The recording of the Foo Fighters’ second album The Colour And The Shape nearly saw the end of the band – with frontman Dave Grohl scrapping a whole album’s worth of material and disagreements causing their drummer to quit.

But an inspired late-night solo songwriting session produced a moment of genius that pushed the band to create their greatest album.

The song that saved Grohl’s masterpiece from imploding was Everlong.

It was Grohl alone who created the first, self-titled Foo Fighters album in 1995 in the aftermath of former Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain’s death.

After a hugely positive reaction to that debut, the Foo Fighters – at this time comprising of Grohl, ex-Nirvana/Germs guitarist Pat Smear and ex-Sunny Day Real Estate rhythm section Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith – sought to record a bigger, bolder follow-up as a full-band.

Desiring a less DIY, more mainstream rock sound, the band enlisted producer Gil Norton – famed for his work on the Pixies’ Doolittle – to oversee the recording of their second album in late 1996. But after setting up camp in Bear Creek Studios in Washington state, the resulting sessions were far from enjoyable for the group, all of whom were relatively inexperienced in a professional studio.

In his autobiography The Storyteller, Grohl wrote: “Gil was a notorious taskmaster, and his meticulous attention to detail ultimately paid off, but not before breaking our spirit after 30 or 40 takes of each song.”

Whilst the band were mentally strained from being overworked, tensions were further raised for Grohl after he was served with divorce papers at the studio from his wife Jennifer Youngblood. After a month of stress, things came to a head when Grohl and Norton became dissatisfied with Goldsmith’s drumming.

“Gil called Nate and I the rhythmless section, so that was encouraging,” Goldsmith recalled in Foos documentary Back and Forth. “Constantly, there was this feeling that, whatever song we were working on, Dave had a drum part for it already in his head.”

Frustrated, Goldsmith felt that his contributions could never live up to Grohl’s impossible standards.

In the same film, Grohl claims: “When I’ve written a song, I have kind of a clear idea of where the basic root accents should lie… which is a fancy way of saying I know what the drums should sound like in my head as I’m [playing guitar]. If I listen to a song, and I don’t think it has the thing that it needs, it’s not necessarily gonna get past me and get on an album.”

In need of a break, the band took the Christmas period off, and a jaded Grohl, homeless after splitting from Youngblood, returned to his home state of Virginia to his mother’s house.

Listening back to their work so far, Grohl was disappointed that the group could not reach his high expectations. He recalls: “I [had] a conversation with Pat, saying, ‘It has to be better than this.’”

Whilst in Virginia, alone, Grohl channelled his frustration into something positive, and wrote two new compositions that would help him refocus and finish the album – the pensive Walking After You the cathartic Everlong.

“It wasn’t a surprise to me when Dave came back from Virginia with two good new songs,” Norton states in Paul Brannigan’s Grohl biography This Is A Call. “Dave never stops, he’s constantly trying to better the work that he’s got. But when I heard Everlong, I was like ‘Oh…’ It made the album whole. It was the catalyst that held everything together.”

The song’s inception began with its instantly recognisable intro riff.

“I remember coming up with the riff while recording [lead single] Monkey Wrench,” Grohl told NME. “The song is in drop D tuning, and in between takes I was fooling around and I found that chord.”

Beginning with a Dmaj7 chord with the open bottom D string pedal note, the all-downstroke strumming moves to a Bsus2 shape, which then slides down to Gsus2 and back to Bsus2, before the other instruments join in.

Grohl initially dismissed the riff as being too similar to Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia, but decided to stick with it.

“I didn’t really put it together until we were on [our] Christmas break,” he said. “I demoed it all by myself. It [was] the same song, but just super raw.”

Committed to seeing the album through, Grohl ultimately made the decision to re-record it in full, with sessions moving to Grandmaster studios in LA, and Grohl stepping behind the kit to play the drum parts himself.

Taylor Hawkins, the band’s long-serving drummer who would replace Goldsmith on the following tour, said: “[Grohl] didn’t fire [Goldsmith], he just said, ‘Dude, you’re not ready to make a record yet, and this record’s make or break [for us].’”

But for Goldsmith, the removal of his drum parts cut deep.

He recalled: “Dave said, ‘You know, I still want you to tour the record’, and I was like, ‘As it is now, I need to re-build my soul, re-find it… So thanks but no thanks.’”

Goldsmith left the band for good before the album was finished.

Emboldened by this decision and sticking with his creative vision, Grohl delivered an inspired performance behind the kit across 11 of the album’s 13 songs.

Speaking on the Produce Like a Pro YouTube channel, engineer Bradley Cook said of Grohl: “He was rusty for about two takes, and then just so good after that. He hadn’t played for a long time, and then he was just on fire.”

When it came to his guitar parts Grohl – a die-hard Gibson lover – played the song on his RD Standard through a Fender Tone Master head and a Mesa/Boogie 4x12 cab. Smear, meanwhile, opted for his trusty Hagstrom HiiN, with a Mesa Boogie Studio .22 preamp and a Crest 4801 power amp that mirrored Kurt Cobain’s In Utero touring rig.

Pat Smear also played through a Marshall cab, but kept blowing the speakers – a happy accident, believes Cook: “It sounded really good, so we kept putting new speakers in and kept blowing them. Pat’s sound is a real punky, middley sound complimentary to [Dave’s] Boogie [amp].”

On the pedal front, the guitarists made use of a ProCo Turbo Rat, a ProCo Rat 2, a Kay Fuzz, a Jordan BossTone fuzz and more across the album’s sessions.

The lyrics to Everlong were inspired after Grohl began a brief romance with Louise Post of alt-rock band Veruca Salt. As Grohl told Kerrang!: “It’s about a girl that I’d fallen in love with, and it was basically about being connected to someone so much that not only do you love them physically and spiritually, but when you sing along with them, you harmonise perfectly.”

Fascinatingly, whilst the band were in California, Post recorded backing vocals for the track from Chicago. Singing along as the song played through her landline phone speaker, Norton and Cook mic’d up the speaker of their studio phone – a long-distance contribution that perfectly aligned with the song’s yearning lyrics.

With the album complete, the band had weathered a storm that had seen them lose their drummer, and would ultimately lead to Smear’s departure nine months later due to exhaustion. Grohl, however, had found his mojo, reclaiming his identity as both a musician and a person, and so a reinvigorated Foo Fighters marched on.

The Colour And The Shape was a success for the band, peaking at No 3 in the 1997 UK album charts and at No 10 in the US Billboard 200. It has since gone platinum in six countries.

As a single, Everlong only reached a shrug-worthy number 42 on the US Radio Songs chart by the year-end, but fared much better in the UK, where it peaked at No 2.

“The funny thing about Everlong is that people consider [it] our biggest hit, and people consider that album [our] seminal record, but at the time it wasn’t a huge hit,” admitted Taylor Hawkins to NME. “Dave did an acoustic version later by happenstance [live on The Howard Stern Show], and that got played more than the rock version at first. That song took years to build up the kind of esteem that now has become ‘the great Everlong.’”

But the album and its four singles helped the band’s rise immeasurably.

“We went on the road and we played as many places, as many shows as we could, and it was starting to grow,” Grohl said. “You could see there were 2,000 people, 3,000 people, 4,000 people at gigs.

“We were no longer playing the afternoon slot at the festival. We were playing the evening slot at the festival. And Everlong was on the radio, and all of a sudden there were music videos on MTV and it was happening to us – that thing that happens to new bands as they start to get popular.”

The Everlong video was created by French director Michel Gondry, fresh off of a creative hot streak with Bjork, and his iconic ’90s promo clip has it all – Evil Dead references, Grohl with Liberty spike hair, Teddy Boys, a giant dial-up phone, and Hawkins dressed as Grohl’s female companion.

But Gondry originally had an even more elaborate idea. “It took him an hour to explain it,” says Grohl. “I had to tell him, ‘Dude, the song is four fucking minutes long!’ Daryl Hannah was supposed to be my love interest… The whole idea was amazing. He’s a fucking genius. To make a video with him was an honour.”

On top of becoming a fan favourite, the legacy of Everlong has been cemented in popular culture with appearances in TV shows Daria and Friends, as well as the Martin Scorsese film The Wolf Of Wall Street.

Legendary late-night host David Letterman declared it his favourite song, helping him recover from heart surgery back in 2000. The band would honour Letterman by performing Everlong live on his final ever show in 2015.

The already poignant track found even greater emotional significance in March 2022, as it was the last Foo Fighters song publicly performed by Hawkins, onstage at Lollapalooza Argentina just five days before his sudden passing.

Everlong was also performed as the finale at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, where an emotional Grohl performed solo – its profound lyrics taking on another meaning altogether.

It’s no surprise that the song has become the band’s most-played live number – nearly 1,200 known performances and counting – and closes nearly every show.

“When you play a song like that every night, so many people connect with it, that sort of communal energy makes it magical, every fucking night,” Grohl said. “Every time I sing, ‘If everything could feel this real forever’, and everyone else is singing it in time – that’s pretty powerful. Even on your worst night, it still feels good.”

Dave Grohl has been on the promotional rounds for the new Foo Fighters album and has been talking about the wheeze he came up with to hide advanced CDRs of Your Favourite Toy all over Southern California.

“I’m still old skool,” he told Stephen Colbert last night. “I love doing things myself and I had day off and thought, ‘you know what I’ll do? I’ll burn twenty CDs of our album before it’s come out and me and my daughter Harper will get construction paper and we’ll make album covers and then I’ll go run around and hide them in places all over the San Fernando Valley.'”

So Grohl secreted them in various stores, though as he says, he was often suspected of being a shoplifter. “I’d walk in and I’d have them hidden so I’m already sketchy enough. Then I see the security guard person is eyeing me and it looks like I’m shoplifting when I’m doing the opposite.

"I almost got busted in a Ralphs – I went back to the charcoal aisle, stuck it under a bag of Kingsford and as I walking out the security guard was looking at it like ‘what?’

“Then we posted little clues. It turned into like a scavenger hunt,” he explained. “And who doesn’t like one of those?”

Meanwhile, Grohl plus his bandmates Nate Mendel (bassist) and Chris Shiflett (guitar), made an appearance on the Track Star YouTube channel, testing their music knowledge.

The three Fighters were tossed some fairly easy ones for men of their age and background: The Clash, Van Halen, The Melvins, and Minor Threat - "I based my entire early years of trying to get a bass tone off that guy," Mendel said of the band’s bassist Steve Hansgen.

We also found that Mendel’s mom once made pancakes for another group of punk rock legends: NOFX. “I put on a show for them and they needed to get fed,” he quipped.

The only track that seemed to floor the trio was Freight Train by Elizabeth Cotten. “It’s that famous amazing woman who played blues...I can’t remember her name,” said Grohl of the 20^th Century blues guitarist.

It’s been almost a year now since it happened but the rumpus over Josh Freese’s firing from the Foo Fighters continues to rumble on.

In the Guardian over the weekend, the band were interviewed and Nate Mendel suggested that the hazy reasons that were given for Freese’s exit last year were, well, hazy deliberately.

“Yeah. We made a decision that it was best for all parties,” the bassist explained. “To get into the personal details (with Freese), of why that didn’t necessarily sync up, just didn’t seem like it was going to benefit anybody.

"Some things are OK to be like: this is what’s best for us, and we’re going in a different direction.”

However, Mendel did praise Freese for “coming into a situation and doing exactly what needs to be done musically to make it work” after the sudden death of the previous drummer, Taylor Hawkins, in 2022.

As for Freese, in an interview he gave last month to Modern Drummer, he insisted that he’s living his best life right now, back behind the kit with Nine Inch Nails: “Someone recently said to me, ‘Man, you’ve had a tough year.’ And I thought, Really? So the Foo Fighters thing is over. Big deal, that was a blip.”

“The fact that I’ve been touring with Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle again, playing some shows with Weezer, working in the studio with everyone from Danny Elfman to Billy Idol. I feel like I’m back where I belong. Trust me… no one should feel sorry for me.”

However, Freese did admit that the day the axe fell last year, he felt “in shock”.

“The day it went down I was hanging out on a day off with A Perfect Circle and the Primus guys,” he recalled. “Everyone was in shock and asking me what the hell happened. I just remember thinking that I was really grateful to be out there on tour with my friends and with a great crew… playing music I liked with people that I’ve had a long history with.”

Dave Grohl has stated emphatically that he didn’t pull any favours to secure his daughter a record deal.

The Foo Fighters’ leader was speaking to Chris Moyles on Radio X. The DJ brought up the subject to which Grohl replied: "Violet, my daughter, she's 19. She's about to turn 20. She made this album with a producer named Justin Raisin, and she did it on her own.

"Like, she met the producer, and they would go to the studio every day and make songs, and she would send me songs when she was finished. But I had absolutely nothing to do with this record at all."

He insisted that he had had no part in securing Violet’s recording contract and, in fact, only found out about it when she came over to dinner one time.

"And I had no idea," he said of his daughter's achievement. "I knew that she was looking to sign a record deal and then she's like, 'Hey, dad, can I come over for dinner tonight?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, sure. What do you want me to make?'

"And she'd come over and tell me, like, 'I signed my record deal today.' I was like, 'Oh, my God.'"

"So, I'm totally, like, uninvolved. And I'm like the dad that wants to be there and know everything and she's just totally doing her own thing. It's amazing."

So what’s Violet’s album like? Well, according to dad: “it's a wide range of everything... There's songs that remind me of, like, The Sundays or Cocteau Twins, things like that. Then there's like, super, like, hard, really heavy sort of rock stuff. Ethereal. It's beautiful."

He added: "It's an amazing record and to be honest, when she was making that record, they did it really quickly, too. It really inspired me to make this record. It really did. The way that they made the record and the energy of it, I was like, Oh, man. I've just been inspired by my daughter's debut album. It's cool."

By ‘this record’, Grohl was of course referring to My Favorite Toy, the Foos’ twelfth album which comes out on April 24.

The band are currently in the UK playing a couple of low-key shows in small venues. They play London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire tonight (February 25) and Manchester’s Ritz on Friday (February 27). Interestingly, tickets for both were sold the touts-thwarting old-fashioned way: fans had to turn up at the venue in person and queue. Maybe it will catch on?

Dave Grohl has broken his silence on Josh Freese and the reasons for his departure from the Foo Fighters last year.

It comes after an interview with Modern Drummer in which Freese expressed bafflement over his firing in May 2025. Even nine months down the line, he said “the whole thing” was “even more of a mystery... I think I'm a pretty good read on people, and I did not see that coming.

"One day it was nothing but laughs, we're on stage and Dave's looking at me every night like, 'You're killing it, dude!!!' And then it was just – over."

Now in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple 1, Grohl said: “The thing about Foo Fighters is that we’ve had four drummers in 30 years, but with the Foos, we had Taylor Hawkins as our drummer for 25 years, and beyond being an amazing drummer, he was this incredible spirit, this incredible human being, he was our brother, he was our best friend.”

Grohl admitted that replacing Hawkins would have been “complicated” for any drummer. “With Josh Freese, Josh is a consummate professional. He has a storied career of playing with everyone from Michael Buble to The Offspring; he’s had thousands of studio recordings.”

“So he came in, we went out on tour, and we had such a blast. We had a great time. It was like a year-and-a-half of touring, the shows were great and we had a lot of fun. And, the last show that we did, I think it was in September 2024, we did our last show, and all stepped away from the band.”

After that, Grohl explained that the decision about Freese’s future didn’t happen immediately but over a six-month period. “In those six or seven months, as a band, we talked about what to do next, a new direction, and thought, ‘Okay, let’s call Josh and let him know that we are going to move on with a different drummer.’”

He also clarified that: “We called, as a band, all of us called, it wasn’t just me.”

The frontman continued: “Basically, we called Josh, and were like, ‘Hey man, that was awesome. That was such a blast, thank you so much, but we are going to move on and find another drummer.’ After that, we didn’t make a press release, tweet anything or do interviews. We didn’t say anything.

"Since then, there’s been a lot of talk about it, but I think Josh said it best when he said that he didn’t feel our music really resonated with him, and that’s really important.”

In other words, it was nothing personal. Freese’s face just didn’t fit.

Anyway, the Foos move forward. Grohl told Lowe that with Ilan Rubin now behind the kit, “we feel like a band again.” Last week they announced that a new album, My Favorite Toy, will be dropping on April 24. The first single - the title track - is already up on streaming platforms now.

Josh Freese says that he’s still mystified as to why the Foo Fighters gave him the heave-ho last year.

The 53-year-old drummer was first recruited to the band after Taylor Hawkins' passing in 2022. He stayed with them during the entirety of the Everything Or Nothing At All tour in support of the But Here We Are album, but was abruptly let go in May 2025, saying on Instagram: "In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I've never been let go from a band, so while I'm not angry – just a bit shocked and disappointed.”

Nine months on, it seems he’s none the wiser. In a new interview with Modern Drummer, he said: "The Foo Fighters are such a big, mainstream band that everything I say gets taken out of context, reposted, and blown out of proportion. People created headlines from one quick, simple comment I made on a podcast not long ago - it's crazy. I've got to be careful about what I say about it. But I've got a lot to say about it and I've been just trying to figure out how and when, to go about really articulating it."

Asked why he thought he was fired, he said: "I have a couple small theories, but I can't really go into them right now. I did really enjoy the two years I spent with those guys, however, and they were good to me… until they weren't.

"I enjoyed being around those guys, they were generous and good to me… and that's what makes the whole thing even more of a mystery. I think I'm a pretty good read on people, and I did not see that coming. One day it was nothing but laughs, we're on stage and Dave's looking at me every night like, 'You're killing it, dude!!!' And then it was just – over."

Previously, in an interview with the New York Times, Freese suggested his sacking could have been connected with business issues: "Looking back, it was probably more an issue with their management," he said, adding, "It wasn't music that I really resonated with."

Anyway, as we know, Freese fell on his feet as he’s now rejoined Nine Inch Nails, with their drummer Ilan Rubin going the other way and joining the Foos.

Dave Grohl has confirmed that a new Foo Fighters album will come out this year.

The band were playing in Tasmania, Australia on Sunday (January 25) and announced on stage that they would return down under sooner than expected. “This won’t be the last time you see us,” Grohl said. “We’ll be back here sooner than you think. And it’s before my next birthday.”

He added, “And we might have a whole new record of fucking songs that we just finished the other day.”

Let’s work this out. Grohl’s birthday is January 14 – he turned 57 just two weeks ago, so he’s presumably suggesting touring Australia again before the end of this calendar year. The band already have an extensive North American tour pencilled in for August and September this year. So... expect a new album to arrive any time from early summer.

When that record arrives it will be the Foos’ first since 2023’s But Here We Are and their first with new drummer Ilan Rubin.

The Tasmania show was the band’s first on the island for more than a decade. “We have a very special relationship with Tasmania — as we do with all of Australia,” Grohl said. “To come down and have a special night is amazing… even though we’re literally flying down for 48 hours.”

As he mentioned, the band have a connection with Tasmania. One track on the band’s 2007 album Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace is the Ballad Of The Beaconsfield, an instrumental that was inspired by Grohl meeting one of the survivors from that 2006 accident, a miner who had requested an iPod with one of the Foos’ albums on it whilst he was stuck underground.

That was twenty years ago but Dave Grohl doesn’t forget these things, and at the show last night, he retold the story of the Beaconsfield mine collapse and brought out the miner in question, Brant Webb, on stage. It was, as you can imagine, emotional.

Foo Fighters are back on the road this month but they’ll be without guitarist Pat Smear for at least some of the dates, after the band revealed that he had been a victim of – no kidding – a “bizarre gardening accident”.

As you might recall, Spinal Tap’s first drummer – John ‘Stumpy’ Pepys, in case you’d forgotten – died in such an incident and the phrase has since become something of a music biz joke. So the Foos decided to break the news of Smear’s mishap by posting a fake National Enquirer-style cover to their Instagram account.

With a pic of a grinning Smear with his foot up giving the camera the finger, it reads: “In the classic tradition of rockstars having bizarre gardening accidents, Pat Smear has apparently rung in the new year by smashing the shit out of his left foot.

“This means he’ll unfortunately be missing a few shows while the multiple broken bones in his foot heal. We’ll miss our beloved Pat as much as you will, but we want him fully healed and back on his feet as soon as possible.”

Deputising for Smear will be “Beck and St Vincent guitar wizard, Jason Falkner,” the band write.

In real life, there is something of a tradition of rockers falling foul of gardening accidents, bizarre or otherwise. In May 2020, Brian May ripped his gluteus maximus (his hip muscle in other words) “to shreds” in what he described as “a moment of over-enthusiastic gardening.”

