8. Foo FightersThere Is Nothing Left To Lose
If I was gonna pick a Foo Fighters record, and I should for many reasons, I’d probably put There Is Nothing Left To Lose in there. I guess that was the breakthrough album for them right? That was the first time I became an active listener of the Foo Fighters stuff. I played that album a lot and it was funny, but when I heard ‘Learn To Fly’ on the radio, I was just like, "Who’s doing this? Who is this doing this that sounds like this?"
Years later, to spend some time with Dave [Grohl] and get asked to record the song (‘Dear Rosemary’) with him was really great. It was very, very funny. You know the parts they showed in the documentary [Foo Fighters: Back And Forth] weren’t the funny ones. I came in with the idea of singing but I also brought my guitar and some of my pedals. So I get in and we’re singing and singing and singing and learning the song and Dave’s started directing traffic and Butch [Vig] is manning the ship like, "Er, that’s good, let’s try again", and then I would nail it and I would say to him, "You should put a star on that one". Butch and I worked together in the 80s a couple of times so we knew each other, it was great, it was like old home. Dave was supposed to be envisioning a twelve-string solo, like a Byrds-y kind of thing, and I was like, "Really, you wanna do that?" so I came up with a bridge where we could sing back and forth and that’s what we did. So we got that nailed and we were all taking a moment and letting it sink in and listening to it. I said, "I brought my guitar, I don’t know if you guys have any interest in that?" and Dave was like, "No – no, why bring Hendrix or Clapton into the room and say no, don’t play guitar?!" I don’t know Dave well but I’m just trying to be deferring and play polite, you know house rules – when you walk into a session, it’s always house rules – and just being nice and he was like, "Fuck yeah, what kind of amp do you want?" I was like see this, this, this and this. I get the guitar out and get that working and get out my pedals, and I have all my settings covered with tape. He was like, "Huh, don’t want anyone to see that eh?" I can’t rip that tape off Dave or else the secret’s out!
Later, he said, "I’m getting ready to put the record out, are you gonna come out and play with us?" I was like, "What?! I’ve got a book coming out, I’ve got work to do!" and he said, "Goddammit, make it work." He was very, very sweet – we did the Milton Keynes thing those two nights where I was going out there and DJing. I’d play stuff like Groove Armada to Muse to Pixies, Jus†ice, stuff that would have a beat, have an edge, get people warmed up and they were really digging that, but ostensibly that was so I could come up and play a couple of songs with them. And I was the guy that says, "Look I’m not coming on tour just to come and play two songs, find something for me to do, so I feel like I’m actually doing something", so that’s how the DJ thing came about – I was working all night. Otherwise you’re just sitting in catering all night. I’d go up and DJ and Joy Formidable would play, I would DJ, Social Distortion would play, I would DJ, then they’d put their house music on 15 minutes before they start, then I would go to catering, have a cup of coffee, pack up my DJ stuff and go on. Better to feel you’re doing something than be a walk-on.
