On July 4, 1995 the Foo Fighters Self-titled Debut Album is realesed.
Band Personnel (alphabetically): William Goldsmith (drums) Dave Grohl (guitar, vocals) Nate
Mendel (bass) Pat Smear (guitar)
Greg Dulli plays guitar on "X-Static" and is therefore the only other musician to play with Dave
on the first album.
Production Credit: Barrett Jones & Foo Fighters
Label: Roswell/Capitol (note the order)
The Colour & The Shape was released May 20, 1997 on Roswell/Capitol.
"The album really tells the whole story" says Foo Fighters lead vocalist and guitarist David Grohl
on the making of his band's brand new The Colour & The Shape. "It begins with 'Doll,' which is a
song about entering into something that you weren't prepared for and being scared of that.
Then you go through 11 songs that have to do with guilt, love, the pain of losing someone... It
runs the course, the whole thing, until you get to the end, to 'New Way Home,' which is meant to
be the resolution."
Flash back to 1995-96: A platinum-plus debut LP, "Best New Artist" awards--not to mention high
marks across the board--in the Rolling Stone and SPIN readers polls, a year and a half of sold
out shows from the U.S. to Southeast Asia, the1996 MTV Video Award for "Best Group Video"...
You'd think these guys would take some time off to rest on their laurels, to smell the flowers, to
bask in the praise and accolades...
You'd think, but you're not a member of the Foo Fighters. August 1996 marked the end of the
band's grueling touring regimen supporting the Foo Fighters album--and a week's vacation for
Grohl before composing the music for the Paul Schrader feature film "Touch" (on which he once
again performed virtually every note save for a few guest spots, which included John Doe of X
and
Veruca Salt's Louise Post). By early October, certified workaholic Grohl's fellow Foos had
sufficiently recovered from road fatigue to begin pre-production on the new album at the 24-
track
studio of Barrett Jones, with whom Grohl had co-produced the first Foos LP.
But there was the matter of those pesky lyrics. Or as Grohl puts it, "I had nothing. Absolutely
nothing." "I had three or four weeks to write lyrics for 13 songs," he recalls. "It's strange, now, the
way it's all fallen into place. It seems like it was intended to be this thematic, conceptual thing. It
wasn't, but when I look at it now... I was joking that the cover should be just a picture of a
therapist's couch. It's just weird. The way it's worked out is just really weird. And it's liberating.
The lyrics are like my therapist's notepad. Completely bizarre. I can really say if people start
asking about the last six months of my life, I can honestly say, 'Go read the lyrics.' I'm not even
saying 'Go try to figure it out from the lyrics,' just read them. It's right there."
That said, anyone who should ask those personal questions now knows what the answers will
(or
won't) be in advance. As for the music, however, The Colour & The Shape is everything the first
full length, full band recording by the Foo Fighters should be. Where the first Foos record was
essentially the David Grohl project (For those terminally out of the loop: Grohl sang and played
everything on the first album, with the exception of a guest guitar turn by Greg Dulli on 'X-
Static'),
with guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel and (now former) drummer William Goldsmith
joining later, The Colour & The Shape is a truly collective effort. And Grohl has nothing but the
highest praise for his fellow voices on The Colour & The Shape.
"Nate's an amazing bass player. He's so good at finding a sub-melody. I come up with a riff and
I
want to find a perfect vocal melody, something that's unpredictable, clever, and not so similar to
anything else. I'll think I've found that perfect melody and I'll be singing along, thinking 'This is
so
great, it goes so well with the chord progression,' and then Nate starts doing this bass thing that
just blows the vocal melody away. He's just got such a great sense of melody.
"The cool thing about Pat is I'll come up with a song and show it to him and he refuses to play
the
same chords that I play. If I'm down low on the neck, he's way up there. We'll never meet.
Sometimes I'll try to get him to play something more similar to what I'm doing: 'Pat, that sounds a
little weird, maybe you should come down to where I am' and he'll just say 'No, that's OK. I like
this.' It's great. The dynamic of the band has just, sort of, expanded. You can tell on the record."