Rather more seriously, Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro actually died after spraying insecticides in his garden in the early 1990s (though the coroner said that his cause of death was actually a heart attack brought on by cocaine use, rather than an allergic reaction to the pesticides).

Anyway, while Smear gets some rest, the rest of the Foos play Guanajuato this Saturday (10 January), followed by a date at Los Angeles Kia Forum next Wednesday (14 January).

The Foo Fighters played their first gig with new drummer Ilan Rubin this weekend at a 900-capacity venue in San Luis Obispo, California.

It was very much a last-minute booking. The band only announced the gig on the Saturday, telling fans via social media that tickets would only be available in-person at the venue itself – The Freemont Theater – from 8am on the day of the show.

And with it being Rubin’s debut show with the band, Dave Grohl took the opportunity to introduce the new drummer to fans, saying: “Everybody else has said it, I finally get the opportunity to say, ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome, the most badass motherfucker, Ilan Rubin, is playing drums in the Foo Fighters. It’s official.”

The gig was the first Foo Fighters show for over a year, but their second is coming hot on its heels. In fact it is tonight (September 15). It’s at The Observatory in Santa Ana, California.

The band are utilising the same method for distributing tickets, which are $30 each with a maximum of two per person. So, if you are in the vicinity of Santa Ana and are at a loose end tonight…

The gigs come a week after the band posted a pic to social media of the six band members’ feet standing together in a circle. “Foo Fighters Assemble!!!” the band captioned the snap, before they hinted at an imminent announcement, writing: “Make sure you’re subscribed to the newsletter for info you won’t want to miss… just sayin’…”

So is it just these two shows, or are there more in the pipeline? Fans would be advised to stay tuned to the Foos’ socials.

Josh Freese, the drummer who recently exited the Foo Fighters to return to his old position behind the kit for Nine Inch Nails has been given the honour of a profile in the New York Times and revealed some interesting nuggets about his varied career.

You may not know the vast range of artists Freese has played with over the years – everyone from metal supergroup A Perfect Circle to Michael Buble, taking in Weezer, Chinese Democracy-era Guns N’ Roses, Devo, The Replacements, Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry and Bruce Springsteen amongst many others. In short, he’s a safe pair of hands. Though that doesn’t always mean he’s a perfect fit for every band.

His two-year stint in the Foo Fighters, he admits was a high-pressure gig. “I’m coming in as Dave Grohl’s drummer, and the guy that’s supposed to save the day after the beloved Taylor Hawkins died,” he says. It left him feeling “like I had to be firing on all cylinders all the time.”

His comments about his abrupt sacking last spring are revealing. At first he says: “Looking back, it was probably more an issue with their management,” before suggesting that “It wasn’t music that I really resonated with.”

Freese was something of a drum prodigy. He joined the musicians’ union aged 12 and was touring with Californian punks The Vandals by the time he reached 16. “The Vandals were smart and funny as hell and saved me from music school and a life playing little jazz gigs,” he says of his time with that band.

He also addresses his reputation within the business as being someone who’s easy to get on with, a ‘good hang’ shall we say. “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, Josh Freese is a funny guy, that’s the reason he gets work,’” he said. “Well, I’m a pretty good drummer too. I mean, I’ve got friends that are fun to hang out with, but I don’t want them playing in my band or on my record.”

As for his replacement behind the kit for the Foos, ex-Nine Inch Nails man Ihan Rubin. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says of the drummer swap that took place between his old and new bands this summer. “But Ilan’s a phenomenal drummer, a phenomenal musician. He’ll be perfect for the gig.”

Nine Inch Nails played their first shows with Josh Freese back behind the drumkit last week, kicking off at the Oakland Arena on Wednesday (6 August). Check out footage from the gig below.

It marks a continuation of their Peel It Back tour, which has already done the rounds in Europe and the UK earlier in the year.

As you can see, the band are using the same sort of structure as they did in Europe - performing the heavier hits at the main stage, and playing acoustic versions and remixes at a smaller second stage in the midst of the audience.

Freese, of course, will be familiar with much of the NIN set, having been part of the band’s line-up between 2005 and 2008. Up until recently he was drumming with the Foo Fighters, before leaving in May. Ironically, the Foos' new drummer is Ilan Rubin, who had been playing with Nine Inch Nails since 2013.

At Oakland, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross kicked things off on the second stage playing acoustic versions of Right Where It Belongs, Somewhat Damaged, Ruiner and Piggy, before they were joined by the rest of the band – including Freese – on the main stage for Wish, March of the Pigs, Reptile, Heresy, Copy of A and Gave Up.

They then returned to the smaller stage and were joined by support act Boys Noize for Vessel, Sin, Came Back Haunted and the live debut of their latest single, As Alive As You Need Me To Be, which has been written for the upcoming Tron: Ares soundtrack.

Then it was back to the main stage for Less Than, Closer, The Perfect Drug, The Hand That Feeds, and the band’s two best-known songs, Head Like a Hole and Hurt.

The North American leg of the Peel It Back tour continues in Seattle tomorrow (12 August), continuing through to the final date at the Inglewood Kia Forum on September 19. For ticket details head to the NIN Peel It Back tour website.

The Foo Fighters seem to have found a new drummer to replace Josh Freese who left earlier this year. According to the Hollywood Reporter, he’s Ilan Rubin, who’s best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails.

Rubin served on Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s crew between 2008 and 2009 and again from 2013 and can boast of being the youngest musician to be inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame, when he and the rest of NIN were inducted in 2020.

He’s also had a stint in Tom DeLonge’s ‘other’ band Angels And Airwaves.

It’s still unclear whether Rubin is a permanent member of the band or just a touring drummer. There has been no official word yet on this from the Foo's camp.

Meanwhile going the other way is Freese who left Dave Grohl’s merry men in May, having replaced the late Taylor Hawkins in 2022.

He returns to NIN having played with the band between 2005 and 2008, as well as stints in an array of bands, including A Perfect Circle, The Offspring and Weezer.

Freese confirmed the switch ahead of the band’s upcoming North American tour, writing on Instagram yesterday: “Leaving Nine Inch Nails at the end of 2008 was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. My wife and I were expecting our third child, and I knew I needed to step away from life on the road to be home with my family.”

He continued: “NIN was a band that left me walking off stage every single night thinking, ‘That was incredible. We absolutely crushed it.’ And it wasn’t just a feeling, it was a certainty. That level of intensity, pride, and satisfaction after each show is something I’ve rarely experienced anywhere.

“Now, being back on tour with Trent and the crew - helping them do what they do best night after night - is something I’m incredibly excited about. To be part of that energy again feels amazing.

“If you get a chance to catch one of these shows over the next six weeks, I promise, they’re going to be absolutely unforgettable.”

Safe to say he’s pleased then.

Nine Inch Nails meanwhile announced the news in a more succinct manner, merely posting: “Let’s f***ing go @Josh Freese on their Instagram page.

It’s almost 30 years to the day since the Foo Fighters released their first album, and to mark the occasion, the band have dropped a brand new song - their first new material since their 2023 album, But Here We Are.

Today's Song is one of the Foos’ more reflective pieces, touching on some deep themes. “I woke today screaming for change / I knew that I must,” Grohl sings, “So here lies the shadow / Ashes to ashes, dust into dust.” Listening to it, it’s hard not to think not just of the band’s long-time drummer, the late Taylor Hawkins, but also the tragedy that the band were originally born out of: Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide.

And Dave Grohl has issued a kind of anniversary statement to accompany the new song: “Over the years, we’ve had moments of unbridled joy, and moments of devastating heartbreak. Moments of beautiful victory, and moments of painful defeat. We have mended broken bones and broken hearts. But we have followed this road together, with each other, for each other, no matter what. Because in life, you just can’t go it alone.”

Referring to former members of the band, he added: “It should go without saying that without the boundless energy of William Goldsmith, the seasoned wisdom of Franz Stahl, and the thunderous wizardry of Josh Freese, this story would be incomplete, so we extend our heartfelt gratitude for the time, music, and memories that we shared with each of them over the years. Thank you, gentlemen.” (Freese took over behind the kit after Hawkins’ death but departed in May this year)

“And... Taylor,” Grohl continued. “Your name is spoken every day, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a smile, but you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever. The enormity of your beautiful soul is only rivaled by the infinite longing we feel in your absence. We all miss you beyond words. Foo Fighters will forever include Taylor Hawkins in every note that we play, until we do finally reach our destination.”

There’s no indication whether Today's Song will precede a new album of any kind. Maybe. Possibly not. In the meantime, it takes the band into what will be its fourth decade, a scenario few could have predicted back in July 1995.

After waiting everlong for an affordable version of Dave Grohl’s iconic Trini Lopez-inspired signature guitar, Epiphone finally delivered last year. Arguably one of the most anticipated guitar launches in recent memory, the Pelham Blue semi-hollow took the guitar world by storm, and as such, they became pretty tricky to get hold of. 

That said, these guitars are now more readily available, and thanks to Andertons, the model has also just received its biggest ever discount. As part of its May Clearance Event, which features insanely discounted products that, you guessed it, are only available until the end of the month, the UK-based retailer has slashed a whopping £380 off the Epiphone Dave Grohl DG-335, bringing the cost down from £1,249 to only £869. 

So, this is a call to Foo fanatics; you don't want to miss this epic deal! This is literally the lowest I've ever seen this guitar, and I can't imagine it's going to get cheaper. 

In our glowing review, we praised this guitar's attention to detail and impeccable finish, saying, "The Pelham Blue finish looks great, and at a glance, it’s quite surreal. Everything is finished neatly, from the binding on the F-holes, body and neck to the flawless, uniform paint job. There’s no visible defects, and as with the many Epiphones we’ve had pass through our door in the last couple of years, it’s yet further proof that the head honchos at Gibson have put the effort in when it comes to turning the tide on previous QC-related reputations."

We concluded the review by saying, "The Epiphone logo on the headstock may well carry certain connotations for some people, but as we’re continuing to witness from the Epiphone stable, these aren’t reflective of the guitars the brand is currently putting out. Let’s face it, if you want a replica of Dave Grohl’s guitar that also doubles as a very effective workhorse for any style, this is it."

It's fair to say we were mighty impressed with this model when we got hands-on with it, and to be honest, we can't really believe that it's not only on sale, but with such a massive discount. So, if you were on the fence about picking one of these up, we think your decision is now made!

When it comes to affordable yet powerful digital mixers, the Behringer X32 has become a beloved staple in the live music scene. Whether it's as the front-of-house desk or as a monitor rig, this hi-tech mixing console has won over the hearts of local and pro musicians alike. And now, with a significant Cyber Monday discount at Andertons, you can join the community and save a whopping £249 off this powerful mixing tool.

One famous champion of the Behringer X32 is lead guitarist for the Foo Fighters, Chris Shiflett. When we sat down with Shiflett to discuss his essential pieces of music gear, he couldn't tour without, the long-serving Foos axeman offered up praise for the digital console. His endorsement carries significant weight, as he said, "We've got a Behringer X32, you know, for our monitor rig on stage. We've got one of those now, and we can control our in-ears on our phones, you know, do that whole thing – and that's freaking amazing, man," beams Shiflett. "Like, this is a game-changer for us. So, I mean, that's a pretty essential piece of gear."

It's pretty high praise indeed for this humble digital mixer and shows that it's used by everyone from bands just starting out to touring global megastars.

The Flagship X32 stands out with its broad range of features at this price point, such as 40 channels, Midas-designed microphone preamps, motorised faders, wireless mixing capabilities, and a full audio interface for multitrack recording.

With 16 XLR outputs, six additional lines in/outputs, two phone connectors, a talkback section with an integrated or external mic, and 16 effects, the flagship X32 offers a lot of mixing power for a very reasonable price. No wonder Chris Shifflett is a fan.

With the end of the Cyber Monday music deals in sight, this deal may not be around for much longer, so grab it while you can.

After waiting Everlong for an affordable version of Dave Grohl’s iconic Trini Lopez-inspired signature guitar, Epiphone finally delivered earlier this year. Arguably one of the most anticipated guitar launches in recent memory, the Pelham Blue semi-hollow took the guitar world by storm, and as such, they became pretty tricky to get a hold of. 

That said, these guitars are now more readily available, and thanks to Thomann, it's also just received its first-ever discount. As part of its Cyber Week Sale, Thomann is also running daily deals, which are typically insanely discounted products that, you guessed it, are only available for 24 hours. And today's deal is the best we've seen. In a wild move, Thomann has just slashed a whopping £230 off the Epiphone Dave Grohl DG-335, bringing the cost down from £1,159 to only £929. 

So, this is a call to Foo fanatics; you don't want to miss this epic Black Friday guitar deal!

In our glowing review, we praise this guitar's attention to detail and impeccable finish, saying, "The Pelham Blue finish looks great, and at a glance, it’s quite surreal. Everything is finished neatly, from the binding on the F-holes, body and neck to the flawless, uniform paint job. There’s no visible defects, and as with the many Epiphones we’ve had pass through our door in the last couple of years, it’s yet further proof that the head honchos at Gibson have put the effort in when it comes to turning the tide on previous QC-related reputations."

We conclude the review by saying, "The Epiphone logo on the headstock may well carry certain connotations for some people, but as we’re continuing to witness from the Epiphone stable, these aren’t reflective of the guitars the brand is currently putting out. Let’s face it, if you want a replica of Dave Grohl’s guitar that also doubles as a very effective workhorse for any style, this is it."

It's fair to say we were mighty impressed with this model when we got hands-on with it, and to be honest, we can't really believe that it's not only on sale, but with such a massive discount. So, if you were on the fence about picking one of these up, we think your decision is now made! 

Since joining Foo Fighters in 1999, Chris Shiflett has quietly carved-out his niche as a modern-day guitar hero.

As the lead gunslinger in the Foos’ triple-pronged guitar assault, he bolsters the band’s live sets, jumping seamlessly between the band’s drop-D riffs, melodic lines and even gets to display some of his early influences during the ‘band intro’ of the show.

In his spare time – at times a seemingly alien concept in the Foos camp – Chris can be found hauling his gear into more intimate venues with his country/Americana solo project, Chris Shiflett and The Dead Peasants.

It’s this, combined with his Walking The Floor and Shred With Shifty Podcasts, that have seen Shiflett pivot from being ‘Foo Fighters guitarist’ to ‘modern guitar hero’.

As a fan of the instrument, it’s no surprise that he’s just dropped his third collaboration with Fender, which began with the Mexican-made Chris Shiflett Telecaster Deluxe, before shifting to the opposite end of the bank balance for his Masterbuilt, P-90-loaded Telecaster Deluxe nicknamed The Cleaver.

Now, Chris and Fender have unveiled the Chris Shiflett Signature Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe – an American-made, production version of his Custom Shop original.

We fired up our Zoom connection and spoke to the man himself all about his latest model.

Let’s start with the name: The Cleaver. Is it true that your front-of-house engineer came up with it?

“I think that’s how it happened. I don’t exactly remember, but it was in reference to the tone, because the P-90 just slices right through. But I like it because now it’s like a horror movie reference or something. You know? ‘Get this guitar and you can murder your whole family!’”

It's got a certain cockney kind of vibe to it too, is there some Arsenal inspiration there?

“There’s a funny story that goes along with that, because [Arsenal] is why I made the original one red! I wanted to put the cannon logo…you know where you screw the neck on?

“I wanted to put the Arsenal cannon logo in there so that nobody would ever know it was there unless you took the neck off. Maybe somebody would take the neck off and find it. But that idea got shot down. Legal said, ‘Absolutely not, buddy, not gonna happen.’”

So the production version of The Cleaver is a midpoint between your original signature model and the Masterbuilt version. How did it compare this time, not having to be so conscious of price points?

“It was great, you know, because for the Masterbuilt version we pulled out all the stops. The guiding light was: let’s not worry about what this costs at all. Let’s just make it the best guitar can it be, and then wherever that falls, so be it. But for this one, I wanted it to be American-made.

“It was great, because that does afford you a little bit of luxury of, like, being able to put in the 500k pots and just getting it just right. The pickups are just right, the tint is just right. We played around with a few different things and got it just where we wanted to be, the bevel on the pickguard is just, right. All those little details.”

Do you find that those tiny details that you didn’t think about before suddenly become the most important decision in the world?

“Yeah! But some of those details, like the 500k pots actually have a gigantic impact on how your guitar operates, and the tone and the feel. For me, and the type of player I am, I do a lot of rolling the volume up and down, rolling the tone up and down. Moving, to the neck pickup, to the bridge, all that stuff, I do that a lot.

“It’s just always been a big part of of how I play. Because when I was a kid, I had no effects pedals. I had nothing. I had my guitar, and if I wanted to clean up, I had to roll the volume off, and I still do that today. The little details like that are super meaningful in the long run.”

You’ve stuck with the Tele Deluxe for each of your signature guitars. What is it about the Deluxe format that you like?

“Well, that was sort of my entry point to the Tele, really. I have an old, I think it’s a ’72 Tele Deluxe, and it's got those Wide Range pickups in it. That was the first Tele I ever bought. So my entry point was not through the traditional single coil route. I came to that a bit later.

“It was sort of a natural move to go from the Wide Range pickups to [traditional] humbuckers, because I am such a humbucker-centric guitar player in most of what I’ve done over the years, and those are pretty closely related. But as you do with guitar playing you’re always on these quests for a different tone, and you’re always evolving what you want.”

“When I was young, I was far more comfortable with really saturated, high-gain sounds. Then as the years went by, I just moved more and more away from that. It’s always the shifting sands of what you need in the moment, which is one of the great things about landing on the P-90. It just works in all the different styles that I tend to lean into.”

Is the Deluxe control layout part of the appeal?

“Yeah, for sure. My first good guitar, that I got for my 15th birthday, and the only guitar I had for a very long time, was a Les Paul. So when you think of those super-formative years of playing shows and what your hand does, just automatically, having that set up is very comfortable and intuitive to me – as is the rosewood fretboard, there’s just a certain warmth to it that I like.”

You’ve gone with block inlays this time around too…

“Oh yeah! And that’s where you just get into fun style points, you know, the painted headstock, the block inlays. That’s just for fun. And all the different colours – we made prototypes of, I think, four different colours. It was hard to decide, man. I loved them all. I wanted them all!

“The ones that we settled on are great. They contrast each other really well. The painted headstock strikes me as like an old ’60s kind of detail too. People either really like it or they really don’t. I dig it. I think it’s cool.

“Around the last Foo Fighters record, I had played a Jazzmaster on a bunch of those songs, and so got a couple of them and that was absolutely an influence, because they have the painted headstock and I just love the way that looked. So I was like, let’s do this!”

It comes in Dakota Red and Charcoal Frost Metallic. Do you have a preference on the two finishes?

“I definitely wanted to do Dakota Red because it was what we did the Masterbuilt in. But in that sense of, always being drawn to the newest thing, the Charcoal Frost is just new and shiny to me! So I’ve been kind of leaning into that one.

“We also did a really cool Sherwood Green prototype, like the other Masterbuilt finish, and that looked really good. Then we also did a Lake Placid Blue. So who knows, maybe we'll put one of those out down the road as some kind of something.”

What drew you to P-90s after being such a prolific humbucker player?

“It’s just such a different tone. We’ve got a lot of guitar noise coming off the stage every night. There’s a lot of big amps up there, humbuckering! So to have something that sits in a little different place is good. I started playing a few different guitars with P-90s in them, and I just fell in love with it.”

You have noiseless Lindy Fralins in the Masterbuilt version, what was the process of developing the CS-90 pickups for the production models?

“Well, I know that Fender based it off those Fralin noiseless ones. But in the first prototype that they sent me, I A/B’d the prototype to my Masterbuilt, and they literally sounded exactly the same through my rig. It was like, ‘Yeah, you guys nailed the pickups!’ And that’s kind of the most important part of the whole thing.

“The other important details are the 500k pots. For me, it’s the taper. I can’t stand it when you turn a volume knob and it’s totally off…totally off… totally off…FULL VOLUME! I want that long, slow, even arc and same with the tone.

“Like with a wah-wah pedal – sometimes they only seem to have two extremes, even though you have this whole thing. But there’s really only two sounds. I want the full scope of the taper, and that’s what you get with those 500k pots.”

P-90s are sometimes overlooked by a lot of players – we choose single coils or humbuckers, but in a lot of ways they’re the perfect middle ground.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what they are. They’re perfect, right in-between. When you’re playing a bridge P-90 through a high-gain amp, to me, there’s a certain growl to it that’s just different to humbuckers.

“I mean, who doesn’t love a humbucker? But they’re a little more creamy and nice in a way. There’s just an aggression to a P-90, like the aggressive side without the sort of shrill thing that can happen with a single coil.”

