“IT WAS THE FOO FIGHTERS’ 25TH ANNIVERSARY, SO IT was going to be a big year,” he says. “We thought, it’d be great to make an album, our 10th studio album, and I started planning around that — ‘Let’s circle the planet! Let’s release this documentary thing that we’ve made! Let’s do these van tours! We’ll play the same cities 25 years to the date that we did on our first-ever tour… and in the same van we did the tour in!’ Just all this shit, you know? Basically coming up with this world-domination-celebration thing.”
Spoiler alert: 2020 did not work out the way anyone — Grohl and the Foo Fighters included — had planned. Which is why the singer and guitarist, rather than telling this story to Guitar World from the back of a beat-up van in some far-flung locale (that van tour, scheduled to begin last April, was cancelled as the world went into COVID-19 shutdown) is, like everyone else, at home, talking about his aborted world domination plot over — what else? — Zoom.
And when our narrative is enriched with brand new anecdotes courtesy of Dave’s Foo Fighters coguitarist, Chris Shiflett? That interview takes place over Zoom as well, with Shiflett safely confined in his home.
The final piece of the Foos guitar triumvirate, Pat Smear, meanwhile, is clearly not taking any chances. He speaks with GW via a crackly cellphone connection from the east coast of Canada, where he’s holed up, he reports, “in the snow in a little cabin deep in the woods, with no mail delivery or garbage pickup.”
“He’s turned into a Canadian frontiersman,” Shiflett says with a laugh.
2020, to say the least, was weird.
This story is from the April 2021 edition of Guitar World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 2021 edition of Guitar World.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Kittie - Guitarists Morgan Lander and Tara Mcleod discuss the canadian metal powerhouse's unexpected rebirth — by fire!
Guitarists Morgan Lander and Tara McLeod explain that making new music was “not on their bingo card” when the band regrouped in 2022 for a few festival appearances, preferring to think of the sets as more of a “final lap” than a new beginning. But drilling into old favorites — whether the nu-flavored teenage slams of 1999’s Spit or the more venomously groove-thrashed tunes of their late-’00s period — revealed that despite not having raged together in years, there was something undeniably special about Kittie’s musical connection. “Playing with these girls is like putting on an old pair of pants,” Lander says. “It’s very comfortable — and it looks good too.”
McKinley James - Why all you really need is a guitar, a drummer and some serious low-end six-string skills
Nashville-based blues rocker McKinley James came flying out of the gate in 2022 with his Dan Auerbachproduced EP, Still Standing By. His momentum screeched to a halt, however, when his keyboardist split, leaving only him and his drummer, Jason Smay (who also happens to be his father). “For a moment, I was like, ‘What are we going to do?” James says. “But then I thought, ‘Well, other bands have succeeded as a duo. Maybe we can, too.”
TC Electronic TC 2290P Dynamic Digital Delay
THE MID EIGHTIES was a golden age for digital delay, thanks to the proliferation of pro- and studio-quality rack effects units from Eventide, Korg, Lexicon, Roland and Yamaha.
Danelectro Doubleneck
WHEN I THINK back to the Seventies, the famously coined “Me” decade, it seems the only surefire way you could leave audiences awestruck was to strap on a doubleneck guitar.
CARLOS ALOMAR
The former David Bowie guitarist talks Young Americans, Station to Station and the Berlin Trilogy, plus recording (and co-writing) \"Fame\" with John Lennon
GEORGE TERRY
It turns out Eric Clapton's Seventies guitarist (and co-writer of \"Lay Down Sally\") also played on ABBA's \"Voulez-Vous.\" Below, he looks back on a decade-plus of E.C., Bee Gees, Diana Ross and more
FRANK MARINO
The Mahogany Rush frontman charts the band's Seventies lows and highs, plus SG's, pickups and how he was definitely not visited by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix
DEWAYNE "BLACKBYRD" MCKNIGHT
The jazz/funk/fusion veteran on his smooth segue from Herbie Hancock sideman to full-on Funkdaledic member -plus his '70s gear and what he learned from Shuggie Otis
PAT TRAVERS
The Canadian-born virtuoso discusses the rise and fall of the Pat Travers Band, witnessing the U.K. punk revolution and the riotous roots of \"Snortin' Whiskey\"
JOE PERRY
The iconic guitarist looks back on Aerosmith in the Seventies, the decade that literally made and temporarily broke apart those Bad Boys from Boston