That group dynamic shows and shines throughout: On the subtle and subdued beauty of
opener
"Doll," the infectious and sublime harmonies of first single "Monkey Wrench," "Everlong" and
"New Way Home," the balance of gentle melody and cathartic rage on "My Poor Brain" and
"Enough Space," the epic centerpiece "February Stars," and so on, and so on ad infinitum. The
Colour & The Shape expands from the singular voice of 1995's Foo Fighters into a work equal
parts realized potential and promise for the future.
"We didn't want to make this record a lo-fi basement project," Grohl says. "I'm sort of tired of
these bands who write really amazing pop songs and record them on an 8-track for the sake of
recording their album on an 8-track; people who think that's the punk rock purist thing to do.
That
would be the wrong thing for this band. For these songs. There's stuff on this album where I'm
singing falsetto, stuff where there's four or five guitar parts going on at once. I just thought 'I'd
rather have this sound like a Queen record than, say, a... Rapeman record.' But we didn't make
it
that big a production. It's not like Guns 'N' Roses' 'November Rain' or anything. But for us, it's a
stretch. I've never done anything like this before."
Props are therefore due Gil Norton, who did a stellar, if stern, job of guiding the Foo Fighters
through their first band/producer relationship on The Colour & The Shape. "I wanted Gil
because
of the work he'd done with The Pixies," Grohl recalls. "His knack for making a really fucked-up
sound sound really... divine. He can sort of polish a really messy guitar sound so that it's still a
messy guitar sound, but it's really clear and distinct. The clarity on all those records is really
great.
You can hear everything. It's so good. I'd never met with producers before so I had no idea what
to expect. So we met up in New York and I brought along some rehearsal tapes. We sat down
and started listening to them and within two seconds he started making suggestions. He got
through
the verse and the chorus of one song and he said, 'Oh, you know what you should do? You
should
take that guitar line and the chorus and bridge it...' It was exactly what I imagined a producer
should do."
"Plus Gil's a fucking whip-cracker," Grohl continues. "He made us do things 20 to 50 times.
There's only one first take on the entire album. I thought he was going to have a heart attack
when
that happened. Still, he was like 'That sounded great. Want to try it again?' It could see the
beads
of sweat forming on his forehead. It's almost like an obsessive-compulsive thing. He has to do
things ten times because that next take might sound a little better."
Six weeks spent living and recording at Washington's remote Bear Creek studios were followed
by a record two-week break to assess the work in progress (It was also during this period that
Grohl found time to record "Walking After You" at Washington DC's WGNS studio, the only
demo-style track to make it on to the record; "It was the moment. I'll never be able to capture
that
again"). Reconvening at Grandmaster in Los Angeles, the band recorded the bulk of material
that
would become the finished album at a breakneck pace. By the final stretch of recording, the
band
was bouncing between recording and mixing in the space of the same day. "I had resigned to
the
idea that I was just going to be in the studio for the rest of my life," says Grohl. "By this time, it
was
the middle of February. Four months of being in the studio. And the one day that I had off while
we were in L.A., I went to another studio to go fuck around. I just couldn't be out of the studio.
After the record was finally done, it took me two weeks to get used to the idea, the feeling of not
being in the studio."
Following the completion of the L.A. sessions, drummer William Goldsmith made final his
decision
to leave the Foo Fighters (Rumors that Goldsmith was ousted or left due to Grohl's alleged
recording over his tracks have proven unfounded, as Goldsmith has left on completely amicable
terms). "The idea that I just scrapped his tracks and did them over is just wrong," Grohl explains.
"We re-did entire songs. The L.A. recordings are different versions. Completely different. We
basically re-did a lot of the record. William just felt that he didn't want to go back out on the road
again for such a long time. I don't know if he'd ever gotten used to the idea of being in a band
that
would play a festival in front of 60,000 people or a headlining show for 4000. Let alone doing
things like that for a year and a half. I think William felt like he'd be more comfortable living a
more
stable, grounded life."
With the record completed and new drummer Taylor Hawkins in place, it's back to work for the
Foo Fighters. A "Monkey Wrench" video directed by Grohl has been completed, and the band
has hit the road for, well, probably longer than a year and a half this time
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