So, has The Cleaver become your main guitar these days?

“I always have them in my touring rig. I tend to switch up a lot of guitars. I bought a vintage Mockingbird. There’s always something weird coming in and out of the quiver on the road. But yeah, the Cleaver has been a mainstay.”

What makes a song a good fit for the Cleaver?

“Well, different songs sort of need different things, and I know I keep saying it, but it really does work for everything. But I love to play it on songs like Aurora that are less gain-y. Sometimes I'll have it on the on the middle position for some of that, because that just gives it a kind of a nice glassy feel.

“The song The Glass is another one. Best Of You, which is mostly super high gain, but has those sort of more picky, detailed parts. I drop it in all over. It works for me, for everything, but definitely on the songs that need a little more of that clear breakthrough. I tend to always use it on those.”

Aurora is so dense with layers of delay, it makes sense that it works on that song…

“Yeah, for most of that song, I’m going it’s the Cleaver through my Vox [AC30], and I have the Vox set just on the edge of breakup. You know, that Vox-y, just a little dirty, but chimey at the same time.

“Then with all those delays, there’ll be some chorus, and there might be some compression, and then I’ll kick into the Friedman for the for the big parts.”

You mentioned earlier that you’re a fan of using the guitar’s controls. Does that apply to the Cleaver too, or do you have more default settings when you’re playing it?

“I am absolutely by far, mostly on the bridge pickup of probably any guitar I’m playing. It’s home base to me, for just about everything. But it depends.

“In my solo stuff, I have to be honest, I’ve been playing a Strat more than I ever did before, and I’ve been really loving throwing that into the neck position and and doing some noodly stuff with that. But, yeah, probably more on the other pickups in my solo thing, because it just lends itself to that and it's generally a one-guitar sound.

“When you have just one guitar, I always feel like you can get away with a lot more. When there’s three of us playing guitar in Foo Fighters, there’s all this other sound as well. I think a lot of those tone details can get kind of lost in it. Which is what drew me to The Cleaver in the first place – having that P-90 cut to kind of find your own little pocket.”

• The Chris Shiflett Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe is available now, priced £2,599/$2,499. See Fender for more details.

Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear has revealed that his first ever performance with Nirvana did not go as he had planned - and that he wasn’t allowed to go on stage until he changed his guitar.

In a new interview for Premier Guitar, alongside his fellow guitar-playing Foos bandmates Dave Grohl and Chris Shiflett, Smear talks about Nirvana’s appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1993, shortly after he had joined the band.

The guitar that Smear had with him was a 1982 Charvel he had bought in his previous role as a backing musician for German singer-songwriter Nina Hagen.

He recalls: “She [Hagen] had a musical director, and they were snobs, and they hated that there was a f**king punk rocker in their band. They hated it so much. I mean, she didn’t, but the band did, and they’re like, ‘You need to get a good guitar.’ So I end up buying this Charvel.

He continues: “It was gorgeous. I mean, this thing was so pretty. I thought, ‘Okay, now I have a good guitar.’ So we’re doing my first-ever gig with Nirvana - Saturday Night Live. And I’m like, ‘Well, better play my good guitar. I’m gonna play my Charvel.’

“And what I didn’t know at the time – I don't even know if you [referring to Dave Grohl] were involved – but there was a discussion about me and that guitar like, ‘No, no, no, we can’t let him on stage.’”

Instead, for this performance, Smear was given a blue Mosrite Mark V by Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain.

“Kurt ended up giving me this rad f**king guitar, which is not a Charvel.”

In the remainder of his time with Nirvana, Smear played several other guitars that were gifts from Cobain, including a few primarily Fender Stratocasters.

And this particular story has a happy ending. In 2023, Smear returned to the stage of Saturday Night Live with the Foo Fighters and their guest star H.E.R.

“I noticed she was playing a Charvel,” Smear says. “She goes, ‘Yeah!’ [and I said] ‘I have a perfect guitar for you,’ and I sent her that guitar.”

Fender and Chris Shiflett have unveiled his much-anticipated signature Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe, so-called because this workhorse electric guitar cuts through the mix courtesy of a pair of custom-wound pickups inspired by P-90s.

You can buy it in Dakota Red and/or Charcoal Frost Metallic. Because the Foo Fighters guitarist knows what’s what, both finish options come with a painted headstock – a true connoisseur’s move.

Both models have that over-sized 3-ply mint pickguard that always strikes us as the electric guitar equivalent of protective clothing.

And it will need it, because what is a Fender Telecaster if not a tool, built to be thrashed night after night? That’s what Shiflett did when testing his new signature guitar out.

“We put a lot of love and research into creating the American made version of my signature model, The Cleaver,” he says. “It’s been road-tested, dropped on its head, kicked around, x-rayed, strummed, chicken-picked, and arpeggio swept!

“I’m excited to announce we’ve made a great guitar that's adaptable to all situations. Can’t wait to get this into the hands of players everywhere!”

Fender has developed an all-new electric guitar pickup for the Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe, with these Noiseless CS-90s offering that hot, overwound single-coil tone, with lots of aggressive midrange and none of the 60-cycle hum – invaluable in high-volume, high-gain scenarios.

Shiflett’s Tele has a solid alder body, with a belly cut carved into the back to make it a little more comfortable. The neck is bolted to the body in the time-honoured Fender fashion but there’s not getting around it, this is a Tele that took its design elements from the ‘70s, an era when Fender had one eye over its shoulder to see what was going on at Gibson.

We can feel that and hear it. The slab rosewood fingerboard has the pearloid block inlays and, like Gibson, the 12” radius. Put that together with the CS-90 inspired pickups and the dual-volume, dual-tone controls and three-way pickup selector and there’s the influence. Still, it’s a 25.5” scale bolt-on, with a maple neck in a Custom Oval C profile. There’s no mistaking who made this one.

Fender’s executive vice-president of product, Justin Norvell, says it was an “incredible journey” making this guitar, which was ultimately named by an unlikely source.

“Chris has a lot of guitars, plays a lot of styles and demands versatility, and our goal was to capture that spirit in the design,” he says. “This guitar is not just an instrument; it’s an extension of his musical identity and tone that both he and his fans demand. Fun fact: we didn’t nickname it the ‘The Cleaver’ – his front-of-house person did the first night he played it live, because ‘it cut through the mix like a cleaver!’, which speaks for itself!”

Other details include a Pure Vintage string-through hard-tail bridge, with six bent-steel saddles. There are Pure Vintage F-stamped tuners, matching the F-stamped neck plate.

This isn’t a relic’d guitar but the switch tip is aged white and the finish is nitro. It will age gracefully. You’ll find Shifty’s signature on the back of the headstock.

The Chris Shiflett Cleaver Telecaster Deluxe is available now, made in the USA, priced £2,599/$2,499, and ships in a hard-shell guitar case. For more details, see Fender.

RECORDING WEEK 2024: It's Halloween – the perfect shameless time to cash in on this spooky holiday with plastic toy wizards and witches, sugary snacks in the shape of bats, and stories about recording locations that will terrify you.

We can't bring you the first two - but feel free to send us some in exchange for the third. So here, without further spooky weirdness, are the 10 scariest places you could record music in, but probably wouldn't want to.

1. Four haunted studios

We might as well start with the obvious: some purpose built recording studios that just happen to be (allegedly) haunted. London's The Garden Recording Studio is our first choice, and one that has an impressive history.

Started by former Ultravox front-man and solo artist John Foxx, the Shoreditch-based studio was used by Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Depeche Mode, The The and others during the 1980s, but is sadly now a sandwich shop, albeit quite a snazzy and trendy one, according to some accounts.

However, during the studio's relatively short history, it managed to attract the odd haunting as well as top '80s bands.

Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys claimed a ghost called Elsie was a studio regular, and even left a mark on some of the recordings made there - nothing that a decent noise gate plugin couldn't sort out, we reckon.

The band were recording their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, in 2006 at the studio, with James Ford and Mike Crossey on production duties. Turner told Rolling Stone that, “it’s said that a young girl ‘Elsie’ haunts the echo chamber and unexplained faint whispers have appeared on recordings in the past.”

The Garden is certainly not alone in boasting spirits. Other studios that claim to have had hauntings include London's Blackwing, a church with a graveyard where Depeche Mode once recorded - all good ingredients for a ghost story, especially as lead singer Dave Gahan once died for a short while and had an out-of-body experience. Tenuous, yes, but we're just starting ok? It definitely gets more scary than this…

The famous Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, Wales, for example, where Queen and Oasis have laid down tracks, has also had some spiritual goings on, with Ozzy Osbourne (not his only mention in this feature) and bandmates guitarist Randy Rhoads and bassist Bob Daisley once messed about with a Ouija board there, to their peril. The board apparently predicted that Randy would die, as he did just a few years later. Coincidence or not? Either way, don't mess with Ouija kids.

Finally, when Foo Fighters decamped to a studio in Encino, California, they discovered a ghostly presence that not only knew how to terrify people, but also about the ins and outs of using Pro Tools. Truly 'a ghost in the machine', you might say.

"We started working there and it wasn’t long before things started happening," Dave Grohl told NME.

"We would come back to the studio the next day and all of the guitars would be detuned. Or the settings we’d put on the board, all of them had gone back to zero. We would open up a Pro Tools session and tracks would be missing. There were some tracks that were put on there that we didn’t put on there, but just like weird open mic noises. Nobody playing an instrument or anything like that, just an open mic recording a room.”

To be honest, missing DAW tracks, detuned instruments and "nobody playing an instrument" sounds like one of our typical studio sessions, so we like the idea of a ghost with actual studio engineering skills helping us out.

2. Chilling crime scenes

Crimes don't get more notorious than the killing of Sharon Tate, her unborn baby, and four other victims at 10050 Cielo Drive in LA in August 1969. The first music production link in this horrendous story is that the house was previously owned by Terry Melcher, a very successful record producer who refused to sign a certain Charles Manson who fancied himself as a recording artist.

Manson later asked members of his cult-like followers 'The Family' to kill anyone at the address, possibly believing that it was still owned by Melcher. The house had actually been taken on by film director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate, and on the night of the attack Polanski was away, but Tate was there with four other guests all of whom were killed in horrific circumstances.

The murders were huge news, of course, with all the perpetrators and Manson - after directing these murders and being involved in two further killings the following night - imprisoned for life.

10050 Cielo Drive would then change hands many times with its macabre history stopping it from being a permanent residence for any owner for any length of time. Eventually the property's final buyer, Alvin Weintraub, decided to demolish the house, but not before renting it out to Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who set up a studio at the property in 1992.

He recorded much of their seminal The Downward Spiral there, but after meeting Tate's sister, who put it to him that he was cashing in on her sister's murder, decided to vacate the property. "I thought, ‘Fuck Charlie Manson. I don’t want to be looked at as a guy who supports serial-killer bullshit," he told Rolling Stone magazine.

It was a sensible decision, of course, but perhaps taking the front door of the house with him to install in his new studio, as he reportedly then did, wasn't so cool. And his stay at the house wasn't without its spooky happenings.

In Gavin Baddeley’s book, Dissecting Marilyn Manson (another visitor to the house), Reznor said of his odd experiences there that, "It’s not like spooky ghosts fucking with you or anything, although we did have a million electrical disturbances. Things that shouldn’t have happened did happen. Eventually, we’d just joke about it: 'Oh, Sharon must be here. The fucking tape machine just shut down.'

3. Under the sea

Our next entry is fortunately rather less horrific than the Manson-themed one unless, that is, you are scared of water - 303 metres of it. In 2006, Katie Melua decided to go completely submersive with her music, by diving (ok, taking an elevator) 303 metres below sea level on a North Sea gas rig (the Troll A platform, 55 miles off Bergen, Norway) to play a couple of gigs. Honestly, the scary places have no limits when there are records to break (and of course records to sell).

She told The Times in 2020: "We flew by helicopter, and the rig had a rickety lift that took us down 985ft to the level of the seabed."

Melua played two 30-minute sets down there – to 20 'lucky' people who had won tickets to see the gig – and she still holds the record for the deepest underwater concert.

You can see Melua discuss the gig in the video below, and we particularly love one of the YouTube comments that says: "Not many people will ever get the chance to record at the base of Troll A. The reverberation is amazing. Has anyone taken impulse response samples that we can plug into convolution reverb filters?"

4. A haunted mansion

Scoobie-Doo and Shaggy investigated a huge number of mansions during their various capers, as mansions tend to (suspiciously) attract hauntings and other mysteries, although, of course, most of this particular duo's 'ghost' discoveries turned out to be disgruntled janitors. Mansions also attract bands - it's definitely a rock n roll thing - so where better for a scary recording than a haunted mansion… with a recording studio built in?

US producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Kesha, Adele, and Lady Gaga) owns just such a mansion, which is imaginatively called The Mansion and based at Laurel Canyon near Los Angeles. Rubin first hit the music headlines there by recording Red Hot Chili Peppers' album Blood Sugar Sex Magik in 1991. The band have returned several times, as have other acts including Audioslave, Marilyn Manson, Linkin Park, Lorde and the one and only Dua Lipa.

The studio not only contains several hi-end recording items including classics from Pultec, Teletronix and UA, but at least one ghost according to several studio visitors. The Chili Peppers' John Frusciante had a notable experience – and a somewhat erotic one, come to that – with a ghost.

“There are definitely ghosts in this house,” he said. “One of the rooms, the psychics said, has a very spiritually sexual vibe, and I actually heard a woman being fucked in there one day."

Chili's singer Anthony Kiedis confirmed the unwanted guests to Metal Hammer: "There were ghosts everywhere. They came out on about four of the photos we took for an album cover session - these floating, nebulous shapes... We were accepting of the fact that we were living among them. We weren't there to be obtrusive. We were there to make music and to coexist in what was more their house than ours."

And Slipknot's Corey Taylor also saw an apparition while recording at The Mansion, saying in the book A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To Heaven: “I looked up and saw a man in a tuxedo staring right at me. I ran into my room, but when I looked back there was no one there. The more that I thought about it, ‘Tuxedo Man’ would have had to walk through the door of our bedroom. Not open it and come in but through it.” Of course, ‘Tuxedo Man’ could have been… a man in a tuxedo, not an uncommon occurrence in a mansion, you might assume, but we'll count it as a decent recording-based ghost story for this feature anyway.

It's not know whether Rick still records at The Mansion, but he does own another, equally incredible studio called Shangri-La, located near LA just above Zuma Beach, close to where the *spoiler alert* 'Statue of Liberty' Planet of the Apes film ending took place. He likes a bit of drama around his recording spaces then.

5. A haunted house

In the UK, the mansions are more than a hundred years old so - by the definitions of time, ghosts and history - more haunted. Our next location takes place just a few miles from where this feature is being written, just outside the fabulous city of Bath - so we feel slightly terrified typing the words, just in case, well, you know…

St Catherine's Court is the venue, an incredible house once owned by the actress Jane Seymour, although the hauntings that took place at her gaff could well have been something to do with her historical namesake. (Yes, ok, we're music production writers, not history experts.)

Anyway, Seymour used to have a recording studio at the house before she sadly departed the area after locals complained about the noise made by famous people staying there. These included bands like The Cure who recorded their album Wild Mood Swings at St Catherine's in 1994 and 1995, and Radiohead who recorded much of – what many consider to be one of the greatest records of all time – OK Computer in 1997.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke told Rolling Stone about his terrifying time at the studio, where, rather than fearing for his life by the threatening ghostly presence at the studio, was more worried about getting a hair cut. "Ghosts would talk to me while I was asleep," he said. "There was one point where I got up in the morning after a night of hearing voices and decided I had to cut my hair.”

And get a hair cut he did, all by himself. We can't find any particular Cure ghost stories related to their time at St Catherine's Court, but they did release a song called Fear of Ghosts, so we'll lazily and very incorrectly say that that fear was probably linked to their time at the studio.

St Catherine's Court was recently put up for sale for £12.5 million, we'll assume complete with ghosts, so if you have any spare change lying around, you could buy yourself some music making – and haunting – history.

6. A creepy castle

OK, while a medieval mansion like St Catherine's Court might be the obvious place for a haunted recording, probably the best shot at a terror-based studio session would have to be a proper English castle. Think of the battles, the death, the potential ghostage…

Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire, England, is now – like St Catherine's Court – a wedding venue, but we wonder how many guests and drunk in-laws know about their venue's history in both recording and ghosting when they toast the happy couple.

Clearwell Castle's recording studio was used by many famous bands in the 1970s including Led Zeppelin, Badfinger, Deep Purple, Whitesnake and Queen, ironically mostly taking place in a room now called The Quiet Room.

Black Sabbath recorded the album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in 1973 at the studio, said to be in the dungeon (of course) at the time. However, the band's Tony Iommi said in the liner notes of the Reunion live album that, "one night I was walking down the corridor with Ozzy and we saw this figure in a black cloak... We followed this figure back into the armoury and there was absolutely no one there. Whoever it was had disappeared into thin air!”

Some claims put the ghost as being Sir Walter Raleigh's wife, Elizabeth, but whoever it was, the ghost left a mark on the band who were terrified during the recording (mostly after playing practical jokes on one another), with drummer Bill Ward so scared that he apparently took a dagger to bed with him every night. Osbourne has also said that the recording marked the end of the band, mostly because of their excessive use of drugs and alcohol, which we're assuming had nothing to do with them actually seeing the ghosts in the first place. Riiiggghhhhttt…

7. A WWII seafort

Finally, not just a scary place to record in but perhaps the weirdest location for any recording studio, or at least a possible future location. The Red Sands forts are one of two sets of Guy Maunsell-designed army forts that sit in the Thames estuary (the others being Shivering Sands), set up during World War 2 as part of London's defences, during which they shot down more than 20 planes.

Abandoned after the war, these mysterious and frankly sci-fi looking structures have been left largely untouched, aside from the odd pirate radio broadcast and appearances in films (The Hunger Games, Artemis Fowl), a sixties Doctor Who story (Fury from the Deep), and both the videos for U2's A Sort of Homecoming, ) and The Prodigy's Invaders Must Die.

In the early 2000s, however, the Project Red Sands charity was set up to rescue the most complete set of seven Red Sands towers with the intended use of at least one of them as being a recording studio. Project Red Sands says:

"The layout of the towers allows us to exploit various activities including music recording studios, communications facilities, hydrogen from seawater experiments, a wartime and broadcasting museum and possibly digital broadcast."

It's not a bad idea, if you think about it: you're a few miles off shore working on that LP, so making too much noise isn't going to be an issue, nor are you going to get any disturbances aside from the gentle squeaking of a nearby wind farm. But terrifying? Most certainly. You'll get that album done in no time, just so you can get off the thing and go home.

While Project Red Sands appears to still be up and running with several charity events having happened and some restoration work done, there's little news of acoustic treatment, monitor placement and synthesiser choices having been decided for any of the towers, although the studio's intended use is still stated on the charity's website. If it ever happens, we'll be the first to record there. Actually, no we won't.

Find out more here.

• Get more recording stories and features at Recording Week 2024 here!

Chris Shiflett has revealed that he is taking a Charvel-style custom Superstrat on tour with the Foo Fighters after being inspired by his podcast conversations with Richie Sambora.

Speaking with Premier Guitar, in a video segment documenting his live rig, Shiflett joked that this kind of electric guitar was “highly illegal” for a Foo Fighters tour, and that having a Floyd Rose-equipped instrument onstage had even led to him augmenting his solo to Breakout with a few divebombs.

“I always wanted to put together a Superstrat or whatever, so I did that,” he says. “I brought it out on tour. I mean, that is like so illegal in the Foo Fighters but I’ve slipped it in just a little bit without asking!”

Shiflett was asked if any of his guests had inspired him while doing his Shred With Shifty podcast. Sambora, whom Shiflett has interviewed twice, was definitely one. The former Bon Jovi lead guitarist was playing a Charvel with a reverse headstock, a signature model whose name escaped Shiflett but must surely be the MusicRadar-approved Henrik Danhage Signature Pro-Mod So-Cal Style 1. 

This got Shiflett thinking. He sourced a neck online. The guitar would be inspired by the ‘80s, by Eddie Van Halen, with a zebra-coil Seymour Duncan JB humbucker at the bridge and a Floyd Rose and not much else to get in the way. And he reached out to Eric Chaz at the Van Nuys, California, institution Ernie’s Guitars to put the S-style together.

One cool detail highlighted in the video is Shiflett’s name on the headstock. The relic’d shell pink finish is sweet too. As yet it is still a pinch-hitter for the Foos live show, but Shiflett says its remit has been extended.

