"We realised you get a better spirit in a track if you work more that way. So we went back to the rock stuff, kept [first single] Best Of You, which for some reason had something about it, kept No Way Back, because that was the first song we did, so there was a lot of excitement in it. We scrapped the rest, they didn't have the recklessness we wanted."

Thanks to his love of metal, that reckless yet big and melodic sound has been an important part of Grohl's songwriting since the 36-year-old started penning his own material in his early teens.

In the late 80s he joined Washington DC hardcore band Scream as a drummer and in the band's final days he started recording his songs in the basement studio of friend Barrett Jones.

When he joined Nirvana and moved to Seattle in the early 90s he kept writing and recording solo material. Following Nirvana's demise, and with Grohl playing every instrument, he and Jones recorded a number of songs that would become the 1995 debut Foo Fighters album.

Thanks to Grohl's profile from Nirvana, and the single This Is A Call, that debut was a huge success. Then with 1997's The Colour and the Shape (with singles Monkey Wrench and My Hero) and 1999's There Is Nothing left To Lose the Foo Fighters became one of the world's biggest bands.

However, following a number of sometimes messy line-up changes, it hasn't been a smooth ride for the Foos.

Grohl's drumming stint with Queens of the Stone Age on Songs For the Deaf in 2002 was enough for many fans to predict the end of the band.

"But he's not going to work for somebody," scoffs Hawkins, whose "little forays" into drugs have also added tension within the band's ranks.

"He's such a great songwriter, he loves to play drums, and through that whole Queens of the Stone Age thing he realised he could go out and do that and still have a band. That was a shock to the system of everyone from fans to even inside the band a little bit. He realised real quickly that he likes having his own band, writing his own songs and having this family vibe that we have."

All the Foo Fighters have their own solo projects and Hawkins believes that's one of the reasons they've been able to stay together so long.

His band, Coattail Riders, has an album coming out soon, Shiflett is in Jackson United, Mendel has Fire Theft, and Grohl released an album by his metal side project Probot last year.

"We all have our avenues to get out what we're not able to get out in the Foo Fighters. Whether it's Dave going to play drums, or when Nate's in Fire Theft, he plays whatever he wants. And I do my own recording with some friends and not only do I write all the songs but I play the weird rhythms that I like to play which is a totally different style of drumming to Foo Fighters. You have to do that, especially if you're going to be in a band for 10 years." 

LOWDOWN

WHO: Foo Fighters

FORMED: 1995, Seattle

LINE UP: Dave Grohl (guitar/vocals), Nate Mendel (bass), Taylor Hawkins (drums), and Chris Shiflett (guitar).

PAST ALBUMS: Foo Fighters (1995); The Colour and the Shape (1997); There Is Nothing Left To Lose (1999); One By One (2002).

NEW ALBUM: In Your Honour, out now.

KEY TRACKS: This Is a Call, Big Me (1995); Monkey Wrench, My Hero, (1997); Learn To Fly (1999); All My Life (2002); Best Of You, No Way Back, Razor, and Virginia Moon (2005).

ALSO SEE: Probot - Probot (2004) Grohl's metal collaboration; Jackson United - Western Ballads (2005) Shiflett's band; Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For the Deaf (2002) Grohl drums.