In a 1995 Rolling Stone interview, Grohl talked about limiting the Foo Fighters’ media exposure. In the early days of Grohl’s new band, it seemed as though he was consciously following in Cobain’s footsteps - their first tour was an opening slot for Mike Watt of the Minutemen. “Rope”īy the time Wasting Light was released, the Foo Fighters had long since stepped out of Nirvana’s shadow, which no doubt made Grohl less touchy about evoking his old band. It’s also possible that Grohl was just looking for an excuse to learn more about Gary Johnson.
This is underlined by the inclusion of Krist Novoselic on bass, the only time two-thirds of Nirvana have ever reunited on a Foo Fighters record. Almost two decades later, Grohl’s view on leveraging Cobain to promote his band evolved somewhat - in the documentary, it is implied (though not explicitly confirmed) that one of the big ballads from Wasting Light, “I Should Have Known,” was inspired by Grohl’s late, great former bandmate. This ranged from the first album’s cover (an otherwise harmless photo of a vintage toy gun) to the lyrics, which Grohl (somewhat perversely) took pains to explain meant absolutely nothing. In the underrated and surprisingly candid 2011 band documentary Foo Fighters: Back And Forth, Grohl speaks with still-apparent resentment about how during the first few years of the band, everything he did was filtered by the media through the lens of Kurt Cobain and his suicide. During the band’s first tour, which took place before the debut came out, fans constantly requested this song because it was the only Grohl composition they were familiar with. “Marigold” ultimately signifies exactly how marginal Dave Grohl was as a songwriter at the beginning of the Foo Fighters. It also feels more like a Foo Fighters song than a Nirvana song, in that it’s presented openly and without apology as a pop song.
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Technically a Nirvana song - it was the B-side of “Heart Shaped Box” - though I’m counting it here because it was included on the live album Skin And Bones. And there was good reason to assume that nobody would remember the Foo Fighters beyond the mid-’90s, either. Do you remember Sweet 75, the band that Krist Novoselic started after Nirvana ended? Of course not. But when this album dropped in 1995, it was genuinely shocking that the drummer from Nirvana put out a record and it included so many immediate and catchy songs like “Good Grief” on it. The Foo Fighters are now looked at not only as the epitome of a middle-of-the-road mainstream rock band, but also as an inevitable band, the sort of act that we are destined to see play award shows and presidential inaugurations and all other public fetes from now until the end of time. This is also the only Foo Fighters album that would describe as genuinely heroic, even more than the LP that literally has “My Hero” on it.
(It’s his version of Paul McCartney’s first post-Beatles solo record.) That homemade quality is what I love about it, along with the quality of the songs, many of which you’ll see later on this list. I suspect Foo Fighters has been memory-holed because it’s not a band record, but rather a glorified demo made almost entirely by Grohl. It’s not as if the setlist didn’t have room for it - as it was, the show was larded with a drum solo and a guitar solo, as well as numerous classic rock covers. When I saw the Foo Fighters perform in 2018, I was disappointed that they didn’t play a single song from the first record.
My favorite Foo Fighters album is the self-titled 1995 debut, which I feel like used to be the consensus choice for the band’s best record but now seems largely forgotten.