“I really brought it out because there’s a section in the show where Dave introduces everybody, and everybody does a little something, and I sorta worked that in to do a little homage to some of my favourite players,” he says. “ I’ll do a little taste of Randy Rhoads, a little bit of Eruption, and a little bit of Thunderstruck, AC/DC, and so I wanted to bring that guitar with me so I could do some tremolo bar dives and stuff. 

“But then after getting it out here, I don’t want to throw it on for just that and then take it of, so I put it one for the song just ahead of that – we usually do Breakout. And then I started doing some divebombs in Breakout just to see if anyone in the band noticed.”

In case you are wondering how much attention the Foo Fighters pay to Shiflett’s solos, well, not that much. No one noticed. Shiflett had to tell Pat Smear to look out for them. As for the S-style, it is a nice stunt guitar alternative to his usual complement of Fender Telecasters.

“It’s a super fun guitar,” says Shiflett. “It plays really good.” And as he reveals in the video above, he plays it with everything on, boost, flanger, whatever’s on the pedalboard…

Head this way if you want to know why Chris Shiflett takes a Quad Cortex on tour with him for his solo dates.

The Irish hitch-hiker who inspired Dave Grohl to ‘get back to work’ and start the Foo Fighters has come forward and shared his incredible story on Twitter/X - and it’s already going viral amongst Nirvana and Foos fans.

The hitch-hiker is named Lorcan and together with his cousin Eoin Tighe they’ve created a video that explains their side of the story, interpolating it with Grohl telling it from his side, as a (still young) rock musician reeling from his friend’s suicide in 1994. It’s quite something:

In an interview on the Graham Norton Show in 2021, Grohl remembers how in mid-’94, in the midst of his grief he just wanted to escape: “I wasn’t sure what to do with my life. I couldn’t even listen to music. I didn’t want to turn on the radio. I put my instruments away. It hurt too much to listen to music, so I thought, ‘I’m going to go to one of my favourite places in the world,’ one of the most remote areas I could find. Just to go out and, like, soul search and find myself. So I went to the Ring of Kerry.”

It was whilst out driving in his rental car that Grohl encountered young Lorcan: “So I’m driving down this country road, am I’m, like, trying to figure out my life and trying to move on, and I see a hitchhiker, and he’s in a parka, and it’s kind of maybe raining a little and as I’m pulling up to him I think, ‘I’m gonna pick this kid up. He’s got a far way to go.’

“And I got closer and closer, and I saw he had a Kurt Cobain T-shirt on, and I thought, ‘Even in the most remote area I could possibly find, I can’t outrun this thing.’ And I thought, ‘OK. I’m gonna go home, and I’m gonna start over.’ And I started the Foo Fighters.”

As for Lorcan, he couldn’t believe his eyes – what would Dave Grohl be doing driving in West Ireland? It was only recently that his outlandish story was corroborated by the man himself.

Lorcan didn’t get the lift, but we all got the Foo Fighters: the happy ending to this heartwarming tale.

Thought Tenacious D had been cancelled in the wake of Kyle Gass’s comments about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump? Certainly not in Dave Grohl's mind.

The Foo Fighters covered Tenacious D’s Tribute at a show in Denver, Colorado on Saturday night. As you can see from the fan footage below it was during the acoustic section of the gig. Grohl only gets so far through the song, admitting that he doesn’t know all the lyrics. After all, he says, “I only played the drums on that song.”

It comes just weeks when after Tenacious D got into hot water during their Australian tour. At a gig in Sydney the week after the Trump incident, Jack Black sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to his bandmate Gass, before asking him to make a wish. Gass then quipped: “Don’t miss Trump next time”.

All hell broke loose. An Australian senator called for their deportation. The band’s tour was cut short and all future creative plans were “put on hold”. Gass was even dropped by his agent.

However, there are evidently degrees of cancellation and Dave Grohl has always been a loyal type, anyway.

The comedy rock duo and Grohl go back a long way – Black and Gass had cameos in the Foos’ Learn To Fly video from 1999 and during their early days would regularly open up for the band. And, of course, Grohl played drums on their 2001 self-titled debut album, which included Tribute.

The Foo Fighters are on the last few dates of their US tour, with shows on the West Coast in San Diego, LA, Portland and Seattle. They recently had to cut short a show in Queens, New York due to a thunderstorm and the ensuing torrential downpour.

Afterwards the band issued a statement: “We are so disappointed that we were unable to play our full set for tonight’s fantastic crowd at Citi Field,” they wrote. “But the safety of our fans, the crew and everyone working in the stadium comes first, so when it was determined that there was no safe way to continue the show in this dangerous weather, we had no choice but to call it a night.”

They continued: “We’re grateful for every second we were able to play for you and looking forward to seeing you again - maybe as soon as Friday!”

The band eventually returned to Citi Field on that Friday (19 July) to play their show in full.

Intentionally or not, Dave Grohl has just stirred a hornet’s nest.

There he was headlining the London Stadium on Saturday night on the Foo Fighters latest UK tour and he makes one little joke about Taylor Swift, who that same evening is playing Wembley Stadium just up the road.

Halfway through his set, he said: ”We were joking about the Taylor Swift tour earlier. I know that she’s on her 'Eras Tour'. I’m telling you man; you don’t want to suffer the wrath of Taylor Swift.

"So we like to call our tour the ‘Errors Tour' because I feel like, we’ve had more than a few eras, and more than a few fucking errors as well. Just a couple. That’s because we actually play live. What?"

He then went on to add: “I’m just saying, you guys like raw, live rock ‘n’ roll music, right? You came to the right fucking place."

Swift couldn’t help but respond to this little dig and after receiving an early standing ovation at her Sunday night show at Wembley said, pointedly: “Every one of my band members, every single one of our crew, my band who’s gonna be playing live for you for 3 and a half hours tonight, they deserve this so much. 

"And so does every one of my fellow performers. And you just gave that to us so generously, we will never forget it.”

All things considered, a classy response. But then her army of fans, the so-called Swifties, administered a thorough kicking to the Foo Fighters leader on social media.

Grohl and Swift are hardly competing in the same market and there’s no history of bad blood between the two, so what’s caused this sudden outbreak of hostilities? 

Well, according to social media it could date back to earlier this year when a comment by Dave Grohl’s 17-year-old daughter - who’s been performing on stage with dad on this current tour - went viral. Violet Grohl postedabout Swift flying her private jet, “why can’t Taylor Swift just drive like everyone else’. The Swifties went ballistic. Death threats were allegedly sent and the singer herself remained silent on the issue.

Meanwhile, the Foo Fighters wrap up their UK tour with dates in Cardiff tomorrow night and Birmingham on Thursday. Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras tour moves onto Europe this week and returns for another four nights at Wembley in August.

It’s been nearly two years since Taylor Hawkins’ son Shane took to the stage at Wembley to honour his father, joining Foo Fighters for a performance of My Hero at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert. This weekend, the 17-year-old — who has been playing regular gigs with his father’s covers band, Chevy Metal — joined Foo Fighters at the band’s back-to-back London Stadium dates to play drums.

First up, Thursday's show saw Shane take to Josh Freese’s monstrous double-bass drum DW kit for an energetic run-through of I’ll Stick Around, which features on Foo Fighters’ debut album, where Dave Grohl played every instrument on all but one song. 

“Hi Shane, thank you for waiting three hours to come play drums with us” Dave Grohl announced as he introduced him, adding “We particularly like it when he plays this song. It’s called…I’ll Stick Around”, as Shane launches into the machine-gun 16th-note snare intro.  

Hammering at the kit with all the ferocity you’d expect, Shane’s playing style, body language and mannerisms are at times uncannily similar to his dad, while also including a healthy influence from the former Nirvana drummer’s playbook as he beats his way through the song’s ankle-cramping groove and fills around the kit.

It’s not without a couple of minor slips, as pointed out in the comment section of the video, perhaps caused by Grohl’s accidental rearranging of the second verse giving Shane a different cue. But overall, the first performance prompted many fans to declare that Hawkins Jr is capable of to taking on his father’s gig full-time.

Shane returned for Saturday’s gig, reprising the song that has in many ways become recognised his own tribute to his late father. Foo Fighters have been playing a much more subdued version of the tune since touring for 2023’s But Here We Are, forgoing the iconic drum intro in favour of a guitar/piano/vocal introduction.

However, on Saturday Hawkins Jr brought it back, as Grohl told the crowd, “Watch this motherf**kers, he’s not fu**ing around!”. The band opted to go ‘classic’ adding the extended live ‘jam’ section to the song, which sees it modulate through the song’s original tempo, to a swung feel, into a double-time groove. 

To close, Shane — all the while being encouraged by a visibly proud Grohl — delivers an impressive solo, before Grohl brings him to the front of the stage for a hug before addressing the crowd while laughing saying, “Who invited this punk!”.

Foo Fighters are currently on their Everything Or Nothing At All tour in the UK and Europe. For a list of dates click here. 

Before the Trini Lopez and the signature 335, there was the 90s black Gibson Explorer – this was Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters guitar and the foundation for the first era of the band. Then it was fazed out, until now.

At the band's recent triumphant Wembley Stadium show on 22 June Grohl was playing a black Explorer again, but this one was different. 

In the footage above, uploaded to YouTube by Fastphotos, Grohl strapped on the mysterious new model for a thunderous rendition of Stacked Actors, from 1999 third Foos album There Is Nothing Left To Lose – a record the band recorded as a trio with Grohl, bassist Nate Mendel and late drummer Taylor Hawkins. 

Introducing the song as one for "old school fans" as a sign of the "deep cuts" from their catalogue that would be aired that night, our eyes were immediately drawn to the streamlined controls. Who needs tone controls anyway? 

Whether this is a custom model ordered by Grohl for some older songs, or if it could be an early peak at something that could be a production model, we have no idea right now. But seeing as the recent Epiphone Dave Grohl ES-335 has proved to be a huge success for the company, more Grohl signature guitars would surely be a canny decision.

Either way, we're glad to see the Explorer and Stacked Actors back in the Foo's sets. 

Foo Fighters are currently storming their way through the UK on their first extended dates on these shores since Josh Freese was announced as the drummer chosen to fill the shoes of the late Taylor Hawkins. During Monday’s Glasgow date, Josh Freese treated the Hampden Park audience to a note-perfect rendition of Alex Van Halen’s iconic drum intro from Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher. 

Thankfully, Freese’s solo was captured and he later shared it to his Instagram account, giving us all the chance to check it out. The clip begins at the end of Monkey Wrench, where Taylor Hawkins would traditionally place a drum solo. 

Since joining, Freese has previously dropped into John Bonham’s metre-meddling drum intro from Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. However, on Monday, when the band dropped out, Freese launched into Alex Van Halen’s unmistakable opening hertas before adding the distinctive double kick/tom pattern then moving into the ride bell accents. As the camera pans round, we catch a glimpse of the rest of the band looking-on in awe.

Finally, Freese finishes with his own solo, ripping some incredibly clean and powerful single-strokes with his hands and feet across the kit. Accompanying his social media post, Freese wrote “Little impromptu ‘Hot For Teacher’ nod last night in Glasgow.”, we think we’d agree, especially when you consider that Monkey Wrench os one of the faster songs in the Foos’ set, and was the 21st song the band played in Glasgow.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Freese nail Hot For Teacher: the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts saw him play the song with Wolfgang Van Halen on guitar, Dave Grohl on bass and The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins on vocals. However, pro-shot footage from the broadcast Wembley concert is scarce, and Freese’s clip gives us an up-close view of him playing, along with clear audio.    

More recently, Freese marked a year since he began playing with Foo Fighters, paying tribute to his friend Taylor Hawkins in the process.  “A year ago today this aired and I got to stop keeping quiet about what had been referred to as “the worst kept secret in the music business” at the time (though I thought we did a pretty good job on our end.) 

"Foo Fighters released an hour long special of us playing some songs at rehearsal. Here’s three clips of the first song. I love the way it came out and am proud of it. I joked that all we really needed was “All My Life” and then move on (because it’s so goddamn good.) 

“That being said, I continue to miss Taylor as does the band, his family, friends and the rest of the world. We also continue to try and make the most of the situation by moving forward and doing what we love doing…playing music, honoring Taylor and staying positive."

Foo Fighters are currently on their UK and European leg of their Everything or Nothing at All tour. For a list of dates click here.

It’s been a year since Josh Freese was officially unveiled as Foo Fighters’ pick to fill the void left by the late Taylor Hawkins, who passed away on 25 March 2022 while on tour on Bogota, Colombia. Freese has now taken to social media to mark the occasion, saying, “I continue to miss Taylor, as does the band, his family, friends and the rest of the world.”

Freese’s position within the band was announced via a pre-recorded performance titled 'Foo Fighters: Preparing music For Concerts', filmed at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606. 

Following a skit where a precession of drummers including Chad Smith, Tommy Lee and Danny Carey individually arrived at the band’s rehearsal under the guise of trivial reasons - all of which were revealed to be clues pointing towards Josh Freese.

Finally, Freese interrupts his bandmates from behind a double-bass drum kit, shouting “Excuse me! Guys, could we just, like, I don’t know…play a song?! Or two, something?”

Posting footage of the session to his Instagram account, Freese said, “A year ago today this aired and I got to stop keeping quiet about what had been referred to as “the worst kept secret in the music business” at the time (though I thought we did a pretty good job on our end.) 

"Foo Fighters released an hour long special of us playing some songs at rehearsal. Here’s three clips of the first song. I love the way it came out and am proud of it. I joked that all we really needed was “All My Life” and then move on (because it’s so goddamn good.) 

“That being said, I continue to miss Taylor as does the band, his family, friends and the rest of the world. We also continue to try and make the most of the situation by moving forward and doing what we love doing…playing music, honoring Taylor and staying positive."

Freese’s appointment as the drummer for Foo Fighters ended months of speculation following the triumphant Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, during which, Freese put in some impressive, faithful and respectful performances honouring his fallen friend, leading many to see him as the natural fit if the band were to continue.

More recently, Freese filled his Foo Fighters downtime by making a return to A Perfect Circle for the first time in 13 years. While he was on tour with APC, Freese sat down with Rick Beato for an in-depth, candid interview where he spoke about every aspect of his career, from being hired to replace other drummers’ parts on recordings, his beginnings as a pro drummer as a child at Disneyland and of course, getting the call to join Foo Fighters.

"It continues to be bittersweet, in the way that part of me wants to say 'I wish I wasn't there at all.' You know? Like, 'I wish there wasn't a reason for me to be the drummer in the Foo Fighters…

“I think that my coming into the band wasn’t something that I wasn’t planning on by any means, even after Taylor’s passing. The first thing I thought was ‘How are these guys going to move on from this?’. Taylor was such an important component to that band, on and off stage. 

He wasn’t just a drummer, he was such a big personality…I wasn’t talking to those guys at that time, just letting everyone have their space. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in that camp, and really, my heart just went out to all of them.

“On my childrens’ lives - I had zero plans of being called to be the drummer…I didn’t ask them that question…I wasn’t going to be another guy coming at Dave going ‘So, dude, if you need a drummer I’m around, just saying.’

"Months went on after that LA performance…right before Christmas 2022 I got a missed call from [Dave Grohl]…I called him back and we small-talked about Christmas and our kids…just silly small talk, family stuff. 

“I said ‘Hey, did you go record?’ and he goes ‘Yeah, we recorded a bunch of stuff, I played drums, I’m really happy with the way it sounds. We had the drummer talk, and we want you to be the guy.’

“It felt like someone socked me in the stomach. I didn’t go ‘Wow! Yippee, this is so cool!’ I didn’t get excited like that, it was almost more like getting the wind knocked out of me. I was like ‘My god, here we go.’ Because I knew…what do I say, ‘No’?”

Meanwhile, Foo Fighters are set to begin the next phase of touring for 2023's But Here We Are in June, with a 25-date run taking in the UK, Europe and US. For a full list of dates, click here. 

You never know what will happen when the Foo Fighters are onstage. Last night (11 May) at their Welcome To Rockville festival appearance at Daytona International Speedway, Florida, Dave Grohl launched into what we thought was him playing Van Halen's Eruption. And at first his tapping looked legit, until Grohl abruptly stopped playing, the camera cut sidestage and the real player was revealed; Wolfgang Van Halen.

After the prank with Eddie Van Halen's son revealed (Wolfgang's own Mammoth WVH band had played a set earlier that day), he then launched into an impromptu burst of Hot For Teacher's intro with the Foo Fighters' Josh Freese accompanying on drums. 

"Don't even get us started on that Van Halen shit," launched Dave Grohl. "We can play that shit all night." And with Wolfgang involved, we'd be more than happy to hear it – he really can play his dad's music incredibly well and already has form for having a lot of fun doing it with the Foos… 

• "There are no rules" – Eddie Van Halen: the last guitar mag interview

If there is one band who aren’t short of a few killer songs in their career, it’s the Foo Fighters. Fronted by multi-instrumentalist and all-around music lover, Dave Grohl, the Foos continue to release album after album of hard-hitting, hook-filled pop rock.

Inside some of these catchy tunes lie really interesting voicings. In recent years they have expanded to a three-guitar lineup which opens up some additional sonic spectrum when it comes to using unique chord voicings to fill out the sound of the songs.

In this lesson we’re going to check out four really cool Foo Fighters chords.

C#min7 (no 5th)

The track Best of You has become one of the band's most iconic tracks. The first chord in this song you hear is a really interesting chord. It’s harmonically rich and has a very jangly sound.

The chord is actually a variation on a C#min7, but without the 5th interval (The G#) present. The open strings paired with the three fretted notes give this chord a sound that does not actually sound like what we’d expect a minor7 chord to sound like.

D13 (no 3)

This chord is one of the band's more unusual choices. This chord could have many names depending on how you interpret the notes – which unusually are A B C and D. Based on the key of the song the most logical naming for this would be D13(no3), in essence, a D13 chord without the major 3rd.

This chord is one of two chords that make up the intro to the track Times Like These. The other chord, is exactly the same chord, but you release the 5th fret on the A to an open string making it an Amadd9add11. 

This chord has a jangly sound reminiscent of many '60s psychedelic pop tracks. The b9 interval gives it a slightly unresolved feel, similar to a sus2 chord.

Db/G

This is a very unusual chord for the chorus of a big rock song. In the chorus of the track All My Life, you hear this Db/G chord. This chord is based around the C shape of the CAGED system but with the barred finger extending down to cover the G note on the Low E string also.

This is a very rich sounding chord that really fills a lot of sonic space. 

E5

In the track Learn To Fly you hear this extended E5 chord. Think of this as an Em with the 4th fret of the G added. This note is a B note which replaces the minor 3rd of the chord. This means what you’re now playing is a six-string chord made up of only root notes and 5th, giving you an extended power chord.

This is a great chord to use to bulk out a recorded guitar part without clashing with any major or minor notes.

• Triad chords could be your new secret guitar weapon: here are 3 reasons why

Josh Freese is one of the most talked-about drummers of the last few years. In 2022, he – alongside an all-star cast of musicians – sat in with Foo Fighters at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, paying their respects to the late drummer through two emotional, marathon sets.

By May 2023, Foo Fighters revealed that the band not only intended to continue, but had tracked a full album as well as announcing tour dates that summer. Rumours circulated naming potential candidates to fill the drum stool, with Josh Freese’s name a constant frontrunner, and the band finally unveiled Freese as their new sticksman during a streamed performance, Preparing Music for Concerts. 

Now, Freese has sat down with Rick Beato for an in-depth, 90-minute conversation which you can watch below, with topics spanning Freese’s early days as drummer, meeting world-class session players at a young age, his incredibly prolific session career, and landing one of the biggest gigs on the planet.

Josh Freese: Getting the call from Dave Grohl to join Foo Fighters

Straight out of the gate, Beato addresses the fact that Freese has stepped into the position left vacant by his friend, Taylor Hawkins, with Freese admitting that part of him “Wishes there wasn’t a reason for me to be the drummer in the Foo Fighters” describing getting the call from Grohl asking him to be his new drummer as “like being socked in the stomach.”

"It continues to be bittersweet, in the way that part of me wants to say 'I wish I wasn't there at all.' You know? Like, 'I wish there wasn't a reason for me to be the drummer in the Foo Fighters…

“I think that my coming into the band wasn’t something that I wasn’t planning on by any means, even after Taylor’s passing. The first thing I thought was ‘How are these guys going to move on from this?’. Taylor was such an important component to that band, on and off stage. 

He wasn’t just a drummer, he was such a big personality…I wasn’t talking to those guys at that time, just letting everyone have their space. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in that camp, and really, my heart just went out to all of them.

“That summer when they were putting those tribute shows together, I was really happy to be a part of it. To be there with a bunch of fellow drummers, fellow musicians who were all really close buddies of Taylor’s…it felt therapeutic to be able to be around other people who knew him very well. That part was healing in a lot of ways, at least for me…it was special.

“On my childrens’ lives - I had zero plans of being called to be the drummer. Everyone and their mother, my neighbour walking the dog, ‘Hey Josh! Foo Fighters call you yet?’, other drummers, Reddit forums, and I’m going ‘I don’t even know if they’re going to continue on.’

"I didn’t ask them that question…I wasn’t going to be another guy coming at Dave going ‘So, dude, if you need a drummer I’m around, just saying.’ I was busy enough and making a good enough living already that I wasn’t freaked out about it. I wasn’t going ‘God, I hope they call.’ More like, whatever happens is going to happen, and that’s how I like to roll, right?

"Months went on after that LA performance…right before Christmas 2022 I got a missed call from him. I was on a walk with my wife and some of our dogs. I go ‘Oh, Dave just tried calling me 20 minutes ago.’ My wife’s like ‘I know why he’s calling you!’

"I swear to god, that’s not why I thought he was calling. I called him back and we small-talked about Christmas and our kids…just silly small talk, family stuff. I said ‘Hey, did you go record?’ and he goes ‘Yeah, we recorded a bunch of stuff, I played drums, I’m really happy with the way it sounds. We had the drummer talk, and we want you to be the guy.’

“It felt like someone socked me in the stomach. I didn’t go ‘Wow! Yippee, this is so cool!’ I didn’t get excited like that, it was almost more like getting the wind knocked out of me. I was like ‘My god, here we go.’ Because I knew…what do I say, ‘No’?

“It couldn’t have gone down any other way after being asked. Being asked by someone who I’ve respected forever, not just as a songwriter and a singer-guitarist, but as a drummer first and foremost for me. Dave is such a bad motherfucker, man.”

But, as well as talking about his new gig, Josh Freese has a wealth of experience with bands ranging from punk and hardcore heroes to pop megastars and rock royalty from which to draw anecdotes. Here are five other highlights of Beato’s interview.

Replacing other drummers' takes can and does get awkward

There was an urban legend in drummer circles during the early '00s that if you risked taking a bathroom break during a recording session, you could find that your drum tracks had been replaced by Freese by the time you got back. Freese (admitting that he himself has been replaced on songs), addressed the subject of being hired to correct and replace other drummers' parts on record, revealing that it could sometimes get awkward. 

“I’m not going to mention the name of the band, but it was a famous band. They’d made a record, and there was one song that they were just not happy with. I knew the guys in the band, I knew the drummer. Not well, but I knew him. My buddy, the singer - I’m laughing, not that it’s funny, but it’s just one of these… – he goes ‘Hey, can you show up at the studio on Saturday?’

“I’m about 10 minutes away and I get a text, ‘Where are you?’, and I’m like ‘Five minutes away!’. He goes ‘Go to Starbucks and hang tight. We’ve been mixing for two weeks and the drummer hasn’t been by the studio once and he just randomly stopped by on his way out of town.’ 

“Drum Doctors, my cartage company were pushing these road cases in the back of the studio that say my name all over them. The drummer saw and goes ‘What’s going on in here?” and they told him ‘Oh, Josh Freese is playing drums’, ‘I’m like, Oh, man!’. So I’m sitting in the coffee shop going ‘Oh, god. What’s going to happen?’

“There’s been situations before where the drummer will be like ‘Fucking Josh, man’. I’m like, ‘Don’t get mad at me, get mad at your producer or your singer. I didn’t decide that they want me to play on this, they decided. If it’s not me, it’s going to be somebody else because they decided they have to do something to get this track to where they want it.

There was another time at Henson about 25 years ago, I’m recording with the band and as I’m playing I see through the glass into the control room. I didn’t know anyone in the band, I knew the producer, but I see a guy I didn’t recognise come into the control room, all tattoos and looked like he was in a rock band. Then I see the body language and I’m thinking ‘Oh, god. What’s happening in there.’ I finish playing and [mimes the talkback] ‘Yeah man, give us a minute.’ The drummer showed up.

I’ve been replaced in the studio, and it hurt. It doesn’t feel good, you go home and go ‘I’m doing it all wrong, my career is over, I suck and everyone hates me.’ No. I’ve worked with great musicians who have gone into play on something and even to my own ear I’ll go ‘That just didn’t feel right’. Doesn’t mean this guy’s not a fantastic guitar player, it’s just not working for that particular track.”

He once tracked a song using his fingers on an upside down snare drum

From his work with a Perfect Circle, to Evanesence, The Vandals, Nine Inch Nails and more, Josh Freese is known for being a hard-hitting rock machine. But that doesn't mean that he can't be subtle. Here, he recounts how important dynamics and lighter playing are to him. 

"It’s funny because I get hired so often – more so a couple of years back – ‘If you want the heavy-hitting alternative rock drummer, you’ve gotta hire Josh Freese’, right? And it would bum me out because I like playing soft, quiet, sensitive things. 

"I think I like the extremes, I like stuff that’s hardcore and intense, I like stuff that’s really light and beautiful. Then the lukewarm part is just lukewarm…

"Slow and quiet is way more difficult than hard and fast, any day of the week. So for me that’s always a little more interesting. Being a songwriter myself and a fan of songwriters, I love getting a chance to do that stuff. 

"I love the stuff I recorded with Ron Sexsmith, the album is called Long Player Late Bloomer and it’s beautiful. One of the songs, I remember we flipped the snare over and it’s almost like a train beat. I was playing on the bottom of the snare, but because the head’s so thin and just the way the mics were and the amount of compression in the room, I played it with my fingers, I’m not even using sticks.

"The track sounds so good to me, I’m just as proud, if not more proud of a track like that, as I am some hardcore track that really sounds like it took a lot to do. That [dynamic] stuff takes more. It’s like walking a tightrope, it’s just so delicate. The delicate, naked stuff for me, is really challenging in a good way."  

Josh Freese appealed to Sting not to mess with Stewart Copeland’s drum parts on Message in a Bottle

As one of the most widely hired session drummers of the last three decades, Freese knows a bit about drum parts: what's important, what isn't, and what you absolutely must include when you're playing the canon of the biggest-selling artists on the planet. 

During his first rehearsals with Sting, Freese went out to bat for Copeland's drum part on Message in a Bottle, even if it meant disagreeing with Sting 24 hours into his new gig. 

“There’s certain things that you’ve gotta hit, certain marks or figures. And then there’s certain things where I’ll inject my own style into something, I’m not playing every fill like it is on the record.

"I’ll never forget, this one thing in particular. We were playing Message in a Bottle, during the ‘I hope that someone gets my…’  and I’m playing the tom thing. We finish it and Sting goes, ‘Can you not do that tom thing?’. I’m like, ‘Dude. I know that I’m the new guy and I’ve only known you for 24 hours, but I have to play that tom thing.’

"I’ve air-drummed that on my steering wheel since I was 16, as has every other drummer or maybe even non-drummer. It’s just so cool. He’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know…’ Then I go up to him later that day and I go ‘I really want to play that tom thing on Message in a Bottle.’

"I think he appreciated sometimes that I was still thinking about it, that I would care at all rather than like, ‘Ok, I don’t have to play the tom thing. Who cares!’. I felt strongly about it, it’s an important part of the song and it’s going to be sacrilegious to not hit it. It felt like I wouldn’t be doing it justice, it would be a crime to not play it."

That said, judging on live performances, it seems that Sting ultimately made the decision.

Dave Grohl and Josh Freese asked Pat Smear’s permission to use two bass drums, and one of them is 23-inches

During the London Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, Josh Freese wowed millions of viewers with his rock solid playing, and effortless navigation of Van Halen's Hot For Teacher (alongside Wolfgang Van Halen, Justin Hawkins and Dave Grohl), complete with the famous double kick intro and groove.

Fast-forward to his debut with Foo Fighters and one of the first things drummers noticed was the dual-bass drum kit. It's an irrelevant detail to many fans, but one that ushers Freese in with his own identity. However the drummer was initially hesitant to suggest using two bass drums, until his new boss read his mind, but Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear got the final say.

“When we were in rehearsals, I was busting out some double pedal stuff, and Dave was like ‘That’s awesome, I love that double bass thing you’re doing!’. I said ‘Really? I was just kind of messing around.’ and he’s like ‘Do it, do it!’.

It’s so crazy, I showed up one day to rehearsal and we were on the exact same page. I’d thought a day or two before ‘Am I going to have the same setup I always have? Do I dare have two kick drums, is that totally ridiculous?’

I show up to rehearsal and Dave’s like ‘I was thinking about it man, you should just go for it and have two kick drums.’ I’m like ‘No way! I was thinking the exact same thing, I thought you’d never go for it! We ran it past Pat. Pat Smear is like the punk rock elder statesman, if it’s cool with Pat then it’s cool. Pat was like ‘Oh yeah, double kick all the way!’.

My main kick drum is a 23”. DW started making 23-inch kicks a couple of years ago, and I’ve got two or three of them, I really like them. A joke I have with a friend of mine, my old drum tech is ‘I like it because, it’s a little bit bigger than a 22”, but it’s not quite a 24” - it’s a 23”!”

He still gets surprised hearing himself sometimes

It's a well-known story that Josh Freese once forgot that he played on an Avril Lavigne record, but when you've clocked-up circa 500 recording credits, you're bound to let a few slip your mind.

“There’s lots of stories like that, one of my favourite ones I’ll never forget. I was having lunch with my mum about 7 or 8 years ago. I’m in this restaurant, and there’s music playing. Some song…I call a certain style of music NASCAR Rock, you know? Real middle of the road, vanilla, not that interesting…

I’m listening to it and rolling my eyes thinking ‘God, I’ve played on so much crap like this.’ I didn’t recognise the song, then it gets to the chorus and I’m like, ‘Oh! This is me, I know this song!’. So that’s definitely happened more than once.”

Josh Freese has announced that he’ll be re-joining A Perfect Circle on their forthcoming Sessanta tour, but fans are going to have to act fast if they want to catch the most-recorded drummer in modern rock with the band due to the small matter of his day job in Foo Fighters.

Freese made the announcement via his Instagram account, saying “Happy to report that for the first time in 13 years I’ll be going out with A Perfect Circle on the upcoming Sessanta tour.”

Quick to quash any confusion that could arise from the announcement, he continues “Due to my schedule with the Foo Fighters I’ll be having to jump off after the Hollywood Bowl on April 20. Gunnar from Puscifer will be filling in on the remaining dates (maybe a little Tim Alexander too?).

However, while that leaves a relatively short window for APC fans to catch the band with Freese behind the kit, he’s not ruling out the possibility of further dates in the future. “There’s a chance I’ll be able to show up to another gig or two after that if time allows but for now that’s the plan. A Perfect Circle has always been a very special band for me and I’m really looking forward to getting out and playing these songs again.

Earlier this week, Freese posted a photo of his APC DW Collectors kit, accompanied by the caption “13 years later…like riding a bike.”. While he was briefly preceded by Primus’ Tim Alexander in A Perfect Circle, Josh Freese is widely considered the band’s founding full-time drummer, having played on the first three albums leading up to APC’s first hiatus in 2005. He rejoined for a stint when the band regrouped in 2010, but didn’t contribute to 2018’s Eat the Elephant. 

Freese will be joining A Perfect Circle for the first 13 dates of the tour, which kicks off at the Boch Center - Wang Theater in Boston, MA on April 2.

Of course, Freese has a pretty busy calendar full of Foo Fighters tourdates which sees him performing around the US and Europe this summer. For a full list of A Perfect Circle dates, click here.

This week has already delivered Foo Fighters fans the signature guitar they have all been waiting for, with Epiphone announcing the launch of the Dave Grohl DG-335, the brand’s latest high-end collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop. But there is another Foos signature model coming, with Chris Shiflett revealing that Fender is releasing another US-made Telecaster with his name on it.

Speaking to MusicRadar, in an interview during which Shiflett discussed his embrace of digital amp modellers with Neural DSP Quad Cortex, and argued why the Gibson Les Paul was a great guitar for country music, Shiflett let on that Fender has been developing a new signature model for him based on his master-built Custom Shop Telecaster Deluxe.

“I don’t know how familiar you are with my signature model, but the original one is a production model that has humbuckers in it,” said Shiflett. “It was really geared towards rock and what I do in Foo Fighters. Then we did a super duper fancy master-built version that had P-90s and it was really expensive. 

“One was really affordable and one was really really expensive, so we’ve got one that’s coming out kind of down the middle that’s an American-made production version of the one with P-90s.”

Shiflett did not give us much of a clue as to when these will be released but he did say that he had already road-tested a few of the prototypes at a gig in Washington D.C., and judging by the picture from the gig at the top of the page, one of those finish options looks like Charcoal Frost with a white or mint green pickguard.

What Shiflett could tell us however is that, while this new model might not have the Fralin P-90s of his master-built Tele Deluxe, Fender's electric guitar pickup guru Tim Shaw was involved with design of these.

“The master-built version had noiseless Lindy Fralin P-90s in it. The production model has sort of a Fender version of that, I believe Tim Shaw designed them. And it sounds really good. Like, it’s very close to the Fralins.”

Shiflett’s Fralin-equipped Custom Shop Telecaster Deluxe was designed by Fender Master Builder Greg Fessler, and featured a two-piece alder body with a belly cut for comfort. 

You might know it better as The Cleaver, so-called for its ability to cut through the mix. Might these upcoming US Tele Deluxes also take the name? That’s all TBC. But it does look like it will have block inlays on a rosewood fingerboard, and a painted headstock to match the body’s finish. Shiflett has already given it his sign of approval.

“We did a Foo Fighters gig last night out here in D.C. and it was the first time I got to play one of the prototypes through my actual touring rig, and sound check with it, tweak it, and really see what it does,” he said. “It sounds f**king amazing. It sounds really good.” 

We’ll bring you more news of Shiflett's new Tele as and when it breaks. You can read our interview with Shiflett here.

Chris Shiflett may not be the first rock star to genre-hop to country, but with a collection of solo albums under his belt and a new EP on the way, he has more than proved that he has what it takes to be taken seriously by the country purists. 

When Shiflett isn’t fighting Foos in arenas and stadiums around the globe, he can be found with a paisley Tele around his neck, delivering authentic country rock that, no matter where you are in the world, will transport you to the bustling music scene of Nashville, Tennessee.  

Despite only releasing his latest album, Lost At Sea, in October of last year, Shiflett is back with an infectious rendition of the Thin Lizzy classic, Cowboy Song – which he’s suitably given the country treatment – and has announced a new EP titled Starry Nights & Campfire Lights. 

Here’s what the Foo Fighters’ axeman had to say about his new single and what we can expect from his latest release.  

“I'm a huge Thin Lizzy fan, and it's a song that I wanted to cover for a long time. I just always thought it would make a good country song. Lyrically, it's perfect to turn it into a country song, but the music side of it was definitely the more challenging part, like how to sort of squeeze that into a country song. Country tends to be a little more, you know, simple, [with] simpler chord structures and stuff, and there's a lot of movement in Cowboy Song. 

“The EP, it's two cover songs. So it's the Thin Lizzy song and we also covered a Hanoi Rocks song called Don't You Ever Leave Me. So there's those. And then we just had some good live recordings of the band. It's always different live when you do stuff.

“We did this Sirius XM acoustic session for the Outlaw Country channel last year, and I just liked the way those songs came out,” notes Chris. “There are also some real stripped-down acoustic versions of a couple of songs from the last record.” 

We caught up with Chris from his hotel room in Washington DC via video link the day after he took to the stage with the Foo Fighters for a private concert at the Anthem Theatre in association with Power To The Patients, a non-profit organisation fighting for more affordable and accessible healthcare in the US.

In this new MusicRadar regular, we ask world-renowned players to choose a selection of gear that is essential for them to make music. Chris chose to shine the spotlight on the newest additions to his solo live rig and even gave us a sneak peek at what is in store for his very popular signature series from Fender.

1. Neural DSP Quad Cortex

“The big one is that I got a Quad Cortex a few months ago, and I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out all the nuances. I mean, there are so many options within that little box, you know, for tone and how to build different presets specific to the songs.

“There are a lot of different ways I know that people approach that, but I've just been messing with it a tonne. It's everything right now. That's all my effects pedals. That's all my amps. That's my whole pedalboard at the moment. That's the most essential piece of gear, I guess, right now.”

“The last time I toured [in the UK], I had a pedalboard and the Strymon Iridium was the amp, basically. [The Quad Cortex] is just smaller for my solo thing. I’m trying to figure out how to have the tightest, smallest, most compact set-up. The Quad Cortex is literally the size of an iPad or something. It's crazy how small that thing is.

“I got one sent to me just to mess around with. My buddy Jason [Shadrick] who's the producer for my Shred With Shifty show, works for Premier Guitar, so he's in the loop on all the guitar stuff, and I think it was born out of a conversation with him. 

“I remember I got a loaner, and I plugged my guitar into it, and the first preset that came up was, I think, a JCM 800, and I just went [makes guitar noise], and I was like, ‘Holy sh*t, that's good!’ I was like, ‘Let me order one immediately.’

“It's been really fun, I like messing around [with it], there are just so many variables. And I keep tweaking and changing stuff around and like, ‘Hey, maybe for this song I'll have two amps in parallel.’ Then when it hits the solo, it'll go to a [completely different sound]. 

“There's a lot built into it that you need to capture. There are so many amps, pedals, and actions built into it, and then there's this whole other thing where people capture different effects and amps and stuff and upload them to the Quad Cortex app. It's just a lot of options, especially for what I do.  

“It's really helpful because my solo records tend to bounce through different sounds. One song might have a [Fender] Deluxe Reverb and one song might have the [Vox] AC15 or a [Marshall] JCM. I like having all those different choices.” 

When asked if he’ll ever go fully digital with the Foo Fighters, Chris assured us that he hasn’t lost his love for loud amps and real tube saturation. 

“I don't know. I mean, my preference is to have a real amp. I just like the consistency of [digital] for my solo stuff. You know, my solo tour, as you would imagine, it's a shoestring budget in comparison to what we do in Foos. So, for big shows, I like having a big amp and all that nice real tube gain and everything that comes with it.” 

2. Behringer X32 digital mixer

Next up is something that we certainly weren’t expecting, but once Chris explained the need for consistent in-ear sounds night after night in a variety of different venues, we understood fully why this would be an essential piece of kit for a band on the road. 

"I'll tell you another thing, and this is not as guitar-y, but we're really loving it. We got a Behringer [X32], you know, for [our] monitor rig on stage. 

"We've got one of those now where we can control our in-ears on our phones, you know, do that whole thing – and that's freaking amazing, man. Like, this is a game-changer for us. So, I mean, that's a pretty essential piece of gear." 

3. Gibson Murphy Labs ‘59 Les Paul Reissue

Moving on to six-strings, and as you’d expect, the Foo’s shredder-in-chief has quite the collection. Chris informed us that having so many favourite guitars can make it difficult to decide which model will accompany him on the road – a decision made more difficult due to the lack of space in the van. 

“I've been messing around with a bunch of different guitars. I'm always kind of tweaking my guitars, switching pickups around and I'm always kind of chasing tone. I'm not really sure what I'm going to bring yet to the UK, but I'm kind of leaning [toward a] really nice Les Paul I got a few months ago, that I'm just kind of in love with right now. So I might be bringing that. 

“It's a Murphy Lab, you know, supposed to be a ‘59, and it's kind of a little bit of a darker burst – it's not the real pink ones. It's kind of dark, and it's really light. It's seven, or a little over seven pounds. So it's just light as a feather, and that thing just, wow. It sounds incredible and plays amazing." 

Now, the Les Paul is hardly the quintessential country guitar, but Chris was quick to quash the notion that this famed singlecut can’t do country as well as the Tele. When asked how the Les Paul handled his country material, this is what he had to say. 

“Fantastic. I love it. Love it for country. I went to go see Hank [Williams] Jr. a few months ago, or maybe six months ago or something, when he played in LA and [he was] playing an SG a lot of the time and [had] real crunchy tones. It was kind of inspiring in terms of guitar choices, amps, overdrives and all that stuff.

“I was standing on the side of the stage, looking at all their gear and pedalboards. I could see Hank's pedalboard, and if I remember correctly, there was either a Klon or a KTR Klon or something like that. I was like, well, ‘All right!’ 

“Les Pauls are fantastic for country. Strats are fantastic for country, you know, of course, Telecasters.”

Naturally, Shiflett won’t purely be accompanied by his new flame-topped beauty on this upcoming tour. He noted that he’ll likely be taking a few Fender instruments on his travels as well. 

“I've been playing my Strats a lot in rehearsals. So I might bring a Strat, and then of course I’ve got to bring one of my Teles – probably bring the Paisley Tele. I might even, at some point – I don't think there's room in the van on this next trip – work one of my Gretsches into our set at some point, too.” 

There's a new version of the Fender Chris Shiflett Signature Telecaster Deluxe on its way! 

You don’t get to sell out arenas, be inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and sell millions of records without getting your very own signature guitar – and in Shiflett's case, it was a hugely popular Telecaster Deluxe. The guitar bearing his name has had two variations, and Chris has given us a teaser of what we can expect from the next iteration. 

“The other big gear thing that's kind of going on is I've got another version of my Fender signature model coming out. I don't know how familiar you are with my signature model, but the original one is a production model that has humbuckers in it. It was really geared towards rock and what I do in Foo Fighters. Then we did a super duper fancy master-built version that had P90s and it was really expensive. One was really affordable and one was really really expensive, so we've got one that's coming out kind of down the middle that's an American-made production version of the one with P90s.

“I just got some prototypes in different colours. We did a Foo Fighters gig last night out here in D.C. and it was the first time I got to play one of the prototypes through my actual touring rig, and sound check with it, tweak it, and really see what it does. 

“It sounds f**king amazing. It sounds really good. The master-built version had noiseless Lindy Fralin P90s in it. The production model has sort of a Fender version of that, I believe Tim Shaw designed them. And it sounds really good. Like, it's very close to the Fralins.”

When pressed to see if fans could expect a more country-themed version of his signature model at some point in the future, Chris disclosed that he had considered it, but there were no plans just yet to make it a reality. However, he did seem to like our suggestion for one dressed up in Fender’s iconic paisley pattern – we guess we’ll just need to wait for that one.  

“I have talked loosely to the folks at Fender about someday doing a proper classic Telecaster with the single coils. There are no plans to exactly yet, but that is something on the bucket list that I'd like to do, you know, a real, just traditional classic setup.

“Yeah, someday. It's funny, I mean, it would be cool to do a paisley. The one I have that I play all the time isn't even a Fender; it's a parts guitar. 

“So in the tradition of parts guitars turning into signature models, I mean, it would be interesting to try to do that with a classic Tele because, I would love to try to figure that out. How do you make it classic and not f**k with it, but not just make the same thing that's already been done 8 million times? I guess that would be the challenge. 

“We'd solve that with a Floyd Rose and a Hot Rail! [laughing]” 

Since we were talking about signature guitars, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask about his band leader's new signature Epiphone, whether he’s ever been approached by Epiphone or Gibson, and if so, what model we could likely see. 

“They broke the internet with that announcement [laughs]. No, I mean, I started working with Fender on my signature model around the Wasting Light era, I think. That was when at least the discussion started first happening." 

“They were the first and only company that approached me about doing a signature model, so no, but in those years since then, Gibson is an entirely different company. Prior to that, I didn't really have any kind of relationship with the Gibson folks, so it just never came up.

Two of Chris’ most iconic guitars have to be the pair he used when he first joined the Foo Fighters’ ranks way back in 1999 – a white Gibson Les Paul Custom adorned with a loving tribute to his favourite guitarist Ace Frehley and an arctic white Gibson Explorer. It seems that Chris shares our thoughts that his now yellowed-out Custom would make a brilliant tribute model in the vein of the new Adam Jones signature series.

“I know, right? But would we stick the Ace Frehley sticker on it? If it was a signature model, I guess I'd have to. I'd have to share a royalty with Ace Frehley [laughs], but hey, that's fine!”

The Gibson Explorer makes a welcomed return to his Foo Fighters rig

It’s been a while since his cherished Explorer has made an appearance at live shows, but for the latest Foo Fighters tour cycle, it has returned – along with a Korina reissue, no less. When asked what made him switch back to playing this legendary pointy Gibson, he explained that it may just be the most comfortable guitar to perform with on stage.

“Well, you know how it is with guitars. Sometimes, you've got your touring rig and something that you played a lot at one point, and you just kind of wind up switching it out, and you almost forget you ever had it. Then you find it in your studio years later, and you're like, ‘Oh my God, why have I not been playing this?’ And that white Explorer is one of those guitars. 

“Dave [Grohl] bought that and the white Les Paul [Custom] for me literally the second day I was in the band because I just didn't have enough guitars for the tour. So both those guitars mean a lot to me just in terms of sentimental reasons, but they also happen to be fantastic guitars. 

“The Explorer, it's a funny old guitar because you look at it and you think it's this kind of goofy heavy metal thing, but [it] might be the most perfectly balanced guitar for playing live out of any guitar.

“Those things just sit so comfortably [because of] the weight of the neck versus the weight of the body.”

“So I started playing that white Explorer again and then also got one of those great new Korina Gibson reissues of the old ones, and that thing's a beast, too, man. That thing is amazing.

“We have an A rig and a B rig and they're kind of floating around the world. So I have one in the A rig and one in the B rig and I love them.”

Of course, frontman Dave Grohl is also partial to the Explorer, but in recent years, he’s favoured his Trini Lopez semi-hollow body and his DG-335 spin on it. When asked if Grohl is likely to bring his famed ‘90s black Explorer out of retirement, the guitarist wasn’t convinced. 

“He has one or two of them somewhere. So, yeah, who knows? That's funny because that's why I got the white one. When we went guitar shopping that day, I knew that he played that black one, and we walked into Voltage Guitar which used to be right up in Hollywood. I spot a white one. I picked it up and I go, ‘Hey, should I get this?’ I was joking. And he goes, ‘Yeah, get it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, for real?’ And so I just kind of got it on a lark, you know, because I knew that he played one. Yeah, so you never know. I'm sure he still has that one somewhere.”

We all have guitars that got away! 

Now, every guitarist has a story about the guitar that got away. This writer’s biggest guitar regret just so happens to be selling my beloved Chris Shiflett signature Fender Telecaster a number of years ago – I actually sold it to a Foo Fighters tribute band!

So, with that bad decision weighing heavy on my mind, I had to take the opportunity to ask the man himself if he ever regretted parting with a certain guitar and if he still longs for the ones that got away.

“Oh, for sure. There were a couple. I came into a couple of really odd guitars. I remember I always wanted a Gretsch. It was before they had really gotten it together, you know, before all the TV Jones pickups were being put in them and everything, so I bought one, just on a whim at a Guitar Center – it was a Tennessee Rose. 

“It really wasn't a very good guitar, and it definitely did not work for what I was doing at the time, which was way more high gain and saturated. I traded it. Man, I got completely bamboozled out of that guitar. I traded it for a Japanese-made paisley Telecaster that I would love now, but I didn't love it then.

“It was like I traded one guitar that was just not really working well for another guitar that was not really working. I don't even remember what happened to that, so those ones just kind of passed through my fingers briefly." 

But Chris asserts that he was pining after the unobtainable guitars that shone like beacons of disappointment on the walls of his local guitar stores, not the guitars he briefly owned. 

“The real ones that feel like they got away were more guitars back in the day that you saw in a shop. Like, I remember in this shop in Santa Barbara, for years, they had one of those green Gretsch anniversary guitars. It was beautiful. I just dreamt about that guitar. And I think it was like, you know, 500 bucks or something. At the time, it's just like, ‘F**k, I'm never going to have the money’ and I never did, you know, so I never got it [laughs]. 

“So there's a couple of those guitars that I remember like, you know, man, if only I just kind of scratched together [the cash], I'd have whatever, some 1950s anniversary, beautiful vintage Gretsch!” 

Shiflett's popular podcast proves even rock stars are still learning

Okay, so we’ve covered the fact Shiflett is the guitarist of the biggest band in the world, a respected solo musician in his own right, but we can also add a successful podcaster and internet personality to the list. Chris hosts his hugely popular YouTube series Shred With Shifty, in which he chats to some of the most well-known guitarists of all time, while also getting a one-on-one guitar lesson. 

Previous guests have included the likes of Ace Frehley, Mike Campbell and Alex Lifeson. Talking about dream guests Shiflett declared that he still had a lot of players he’d like to get in the hot seat.

“Oh my God, so many! When I first came up with the idea and started working on it, I made a huge list and, you know, over the last couple of years, I just kept adding [to it]. 

“We reached out to so many guitar players that I grew up listening to. I mean, there are all the classics: Vivian Campbell, Warren DeMartini and we're going to try Brian May. 

"[I’d love to get] all those superstars, like Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore, like that whole era. All of them. I'd love to interview them all, and I don't expect that we will necessarily." 

We enthusiastically suggested that Shiflett should look closer to home for guests and ask his bandmate, Pat Smear, former guitarist of LA punk legends The Germs and touring member of Nirvana. Chris shares our belief that Pat is criminally underrated as a guitar player and would make a great guest.  

“I love this. Well, he’s definitely on the list. I totally agree, and if anybody doubts that, go listen to those two solo records [he made] in the 80s. I bug him about this all the time, 'Why don't you put those up on Spotify?' You can find them both on YouTube, and they're wild records, man. His guitar playing is just unhinged and fantastic on them. I highly recommend them to anybody out there.” 

Chris Shiflett’s latest album Lost At Sea is out now on Snakefarm Records and you can catch Chris and his band on tour throughout the UK and Ireland this month on the following dates:

20 – Academy, Dublin

21 – The Limelight 2, Belfast

23 – Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow

24 – Academy 2, Manchester

25 – O2 Academy 2, Birmingham

27 – Electric Ballroom, London

More info at chrisshiflettmusic.com

Long teased, much anticipated, Dave Grohl’s Epiphone DG-335 signature guitar has officially been released, with the Foo Fighters frontman’s new six-string resplendent in his tradmark Pelham Blue, with diamond-shaped soundholes and that Trini Lopez-style headstock making it such a distinctive looking semi-hollow. 

Epiphone says it is one of the most requested electric guitars in the company’s history and we believe them. Was it worth the wait? Well, the DG-335 looks bang on the money, and the spec list is stacked high.

A pair of Gibson USA Burstbucker humbuckers (a Burstbucker 2 at the neck position, a 3 at the bridge) take a starring role on a build that calls to mind recent Epiphone x Gibson Custom Shop collaborations for Adam Jones’s 1979 Les Paul Custom and Kirk Hammett’s ‘Greeny’ 1959 Les Paul Standard. 

But let’s not miss those little details, like the white single-ply binding that has been applied to the body’s top and back, the fingerboard and most pleasingly on those diamond-shaped soundholes. 

The mother of pearl inlays on the fingerboard continue with the theme with split diamond detail, introducing more angles on a semi-hollow template that typically eschews straight lines. And those black top-hat style control knobs with nickel inserts look good against Pelham Blue.

As with Jones and Hammett’s top-tier Epiphone guitars, the quality of the components is not to be sniffed at, with CTS pots and Mallory capacitors used as standard, and Switchcraft providing the three-way pickup selector switch and 1/4” output jack.

If the DG-335 looks like something a little bespoke that’s because it is, drawing its design cues from the Gibson Trini Lopez signature model and the classic semi-hollow template set by the ES-335. The form factor is similar. This has the ES-335 body, with Grohl’s model comprised of layered maple and poplar, and the all-important maple centre block to cut down on feedback in high-volume, high-gain playing scenarios.

The one-piece mahogany neck is glued to the body and shaped into the elliptical neck profile that Grohl prefers, and it’s a shape that offers players plenty to hold onto when playing chords without feeling like you’re playing something too chunky. 

The Pelham Blue finish extends across the neck and the back of the headstock, which is where you’ll find Grohl’s signature. And that’s that when it comes to signature appointments. This is one guitar that doesn’t need too many details to tell you who it was made for.

Elsewhere, the dimensions are classically Epiphone/Gibson, with a 24.75” scale length and 12” fingerboard radius both on-message for the brand. Other fundamentals to note are the 22 medium jumbo frets and the 43mm Graph Tech nut. It is equipped with a set of Grover Mini-Rotomatic tuners and a LockTone Tune-O-Matic bridge and stop-bar tailpiece.

Shipping in a signature hard-shell guitar case – because this is a serious guitar after all – the Dave Grohl DG-335 is priced £1,249 / $1,299. See Epiphone for more details.

Join us for our traditional look back at the news and features that floated your boat this year.

Best of 2023: Josh Freese has long been known for his prolific output, having become a first-call studio (and live) session drummer. We’ve noted before, if you own a record collection, there’s every chance you own Josh Freese drum tracks - in fact he has played on so many songs and albums that he admitted in 2021 that he forgot that he’d played on Avril Lavigne’s debut.

So, perhaps you know Josh Freese from his work with A Perfect Circle, Guns ’N’ Roses, Sting, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, The Vandals or Devo. Or maybe you’ve caught him live with The Offspring, Paramore or most recently at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute concerts, where he not only blew minds replicating Alex Van Halen’s parts, but turned-in perfect performances with Foo Fighters.

Here though, we’re taking a look at some of Freese’s CV that you might know, but not realise featured him on drums. Along the way, we'll find proof (if it was needed) as to why Freese is one of the busiest session drummers in rock, and beyond.  

1. Meredith Brooks - Bitch

While Meredith Brooks’ biggest hit begins with a classic sampled breakbeat in the form of The Honey Drippers’ Impeach The President - via none other than Shabba Ranks’ Mr Loverman, no less - the acoustic drums are courtesy of Josh Freese. 

You’ll have to wait for the chorus to get the first glimpse of Freese, with a none-more-90s kit sound comprising a punchy bass drum and tight, dampened snare. It blends seamlessly with the sample and is a great example of Freese’s ability to give exactly what is needed when it comes to hooky pop grooves.

2. Chris Cornell - Can’t Change Me

After Soundgarden split in 1997, but before forming Audioslave in 2001 Chris Cornell embarked on his first solo album, 1999’s Euphoria Morning (now titled Euphoria Mourning). Central to the album’s songwriting and production were Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider, and while Victor Indrizzo, Greg Upchurch, Bill Rieflin and Soundgarden/Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron all contributed to a drum track each, the lion’s share came from Josh Freese.

The album’s lead single bounces between the 6/8 groove of the verses and the double-time, 3/4 waltz of the main theme. All the while, Freese plays it steady, leaving plenty of space for one of rock’s finest vocalists  to do his thing, but not without  managing to insert a hooky recurring drum fill. To hear more of Josh on the album, check out Flutter Girl, Preaching The End Of The World, Follow My Way, Mission, Moonchild and Pillow Of Your Bones.

3. Michael Bublé - Haven’t Met You Yet

Amongst the heavy-hitting rock, punk and metal entries on Josh Freese’s CV sits this ear-worm from pop-swing crooner Michael Bublé. It’s taken from Bublé’s album Crazy Love - co-produced by Bob Rock - which actually featured Freese on three songs: this, the title track and Hold On. 

Gone are the machine-gun rolls in favour of sparse fills, stripped back playing and plenty of cymbal accents alongside the brass section. Freese sits comfortably in the radio-ready production with a fat sounding snare marking the backbeats to his bluesy shuffle. Once again, it’s Freese in session mode showing exactly why he gets hired.   

4. Infectious Grooves - These Freaks Are Here To Party

In the late ’80s/early ’90s, funk met rock with greater popularity than it ever had before. Suicidal Tendencies’ frontman, Mike Muir’s other band, Infectious Grooves remains one of the best-loved bands of the era, but you might not know that Josh Freese was once a part of it.

Freese took over from Janes Addiction drummer, Stephen Perkins for album number two, Sarsippius’ Ark, joining a pre-Metallica Robert Trujillo to complete the kind of rhythm section that now seems mythical.

The 20-song album featured covers of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song and David Bowie’s Fame, but These Freaks Are Here To Party remains an Infectious Grooves classic.

5. Evanescence - Bring Me To Life

The early 00s were a seriously busy time for Josh Freese, with albums from A Perfect Circle, Puddle of Mudd, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Avril Lavigne, The Offspring, Kelly Clarkson, Good Charlotte and many more being released with his drum tracks between 2000-2003. 

One of the biggest, though, was Fallen, the debut album from Evanescence. Freese played all the drums on Fallen, including mammoth hit, Bring Me To Life, and the band included footage of Freese tracking some of his parts for the title track on their 2004 making-of DVD. 

Following the Nu-metal tradition of beats-meet-guitars, Freese’s live drums on Bring Me To Life hit proper in the first chorus, and arguably Freese’s drumming plays a big part in giving Evanescence’s debut the rock-solid precision required for it to go on to sell 17 million copies worldwide. Incredibly, Freese reportedly tracked the album’s drums to little more than a click track, guitars and vocals.    

He might be a world-famous rock star and internationally recognised as ‘The Nicest Man in Rock’ but that doesn’t mean that Dave Grohl has forgotten his early days as an unknown concert-going rock fan. 

As proof, the multi-instrumentalist took time out before headlining Asbury Park, New Jersey’s Sea Hear Now festival in September to visit music photographer and Sea Hear Now co-founder, Danny Clinch’s Transparent Clinch Gallery Pop Up Art Tent, where he produced two sketches to be auctioned for charity.

Drawn on corrugated ‘Prohibited Items’ signage, swiped from the festival site, both serve as a reminder of Grohl’s ’80s adolescent years, with the first drawing showing how to make a beer bong using a funnel, a valve/tap, two-and-a-half-foot of plastic tubing and some metal clips.

The second sketch depicts a retro, step-by-step method — presumably employed by Grohl on at least one occasion — of using a modified cassette tape to smuggle hash into a concert by dismantling the plastic casing, removing the spool of tape and filling the void with lumps of the concentrated devil’s lettuce extract.

The drawings are now being auctioned individually, each winning bidder will also receive a 11x14 print of Dave Grohl, taken by Clinch during the Foo Fighters' set at Sea Hear Now 2023. 

Proceeds from both sales are being donated to multiple charities in the Asbury Park area including the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County; the Cazzeek Brothers; Konscious Youth Development & Service, aka KYDS; Garden State Equality; Catsbury Park; Clean Ocean Action; and Operation Beachhead.

The auctions are open until 27 December, with bids already in excess of $5,000 for each drawing at the time of writing. To place a bid, visit the auction’s webpage.

As a guitarist in the biggest rock band in the world right now we'd understand if Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett kicked back between stadium tours with Grohl and Co. But he's long had another musical life as a country rock solo musician, and new album Lost At Sea proves just how good he is at it. As a songwriter and singer he continues to grow through his enthusiasm for collaborating with other musicians, and that's even more true of his guitar playing.

Whether he's holed up in Nashville with producer, musician and celebrated country songwriter Jaren Johnston working at Music Row's breakneck speed with session aces or interviewing fellow guitar heroes for his podcasts, 'Shifty' is always listening and learning – honing his craft. So we have an opportunity to learn from him too, while quizzing him on some of the gear choices in his solo career.   

Jaren Johnston from the Cadillac Three worked closely with you on the new album, how did that come about? 

"I met Jaren the week that Foo Fighters were in Nashville years ago, recording a song and Zac Brown studio for the Sonic Highways record and, and TV show. So that was the first time I ever spent more than like, a night in Nashville. 

"I was wandering around, you know, trying to see the sights, and check it out and soak it up. And I went to a Dierks Bentley record release party, and Jaren was there. We met, swapped numbers or whatever. And we just stayed in touch over the years. 

"Fast forward to a few years later, I interviewed him for my podcast, Walking The Floor. Obviously, I knew Jaren was from Cadillac Three, and I knew he was a songwriter, and a great singer and guitar player and all that kind of stuff. But I didn't know he was producing bands, maybe until around that time. So maybe that came up in that interview. I asked him around that time if he would get together and write a song with me, and we wrote a couple of songs. And then I asked him if he would produce some stuff for me, where I come out to Nashville and do some recording.

"At that time, I wasn't really thinking about making a record – I just wanted to record a couple songs. But I liked the way they came out so much that once we did it, I was like, 'Oh, we gotta make a whole record like this', with this group of folks and with Jaren at the helm. He's such a talented guy, and, and he's just a great producer, you know, so it was great to work with him on it."

What was it like for you to immerse yourself in that Nashville way of working – was it quite impactful?

"Yeah, in a lot of ways. When I made West Coast town, that was the first time I made a record out there. I hadn't written much with other people, just a handful of tunes, up to that point. So that trip was the first time I ever sat with some other songwriters and wrote some songs.

"I went out a few days ahead of making that record and wrote with Aaron Raitiere and a couple of other people. We didn't actually use any of those songs for that record, but I did use a couple of them for my next record [2019's Hard Lessons], but that kind of introduced me to that thing. There's that whole Nashville songwriting culture – Music Row – where you're writing with a couple of other people over the years, and also through my podcast, I've gotten to know a lot of songwriters and a lot of musicians out there. I've written a fair amount with folks out there, and it's great – I love that side of it. I always feel with my own songs, I sort of get them as far as I can get them and it's nice to have another perspective, to take them somewhere else I couldn't take them to. 

"This new record was the first time I recorded on that sort of Nashville schedule. When you make records with Dave Cobb, it's not quite that thing. We're all sitting in the room playing together, but you're not doing that thing of like, we start at 10 and end at one – whatever the schedule is. And for this record, that is how we cut the basic tracks. Sometimes we would do double sessions. I think I went out there on one of the trips and we did two sessions in a row basically and you track five songs, or something like that. 

"But it is remarkable,  the talent level with the players out there, and you just get so much done in such a short amount of time. It's so different to how I came up making records. In rock 'n' roll, and in LA, which is probably where I'd worked the most, it's just a different tempo. A lot of sitting around thinking about things, what should we do – let's work on the tones, you know. And in that Nashville style it's just boom, you just get in there and you just get going. And it's fast. You're playing with a bunch of really great players. And for me, I'm always just trying to hold down my end of the room. And I'm not even really thinking much about what anybody else is doing. It always sounds a million times better than my shitty demo. So I'm always super excited because all of a sudden, you put these ideas in the hands of these great players and it becomes this collaborative thing. And I just love it."

Do you give the other players quite a free rein in the studio, and then kind of edit things later to your own tastes after you get different tracked options from them?

"I really deferred to Jaren with the folks that he hired for the band. Some of them I knew but he's worked with all of them frequently so they've got a rapport. He's in the control room giving advice to everybody about how to approach it, and making suggestions. I don't remember really telling anybody to do anything. But to be honest, it just sounded great. And you get a lot of different flavours tracking that way.

"We had three guitar players on the tracks including myself, so by the end of getting a song done, you've got a lot of different looks from the other guitar players in the room. With Charlie Worsham, he's playing acoustic guitar, he's playing mandolin and he's playing banjo – he's doing all this different stuff. So when it comes to mixing it, you can say, 'Let's drop that thing that Charlie did into the chorus, and let's do this other thing in the verse'. So there's a there's a lot of that kind thing – like a big, big puzzle."

Tom Bukovac features on a few songs and he's obviously a fantastic guitar player. Did he come in quite prepared after hearing the tracks beforehand or is he more instinctive?

"That's a good question because I don't know for that first session. He played on the first session I did, which was Dead And Gone, and Black Top White Lines and I don't know if everybody had been sent the demos before the session or not. I suspect they were but I don't honestly remember. 

"Somebody charted it, and especially on a song like Black Top White Lines, there's a lot of different guitar things happening and overlapping each other. I think I'm the one playing the kind of Magnum PI part in the verses. Then I remember I played the riff an octave up. 

"Buk is such a cool guy and just a good presence in the room. That's the first time we ever played together. I'd known him a bit prior to that but we'd never worked on anything together, so it was great."

You've had huge success with the Foos but even from your podcasts it seems you're very open to learning and absorbing new approaches and perspectives as a musician. Do you think you're more like that now than ever? 

"Oh without a doubt, I just love getting exposed to musicians that are such great players and do something totally different than what I do. I love to just be a sponge in those rooms. Even with Charlie, I was like texting him the other day; 'How do you play that acoustic thing in Damage Control?' It's my favourite part of the song, I've got to sit down and learn how to play it."

"I think that's kind of music in a nutshell. One of the great byproducts of this whole thing is you get to be in the room with all these cats and take a little bit of this and a little bit of that from everybody. A little bit of what everybody's doing rubs off on each other."

Does that also pose a challenge for when you have to recreate these new songs live and decide what guitar parts you focus on?

"Oh yes, no doubt. That's a big challenge when we go out, because we've been doing some of these songs for a while now. It's like this in any band, it's like this in the Foo Fighters, when when you make a record, and then you have to play the songs live.

"You have to figure out who's playing what, and you can wind up playing something that somebody else played on the record. In my solo thing, I gotta also sing it, so I have to play around the vocals.

"We've been doing a thing for the last year or so. I got an Ableton track setup and so we stemmed out pretty much everything from my last few records. So that's been fun to sort of figure out –  ok what can I actually do live? To try to figure out how to incorporate that into our live show, which is really fun. 

"It's an amazing tool we didn't have a few years ago, or at least I didn't have it. I was always scared of it, or just thought it was lame. And now I've got it in my own thing, and I love it.

"We're on a shoestring budget, and you can't afford to bring out on six or seven-piece band. That would be my preference, but financially it doesn't make any sense. So if you've got your pedal steel, your keyboards, your second guitar and your percussionist on a laptop, it's finding the balance between the actual live thing that we're doing and, and bringing in that stuff. 

"But it's a lot of fun. And I think it just makes it a better show, you know, but most people in the crowd aren't really even aware of it, or care. But it's all about what makes this the best experience in the room when we're playing shows."

Since you stepped into the role of a lead vocalist, do you think that has changed your guitar approach at all? Do you think that you might be a better guitar player as a result of being able to write vocal melodies and that affects your approach to melodic hooks? 

"I was just talking about this the other day in my interview with Charlie Starr. I wish I could sing with the reckless abandon that I can play guitar. Wouldn't it be great. I remember a vocal coach I worked with saying something like that like – sing like you play guitar, where you're not thinking about what you're playing and just doing it. Sing like that. But maybe someday. 

"I would say my guitar playing has probably influenced my singing more than the other way around. But I think going out and playing live, they sort of both suffer. If you could just sing you'd be a better singer, and if you could just play you'd be a better guitar player. So it's that balance, and when those two things are in line it's great. And when they're not…

"It's funny how it's going out fronting a band that made me realise I don't breathe when I'm playing a guitar solo. Because every time I come back for that third verse, or the final chorus, after the solo I'm completely out of breath. So I've had to try to get better about that. And I think that makes you a better guitar player. 

"I think it's also figuring out you gotta relax to be a good guitar player. I grew up playing intense, loud music where you're trying to muscle your way through shit. I think as I've gotten older, I've realised that doesn't work the best for me and if you're breathing and trying to relax, you're just playing better."

Singing and playing can be especially tiring on tour, so is nice to go back to the Foos and just be a guitar player for a while and have that mix?

"One hundred per cent. I mean, going out and doing my solo tours makes me always makes me appreciate how great we have it in Foos. Not only that thing that you're talking about, the musical side of it, but just the luxury of it all. To have a great crew – you don't have to worry about changing your string, driving the van and all that sort of stuff. To be in a nice, comfortable hotel room. I come back from one of my own tours, and I'm like, 'Oh baby I'm home!'"

It must also keep you grounded that you're still in touch with kind of where you came from as a musician.

"Absolutely. Every show on a solo tour there's always some hurdle you have to get over or there's always something that goes sideways you have to just deal with and overcome. And we've had some f*****g shockers recently with things like stage sound – just s**t the people in the crowd don't give a f**k about and you can't let it drag you down. 

"I don't care if you're having the worst day of your life, you can't get up on stage and be like, 'This f*****g sucks. My in-ear mix is terrible waah waah.' Nobody cares, and they pay their money so you just can't bring that into the room. We always kind of laugh about it afterwards. I'll just say to my band, 'I'm so proud of us. We got through that with a smile on our face. And the crowd had a good time.'"

Talking about stage sound brings me to the Strymon Irdium amp modelling pedal that you used on your solo tour instead of a traditional amp. You're obviously used to using tube amps as part of a bigger rig with the Foos but do you think you could use an amp pedal like the Iridium if you weren't using in-ears?

"That's a great question and I haven't used it with a powered speaker. I'm on any ears all the time, whether it's in Foo Fighters or my solo thing, which I do mostly for vocals, not so much for guitar – actually, in ears to me kill guitar tone. Which is also why I got the Iridium. The reason I switched to that was because, again, we're just on a shoestring budget when I'm going out and doing solo shows. And you're at the mercy of wherever you're playing and bad power and a front-of-house guy that maybe doesn't like you to whatever. And it would just always sound terrible to me coming back in my in-ears when my amps were mic'd up. 

"The Iridium was the first amp modeller that I took out. I think it's still the only one that I've actually gone out and played shows with. And the reason I use that one is because I think it sounds great. It's really simple – it's just laid out like an amp. And that's been the thing that I've sort of figured out with this new way of doing my solo thing. When it works great, and it works great most of the time, not just the Iridium, but the Ableton and the in-ears and the whole thing, it's amazing. It's wonderful and you sort of cut out the middleman and I'm just getting that great tone right in my ears and I love it. When it goes sideways, for whatever reason, all of a sudden you don't have any of your coping skills that you've learned for the last 40 years on what to do in a live situation when something's going wrong.

"If I'm just playing through an amp, and I've just got a wedge, if it's terrible I can turn my amp up. I can just stick my finger in my ear and hear my vocal and get through it. You just have those ways of dealing with it that you've learned over time, or even just the ways of coping with it even if it's just terrible. And you just get through it. But when it comes right into your brain and things are happening that you don't fully even understand, that's when you get a little lost.

"But with the Iridium I just love the way it's laid out. It's really simple. You know, I know what bass and mid and treble do. I know what a volume knob does."

Do you feel it helps to get around the inconsistencies that can happen with mic'ing and the venue's sound engineer and their personal preferences?

"It should get around them. What I have found is that if your sound guy is messing up the pre-fader / post-fader situation it can get really f****d up and a lot of front-of-house people seem to not be able to resist EQ-ing it in a different way.  I have to have this conversation with everybody; 'Just send it back to me direct. I don't want any special sauce on it. Just exactly how it comes off my board. And that's it.' That's the whole point."

You're using a Fender Deluxe Reverb model on the Iridium. What is it about that kind of amp that works so well for your solo music?

"Oh, man, that is the classic country amp. You can't beat a '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb. I have a couple of them that I've used forever with my solo stuff, as well as a great old '65 Princeton Reverb that I'll use from time to time, which saves you little van space when you're doing it that way. 

"There's something about putting the Tele in front of one of those things that is just magic. They're made for each other. And I've been using that Wampler Tumnus – it's kind of like their Klon, and I love the way that hits it with the Tele. I don't even really grit it up too much, it just gives it that hair you want. It doesn't take over your tone – it just kind of beefs it up a bit.

The Klon is a bit of a rabbit hole players get obsessed with, but the Tumnus is a great affordable alternative. is great. Have you ever compared it to a real one? 

"I've never A/B'd it, and I don't have one of the original Klons, but I do have one of the KTRs – the red one. I use that in my Foo Fighters rig too, and it's fantastic. But Wampler sent me some pedals, and that Tumnus was one of them. I plugged it in, and I just like to mess around with pedals and see what how they work and everything. I don't know man, something about that one – it just it just spoke to me."

Your signature Fender Tele Deluxe was inspired by a Warmoth guitar that you put together, do you still tinker with guitars?

"It's funny you ask. My buddy who I've been taking my guitars to for years is building me a total hotrod right now. I don't even know what I'm going to use it for. I'm just gonna play it in my living room or something because I don't think I could get it onstage at a Foo Fighters show. 

"It's a ridiculous guitar that we're building – Floyd Rose, one pickup, one volume. The whole deal. Excellent. I don't know exactly what it's going to work for because I'm not really doing divebomb solos in either thing that I do but it's going to be the guitar that I sit in my bedroom and figure out Jake E Lee solos on, or whatever."

You played humbucker guitars for years but eventually came around to Telecasters. Was your signature model like the bridge between those worlds and is the Tele the main guitar in your solo world?

"Pretty much always. I mean, I record with a range of guitars – mostly that Butterscotch Tele that I've got is what I used for most of my new record. But I think I also played my signature model with the P-90s. And I'm sure I must have played a Les Paul on there somewhere… the slides solo on Weigh You Down is definitely my Les Paul because that's my guitar that I have jacked up for slide.

"I love a classic Tele sound.  That Paisley one that I've been playing a lot for a while, I put the Lindy Fralins in, I forget what they're called – Vintage Tele pickup in."

That's the guitar that says Fender on the headstock but isn't one?

"Correct. But I will tell you, we were just out in Chicago for Riot Fest and I went by Chicago Music Exchange and I actually bought a proper '68 Paisley telly. So I have that in my possession and I might leave the fake one at home for a while."

Compression is a big thing in country guitar – do you use one yourself? 

"I do. I don't quite have a handle on that. I only really use it when I've got a real clean tone. Because I just don't like the way a compressor pedal hits overdrive – I just don't like it for me. But it's great when there's that real compressed tone that you hear on a lot of '70s and '80s [records], and even beyond. That real kind of fuzzy thing that it's just kind of soft-sounding that you hear on a lot of those Merle Haggard records from the '80s or whatever."

Country music isn't part of pop culture in the UK, but it does have a growing audience. It's still easy to gravitate to rock and assume that's the first place to find electric guitar-playing talent. But would you say country music has always been where some of the greatest guitar playing could be found? 

"Oh yeah, country guitar playing is amazing. In rock 'n' roll music or modern rock, whatever you want to call it, I think there's a lot of great guitar playing now – lead guitar playing and stuff. But the kind of guitar playing that I grew up listening to got pretty taboo through a lot of the '90s and early 2000s. And that never happened in country music. 

"Country music has always embraced great playing – great ripping solo sections and all that sort of stuff. Nowadays this thing called Americana sort of came out of country music – this big umbrella word of traditional guitar playing. Anything with a bass, drum, keyboard and a singer gets called Americana now. A lot of it isn't country at all. So you can make an argument that Americana is rock 'n' roll or whatever. But there's so much overlap, and so many country players that rock music was a huge influence on and vice versa. So I would tell people, put down your biases, and just listen for the rippage!"

• Lost At Sea is out now on Snakefarm Records. Chris Shiflett and his band will tour the UK and Ireland in March 2024, playing the following dates:
  
  20 – Academy, Dublin
  21 – The Limelight 2, Belfast
  23 – Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow
  24 – Academy 2, Manchester
  25 – O2 Academy 2, Birmingham
  27 – Electric Ballroom, London
  
  More info at chrisshiflettmusic.com

The Foo Fighters are no strangers to collaboration – they even invite their fans up onstage to jam with them. Now H.E.R is the latest honoury Foo as she performed with the band on Saturday Night Live (28 October) – but she didn't bring either version of her signature Fender Strat.

The band's all-humbucker toting guitar lineup saw her utilising what looks to be a Charvel HSS Style 1 model in sleek satin black with a caramelised maple neck.

Elsewhere in the episode, Dave Grohl flexed his comedy chops, appearing in a number of skits on the show, while the Foos also performed their single Rescued (introduced by Christopher Walken) from 2023's But Here We Are album. 

As if there was any doubt, Shane Hawkins cemented his future as a drummer via his triumphant appearance at last year’s Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, providing a hard-hitting, powerful foundation for Foo Fighters on My Hero in honour of his late father.

While some corners of the internet had Shane tipped to succeed his dad in the Biggest Rock Band in The World, the reality of a teenager joining a band with a combined age of well over two-and-a-half centuries never seemed wholly likely. However, what was made clear is that Shane Hawkins is one hell of a drummer.

The stage might have been smaller for his latest live show, but this past weekend Shane delivered even more proof that he’s inherited the knack for the family trade by sitting in with Chevy Metal - the classic rock covers band founded by Taylor Hawkins as a side project.

Shane joined Chevy Metal for their show at the Canyon Club, Agoura Hills, California, on 29 July, raising money for the Rock & Roll Rescue dog shelter/adoption service. 

Sat behind a mix-and-match kit featuring drums seen in Hawkins’ social media clips, he echoed his father’s drum setup, with his cymbals set just high enough to reach, and auxiliary toms placed above the hi-hat.

Among the covers were Black Sabbath’s The Wizard, and Led Zeppelin, Moby Dick. The latter giving Shane the chance to flex with an impressive drum solo channelling both John Bonham and some heavy inspiration from Taylor Hawkins’ own solos in Foo Fighters.

Skid Row frontman, Sebastian Bach provided lead vocals for run-throughs of Van Halen’s version of The Kinks’ classic, You Really Got Me and Mötley Crüe, Looks That Kill. Meanwhile, the band backed Elliot Easton for two songs by The Cars - Just What I Needed and Good Times Roll. 

In addition to Shane Hawkins, Chevy Metal were also joined by three other drummers for the set: session ace, Kenny Aronoff, Poison’s Rikki Rockett and Foo Fighters engineer, John Lousteau.

Weezer drummer, Pat Wilson took time out from his day job this weekend to play guitar with Foo Fighters during their performance at the Fuji Rock festival in Japan.

Joining the band on Saturday, Wilson took the place of Foo Fighters’ regular Pat (Smear) to play guitar on Big Me from Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut album. 

Dave Grohl introduced Pat by saying, “Please welcome, the newest member of the Foo Fighters…he used to be in Weezer, now he’s in the Foo Fighters!” 

Of course, this led the audience to think he was about to aim the spotlight at Josh Freese, who contributed drums to Weezer’s 2009 album, Raditude as well as taking up the drum stool during Pat Wilson’s switch to guitar between 2009-2012.

At that, Wilson took to the stage, complete with Smear’s three-pickup Gibson SG Custom. After solidly running through the Beatles-inspired tune, the drummer displayed some unexpected lead chops by playing some tapped licks over the song’s ending.  

Wilson wasn’t the only guest to show up on stage with Foo Fighters on Saturday. Earlier in their set, the band were joined by Alanis Morissette for a version of Sinéad O’Connor’s Mandinka, paying tribute to the Irish singer, who passed away on July 26 aged 56. 

“We’re singing this song for a reason tonight.” says Dave Grohl, Alanis Morissette adding “For a beautiful woman with high intelligence and deep empathy, way ahead of her time, who is no longer with us.”

Josh Freese later took to social media, posting a photo of the drumming trio to explain how the Foos/Wilson collaboration came about. 

“Dave and I share a great love for Pat Wilson. We played Fuji Fest tonight and Weezer is playing tomorrow so we kidnapped him and took him a day early from Tokyo out here. Even got him up on stage to play guitar on a song. A fine time was had by all.”

Meanwhile, Foo Fighters recently uploaded pro-shot footage of Josh Freese’s debut with the band with the live version of Under You added to the band’s YouTube channel. The video is taken from the Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts performance, first broadcast via a livestream back in May.

The cat was finally released from the bag recently, as ace session drummer Josh Freese was announced as the Foo Fighters’ new drummer. With this has come a lot of explanation to those who aren’t familiar with Freese’s CV (so long, it has its own Wikipedia page).

Alongside the mentions of his stints with Guns N’ Roses, Nine Inch Nails, Sting, The Offspring, A Perfect Circle and many, many others, is the fact that Josh began his playing career as a 12-year-old at Disneyland.

In fact, Dave Grohl even addressed it himself during Foo Fighters’ Preparing Music For Concerts streamed event, where Freese’s new role was unveiled. Freese’s father, Stan Freese is a renowned tuba player and celebrated band leader, who in the 1980s — having already worked in Holywood on TV and film music — was Disney’s Director of Bands.

Josh was enlisted into the band, Polo, where as he told Grohl and the rest of the Foos, he’d accompany his bandmates through “Whatever was on the radio in ’85/’86, which was…we played three or four Huey Lewis songs, we played some Simple Minds, we played some Pet Shop Boys…”

This exposure led to Freese Jr’s profile expanding, and as he told DW (the drum brand he still plays to this day) in 2022 during a promo for its 50th anniversary kits, helped him snare an endorsement with the then-emerging California-based drum company.

But it wasn’t just acoustic drum companies who were interested in the young Disneyland drummer. Freese caught the attention of electronic drum set pioneer, Simmons (now owned by US retail giant, Guitar Center), who enlisted him to appear in a promotional video for its CB 700 series electronic drum set.

The Simmons CB 700 series was initially offered in three configurations: the tom-only SDS 200 (two tom inputs) and SDS 400 (four tom inputs), and the SDS 800 kit, featuring electronic kick, snare and two toms.  

Key features of each module included the ‘Second Skin’ control, which emulated the sound of double-headed toms, Run Generator which allowed the player to play multi-pitched fills from a single pad, and the addition of a headphone socket. That’s where the promo video comes in.

Thanks to the convenience of YouTube, the footage — originally intended for in-store use at Simmons dealers, and previously featured on The Vandals' Live at The House Of Blues DVD — is available for us to rewatch today. 

There are two clips - the first is designed to showcase the kit’s ‘Silent Practice’ capabilities via the inclusion of a headphone socket. We watch a young Freese enter his room, and don some headphones before being transported to a studio environment, all the while jamming to a soundtrack that’s so ’80s, it could be released as a synthwave track today. 

The clip cuts back to Freese in his room, definitely not disturbing his neighbours because he’s wearing headphones, remember?

The next clip, titled ‘Studio Tested’ begins with Freese executing a stadium-ready stick twirl in the same studio environment, while a producer works the faders and enthusiastically air-punches along to the groove. 

Young Freese busts out a four-bar solo, while an unknown teenage girl dances along and the voiceover once again announces “Introducing Simmons CB 700: Today’s hot drums for tomorrow’s hot drummer.” It’s scarily accurate, given Josh Freese’s future career trajectory. 

As a strange and sad coincidence, Taylor Hawkins scrawled CB 700 on his front bass drum head for one of his final gigs with Foo Fighters at Lollapalooza in Chile. The gag was a reference to the budget drum kit institution by the same name, a beginner drum set that gave many would-be drummers their first taste of the instrument.

Meanwhile, Josh Freese and Foo Fighters are currently rolling through a packed summer schedule of live dates. New album But Here We Are (featuring Dave Grohl on drums) is out now.  

Way back in 1999, Blink-182 were on their steep ascent from pop-punk brats, to worldwide rock stars. Third album, Enema of the State dropped on 1 June, and still-new drummer Travis Barker was about to become one of the best-loved drummers in contemporary rock. 

By the end of the year, Enema…would be well on its way to becoming a platinum-selling album, propelled by the band’s cameo and placement on the soundtrack to summer blockbuster, American Pie. But first, there was the small matter of Blink’s 30-odd scheduled performances on the US leg of that year’s Warped Tour to complete.

19 dates in, and Travis Barker had to sit out the band’s set at the Randall’s Island, New York date due to an unknown injury (although according to this Reddit thread, it was a problem with his finger). 

“It’s kind of an interesting show for us tonight.” says Tom DeLonge in an audio-only bootleg recording of the show (below, and definitely NSFW). Mark Hoppus adds, “Our drummer’s sick so we have fill-in drummers from four different bands playing tonight…wish us luck.”

Those drummers were Damon DeLaPaz (Fenix TX), Brooks Wackerman (Suicidal Tendencies), Byron McMackin (Pennywise) and Josh Freese (The Vandals). The night came full-circle, as Barker himself covered for an absent Josh Freese the year previous.

Luckily, Jeff 'Rhino' Neumann was on-hand with a video camera and captured multiple songs from the side of the kit, which have since surfaced via a Blink-182 fan account on YouTube. 

Travis Barker — clearly not unwell enough to miss the proceedings — looks on from feet away as the drummers and his bandmates smash their way through a short but sweet 10-song set comprising songs from Cheshire Cat, Dude Ranch, and five songs from Enema of the State.

Each drummer used Barker’s drums, and this being 1999 it’s an OCDP sparkle-wrapped blue/green/orange jellybean kit, Footage of Freese playing What’s My Age Again. Footage of Freese shows him blasting his way faithfully through two songs from Enema: mega-hit What’s My Age Again and Going Away to College. 

You can check out guest slots from the other drummers on the bill below. Meanwhile, Blink-182's classic line-up of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker are currently on tour, having recently made their live return at Coachella ahead of a new album, expected later this year.

It’s not often you get to watch a world-class rock band work on songs for a tour, but just as the intrigue of Peter Jackson’s fly-on-the-wall Beatles documentary, Let It Be slips the mask on what it’s like to be in the room with the biggest band in the world, Foo Fighters: Preparing Music For Concerts gives us insight into modern day rock heroes at a transitional point in their career.

Just over a year ago, the band was hit with tragedy when longterm drummer and second-biggest personality in the band, Taylor Hawkins died while the band was on tour in Colombia.

In that time, Foo Fighters staged two triumphant tribute concerts in honour of their late bandmate, announced their intentions to continue, recorded a new album and kept the world guessing as to who would play drums in the future.

That question was finally answered, with session drummer Josh Freese being unveiled at the start of the video, before we’re given a taste of what to expect from Foo Fighters’ packed live schedule for 2023.  

The hour-or-so-long event streamed 21 May via Veeps, and was captured at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606. There’s no big light show, no hyping of an audience, just a group of musicians clearly enjoying themselves. Here are just some of the reasons why drummers specifically will want to rewatch while they can.

Foo Fighters: Preparing Music For Concerts is available on demand here until 24 May

Josh Freese’s reveal easter eggs

Foos fans will know that the band has long been adept at keeping things under wraps (unless a Radio DJ happens to find out), and while some educated guesses pointed to Josh Freese for many months, it wasn’t fully confirmed by the band until the Preparing Music For Concerts video aired. In typical Foo Fighters fashion, Josh Freese’s position was unveiled with a skit.

The band staged a break-time conversation, which was subsequently interrupted by a cast of decoy drummers, each giving a Freese-related clue. Chad Smith mentioned that his car was being blocked by a white Mercedes (Freese’s daily driver), Tommy Lee brought the band P.F. Changs (another Freese favourite) while wearing a Vandals (Freese’s band) t-shirt, and Danny Carey thoughtfully brought two poodles (actually belonging to Freese) which he’d claimed to have just groomed. 

Finally, a voice chimes in, and we cut to Josh Freese sat behind a monstrous DW kit asking if “We could like, I don’t know, play a song or two…or something?” At that we’re treated to a ferocious extended live version of All My Life.

They debuted a brand new song

As well as the two new songs we’ve already heard studio versions of (Rescued and Under You), buried mid-set is another track from forthcoming album, But Here We Are, titled Nothing At All. It’s introduced after Grohl ponders a ‘mellow song’ to play, with an initial suggestion from Mendel of Hearing Voices (also as-yet unreleased). 

The band settles on Nothing At All, and Freese takes the opportunity (to some gentle ribbing) to swap his ride cymbal. What follows is a Police-influenced tune, reminiscent of Foo Fighters’ There is Nothing Left to Lose era with a drum part that sounds a bit like Copeland and Bonham having a drum hang. 

Barking hi-hats and a fat backbeat combine for the backdrop to skanking guitar chords on 2 and 4 in the verses before the chorus kicks in with pure vintage Foos alt-rock. It’s 3-out-of-3 for the new material so far, which makes us think we could be in for an incredibly strong comeback. 

Freese unleashed

Freese is obviously entering into a very close-knit inner circle of bandmates who have played together for decades, and one that has suffered a loss that could have ended it professionally, while the personal side may never be overcome. 

This is the first point we get to see Freese’s varied and seasoned career as a chameleonic sideman come into play, as he treads the line as ‘new guy’ expertly, allowing his drumming to do the talking. And talk they did. 

From the razor-sharp five-stroke stabs in All My Life, to the energetic double-kick-playing in No Son of Mine, the up-tempo power and energy of Monkey Wrench, a hypnotic and respectful version of Aurora (which Hawkins claimed as his favourite Foo Fighters song), there’s a lot to get excited about. That’s before the histrionic mid-song solos and trashcan endings, Freese plays it perfectly with faithful versions merging with a fresh personality, and there's a subtle nod to his friend Taylor Hawkins courtesy of the Hawk logo on his front bass drum heads .

The muso nerd-outs

All the members of Foo Fighters cut their teeth on the independent punk/alternative scene, but there are plenty of moments where we see how being one of the world’s biggest rock bands isn’t just a happy accident. If they appear to know what they’re doing it’s because they absolutely do, but the musician’s sense of humour is never far away. 

Dave Grohl is quick to mention Freese’s dual-bass drum set-up, even suggesting that they install a double-kick cam at some point. 

Elsewhere, there’s a comedy ‘downstroke practice’ following a slightly uptempo rendition of Monkey Wrench, and Freese explains how his earliest gigs were as a 12-year-old, playing Top 40 covers at Disneyland (following an impromptu jam of Huey Lewis’ Workin’ For A Livin’). 

It’s difficult to imagine how heavy the last 14 months have been for the band, so the muso geek humour lightens what could have been a sombre mood.  

The between-song chat is like a drum clinic at times

With the whole session captured in broadcast-quality, any drummer watching could only hope for a little bit of pro-shot drum chat between two of the most influential/most prolific rock drummers we’ve seen in decades, and we certainly got some glimpses. 

Grohl quizzes Josh on his application of double kicks, they discuss the drum part to new song, Nothing At All (specifically, the reason the hi-hats don’t play on the backbeats, prompting Freese to tip his cap to Charlie Watts). 

As a perhaps unintentional clue, Grohl talks about how he came up with the part and demoed it at home, adding weight to the likelihood that it’s Grohl drumming on the album. 

But it’s also some of the subtleties that give us insight into why Freese has a CV studded with A-list acts - the changing of a ride cymbal for one song, the confidence and humility to ask arrangement questions before playing Monkey Wrench rather than winging it, knowing where his lane is and how far out of it he can veer. 

As much as the water-tight, powerhouse and often startlingly brilliant drumming, Freese’s attitude and approach show why he got the gig. 

The Foo Fighters are officially back, and are armed with strong new songs that got their first chance to shine in a live setting during last night's (21 May) Preparing Music For Concerts livestream.

In addition to officially revealing Josh Freese as their live drummer, the band gave fans the chance to hear brand new song Nothing At All for the first time, alongside recent singles Resecued and Under You. 

The live stream was broadcast in black and white but Dave Grohl played what looked to be a white Gibson DG-335 signature model. We'll add that to the list of finishes we'd like to see if Gibson ever gets the wheels turning on core and Epiphone versions of the model.  The good news is interim CEO Cesar Gueikian seems open to it. 

Fellow Foos Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett clearly got the memo on B&W-friendly finishes with their SG, Gretsch White Falcon and Les Paul Custom too. 

A band that coordinates their guitars together, stays together.

The Foo Fighters will release new album But Here We Are on 2 June. 

Ever since Foo Fighters announced their intentions to continue as a band following the tragic passing of drummer, Taylor Hawkins, one question has remained unaddressed: who will be playing drums in the regrouped line-up?

Months of speculation has resulted in rumours of multiple strong candidates taking on the role - Rufus Taylor (The Darkness);  Atom Willard (Rocket From The Crypt, Angels and Airwaves); Jorma Vik (Eagles of Death Metal, The Bronx) are just three drummers who have been tipped for the hotseat.

However, one name that has been a constant throughout is Josh Freese, who’s drummed for everyone from Sting to Michael Bublé (so many, in fact, that he even forgot some of the records he's played on). 

Freese, a veteran session drummer who has also played with rock heavyweights including Nine Inch Nails, Evanescence, was also a founding member of A Perfect Circle and counts Devo and The Vandals amongst his regular gigs.

During both the London and LA Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts last year, Freese put in some heroic performances, teaming-up with Justin Hawkins, Dave Grohl and Wolfgang Van Halen on Van Halen covers, Hot For Teacher, On Fire and Panama, as well as joining Foo Fighters for a number of their original songs. For many (including us), this immediately cemented Freese’s position as a front-runner, if-and-when the band announced their future plans.

Now, just hours before Foo Fighters will stream Preparing Music For Concerts — a free-to-watch live performance captured at the band’s Studio 606 where the identity of who will be playing drums is set to be revealed — Paiste cymbals (the brand Freese plays) has taken to social media with a teaser that more or less confirms the news.

“Who is the new Foo Fighters drummer? Find out May 21 12:00 noon PST.” says the post, plugging a link to watch the event via Veeps. Crucially, though, is the accompanying picture which shows an intentionally blurred shot of what looks like an orange/copper kit in Freese’s often-used one-up/two-down configuration. 

Despite the blur, the lugs clearly resemble DW’s distinctive Turret design, and this being Paiste’s post, we don’t need to see the cymbals to know what brand they are.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Josh Freese is now a full-time Foo Fighter, or that he has contributed to the band’s new music, however we’re expecting to see Freese feature on the streamed event later today, and most likely the band’s packed schedule for the rest of 2023.  

Foo Fighters: Preparing music For Concerts will air today at 20:00 BST, 12:00 PST and 15:00 EST. To tune in, click here.

Foo Fighters have released Under You — the second song taken from their upcoming album, But Here We Are (released 2 June) following first single, Rescued — as well as announcing a free streaming event.

Under You is an uptempo slice of trademark Foo Fighters power-pop that wouldn’t sound out of place on There Is Nothing Left To Lose, with heartfelt lyrics (“Pictures of us sharing songs and cigarettes, this is how I’ll always picture you…”)

Now, we’re fairly confident that it’s a Dave Grohl drum part, but once again speculation remains high over who could be set to be joining Foo Fighters on drums.

Session ace, Josh Freese has been our pick since his role in the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts, and he's looking increasingly likely. 

Last week, Nine Inch Nails drummer, Ilan Rubin (who took over the NIN gig from Josh Freese) took to social media to confirm that he will be joining Danny Elfman’s live band (a position held by Freese) for shows on 2 and 5 August. 

While Elfman’s dates aren’t a direct clash with Foo Fighters’ current scheduled appearances, the announcement has prompted fans to suggest that Freese has cleared his schedule to make way for Foo Fighters dates on 4 and 6 August. 

However, it seems that the wait to find out who will be drumming for Foo Fighters will be over sooner than we anticipated, as the aforementioned streaming event takes place this Sunday, 21 May.

Hosted in association with Veeps, Foo Fighters: Preparing Music For Concerts is a free-to-watch event captured at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606.  

It starts at 20:00 BST, 15:00 EST and 12:00PST, and the event’s holding page promises “debut performances of new songs, behind the scenes footage & a few surprises.”

Click here to register for viewing.

Foo Fighters have recently been gearing-up for the band’s first live dates since the passing of drummer, Taylor Hawkins, and now the band has shared a brief clip of what appears to be a new song.

The clip follows comments made in February by UK radio presenter, Chris Moyles, who claimed live on air that Foo Fighters had a new album coming “in March”. 

Posted to the band’s social media channels on 12 April, the 13-second, un-named clip is accompanied by the caption “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” 

The clip, featuring a syncopated, octave-guitar riff, harks back to a blend of the band’s sound on In Your Honour and There Is Nothing Left to Lose backed by some dreamy chords while the drums play flams on the backbeat, interspersed with flowing tom fills.

It might be short, but the clip is just long enough to have set the comments section alight with questions and speculation over who is drumming on the recording and who will be filling the drum stool for the band’s packed summer schedule.

Many fans are convinced that the drummer on the recording is Dave Grohl, and while there’s not much to go on, there’s enough to lend that theory weight: the huge snare backbeat and pounding toms for a start, coupled with the fact that Grohl is the most obvious candidate to play drums on a Foo Fighters recording in Hawkins’ absence. However, both stylistically and logistically this could quite easily be a Taylor Hawkins drum track recorded prior to his death.

Which leaves the big question: who will be drumming for Foo Fighters’ upcoming live shows? Comments from fans are still centred around three main candidates: Pearl Jam’s Matt Cameron, The Darkness’ Rufus Taylor and session drummer Josh Freese who’s played with, well…pretty much everyone.

Matt Cameron is seemingly out of the running, having said pretty clearly that “The internet rumours are false, I haven’t joined the Foos”.

Rufus Taylor has been another strongly-rumoured replacement for his “hero, mentor and big brother”, however following The Darkness’ recent announcement of an anniversary tour marking 20 years since the band released debut album Permission to Land (and the fact both bands have clashing live dates), we think this is also unlikely.

A quick look at Devo’s calendar shows that frontrunner Josh Freese will either be in Europe and the US at the same time in August, or depping-out Devo’s European dates in order for it to be him. But that’s not out of the question, given that former Devo drummer Dave Kendrick, former Offspring drummer Pete Parada and drummer/comedian Fred Armisen have all filled-in for Freese with Devo at times.  

Another name that has been mentioned in relation to Foo Fighters recently is ex-Angels and Airwaves drummer, Atom Willard. Back in March, The Sun named Willard and Matt Cameron as likely replacements (possibly even sharing the live schedule) for Hawkins after the former posted footage of himself at Foo Fighters’ Studio 606, adding that he was using some of Taylor Hawkins' drum shells. 

However, while there’s no denying that Atom Willard would do an incredible job, the tabloid overlooked the fact that Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba — who Atom has previously played with — was also present in the video, making it likely that the two are working on new material.

That’s before we even consider other heavyweight drummers including Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk, who appears to have a clear schedule following Tom Morello’s recent response to when RATM could play live again.

So, we’re none the wiser beyond the fact that, whatever it is and whoever will be drumming, there appears to be new Foo Fighters music coming very soon.

Foo Fighters are currently scheduled to make their live return on 24 May in New Hampshire. For a full list of tour dates, click here. 

It’s hard to believe that a whole year has passed since Foo Fighters drummer, Taylor Hawkins’ life was tragically cut short while on tour in Bogotá, Colombia, but today (25 March) marks the one-year anniversary of the beloved drum hero’s death. 

To pay tribute to the fallen rocker, Belgian band Black Box Revelation organised a mob of 100 drummers, and took over Belgium’s Sportpaleis stadium in Antwerp - the venue which was the scene of Hawkins’ final Belgian performance in 2018 - for a cover of Foo Fighters’ My Hero.

It begins with Black Box Revelation drummer, Dries Van Dijck beating out the song’s intro, before the thunderous crowd of 100 additional drummers - all dressed in black t-shirts sporting a silhouette of a Hawk - join in. 

The song, which featured as a single from Foo Fighters’ 1997 second album, The Colour and the Shape, famously features a double-drum intro. As was well documented in Foo Fighters’ own documentary, Back and Forth, Dave Grohl took over drum duties from original drummer, William Goldsmith during the album’s tracking process, recording My Hero’s drum intro on two separate kits.

Hawkins wasn’t in the band at this point, however since his passing, My Hero has become an anthem closely associated to him, due in no small part to his son Shane’s energetic and emotional performance of the song with Foo Fighters at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts.  

A statement from Black Box Revelation says, “Taylor Hawkins was the best drummer of our times. Honouring him with this tribute was an experience we will never forget.”

Foo Fighters are scheduled to play at a number of festivals this summer, and are yet to announce who will be behind the kit. For a full list of tour dates, click here.

At the start of the month, the Foo Fighters pulled together a who's who of rockstars for a musical marathon that will go down in history as one of the greatest lineups to ever grace Wembly's stage. The lucky attendees of Wembley Stadium were treated to the rock gig of the decade, with energetic performances from the likes of Queen and Brian Johnson, a reunited Them Crooked Vultures, and a masterclass of technique from Rush - not to mention a surprise appearance from Paul McCartney. 

Now, you'd think one concert of that magnitude would be enough, but today, Dave Grohl and co. are taking to the stage again to honour their late drummer and friend, Taylor Hawkins, with yet another mega-show. Taking place at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California, this star-studded tribute promises to be just as thrilling as its British counterpart, with many big names added to the bill in the last few days. US fans can expect exhilarating performances from the likes of Tool's Danny Carey, Soundgarden's Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron, and Motley Crue's Tommy Lee, among many others. 

How to stream the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert

While the London concert was available to stream live on MTV's YouTube channel worldwide, unfortunately, that stream isn't available for the LA show. 

There is also no official word about whether the show will be available on-demand via Paramount+, like the London concert. We are really hoping that they release footage of the show in some capacity, as if it's anything like the first tribute, it will be a night to remember! 

Now, while you may not be able to watch the LA concert, the London performance is still available in its entirety via Paramount+. Paramount's streaming service is available for $4.99/£6.99 a month and contains a wealth of TV shows and films, as well as the Foo Fighters' love letter to their fallen bandmate. 

It should also be said that Paramount+ offers a generous free 7-day trial, so you can sign up and try it out before you part with your hard-earned cash. 

How to watch outside of your permitted broadcast area

So you want to join the celebration of this larger-than-life drummer, but unfortunately, Paramount+ is not available in your country? Well don't worry, all you need is a VPN. 

These Virtual Private Networks are used to change the location of your IP address, therefore tricking the streaming service into thinking you are, in fact, viewing from the USA - or any other country for that matter. Express VPN is our service of choice and is currently available on a 30-day trial.

Who is performing at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert?

Dave Grohl has made sure to populate the stage with Taylor’s biggest influences and favourite musicians, with the likes of Travis Barker, Geezer Butler, Matt Cameron, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, Alanis Morissette, Miley Cyrus, John Paul Jones, Chad Smith, Brad Wilk, Brian May and Roger Taylor, Krist Novoselic, Nancy Wilson, Joshua Homme, Jon Theodore, and Alain Johannes, Joan Jett, P!NK, Stewart Copeland, Chris Chaney, Gene Simmons, Nikki Sixx, Mark Ronson, Omar Hakim and Chevy Metal.

Additional guests were announced a matter of days ago, with the likes of Danny Carey, Tommy Lee, Kim Thayil, Justin Hawkins, Taylor Momsen, and Kesha all being added to the bill. 

Now, Wembley were treated to a surprise performance from Paul McCartney, but we'll just have to wait until the night to see what Dave has up his sleeve for the LA audience.