Foo Fighters is the debut studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on June 26, 1995, through Roswell and Capitol Records in the United Kingdom and on July 4, 1995 in the United States. Former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl wrote the entire album. He recorded it himself in six days with the assistance of producer Barrett Jones at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle, Washington, in 1994.
Grohl said that he recorded the album just for fun, describing it as a cathartic experience to recover from the suicide of Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain in 1994. The album, featuring more traditional rock stylings than what was typical in grunge, is considered to have established the post-grunge genre.
After Grohl completed the recordings, he passed cassette copies of the sessions to personal friends, using the name "Foo Fighters" to conceal his involvement. When the tapes attracted record label interest, Grohl signed with Capitol and formed a backing band to perform the songs live. The album was promoted through extensive tours and four singles, two of which were accompanied by music videos.
Upon its release, Foo Fighters earned critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its songwriting and performances, and was also a commercial success, becoming the band's second-best-selling album in the United States. It also peaked within the top five of charts of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Background
In 1990, Dave Grohl joined the grunge band Nirvana as drummer. During tours, he took a guitar with him and wrote songs, but was too intimidated to share them with the band, as he was "in awe" of the songs written by frontman Kurt Cobain. Grohl occasionally booked studio time to record demos and covers, issuing an album of demos, Pocketwatch, under the pseudonym Late! in 1992.
Following Cobain's suicide in April 1994, Grohl entered a state of depression, and found it difficult to both listen to music and play instruments.
Grohl's first musical performance after the demise of Nirvana was with The Backbeat Band at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards in June. Soon thereafter, Mike Watt invited Grohl to play drums on his album Ball-Hog or Tugboat? (1995). Grohl enjoyed these experiences and thus decided to work on his own musical project, which he believed could serve as "some sort of cathartic therapy". Although Grohl played all the instruments on the album, he intended to release it under a name that would make people believe it to be the work of a full band, similar to Stewart Copeland's 1980 EP Klark Kent.
Recording
Grohl and Jones produced the record across a period of one week in October 1994, with Grohl on vocals and all instruments. Both would arrive in the morning at Robert Lang Studios, start production by noon and do four songs a day. Each song took about 45 minutes to be completed, and the compositions were recorded in the same order that became the album's track listing. The only song that required two run-throughs before completion was "I'll Stick Around". It would be a very low-key release, with only 100 LP records being pressed after the sessions were finished. Eddie Vedder premiered two songs from the recording on January 8, 1995, during his Self-Pollution radio broadcast.
The mixing sessions of the album began in Robert Lang Studios (which were used on the 100 tapes Grohl gave away) but eventually those mixes were discarded and the sessions moved to Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock's "The Shop" studio in Arcata, California. Mixes were done on a 32 channel API DeMedio console, custom built by Frank DeMedio in 1972 for Wally Heider Recording's 'Studio 4'. A Stephen's 24 track 2" tape machine was used for playback. Processors used in the mixes included an Eventide Omnipressor compressor for vocals and guitar solos, an Alan Smart stereo compressor for "squashing" the drums and mixing them back in as well as being used over the entire mix. Other processors included UREI 1176 and LA3A compressors as well as an Echoplex for delays and a "crappy digital reverb". Mixes were "nothing that crazy" Rob described, adding that he "mixed 'Big Me' in 20 minutes".
During the sessions, Grohl was invited by Tom Petty to perform with The Heartbreakers on Saturday Night Live one month later. The performance was followed by an invitation to be a full-time member of the Heartbreakers, but once Petty heard about the Foo Fighters, he instead encouraged Grohl to move on with this solo project. The only compositions done after Cobain's death were "This Is a Call", "I'll Stick Around", "X-Static" and "Wattershed". The album's sound has been primarily described as punk rock, alternative rock, melodic hardcore, and post-grunge. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that the album was a "handful of punk-pop gems that show, given the right musicians and songwriters, the genre had not entirely become a cliché by the middle of the '90s." As Grohl later explained, "I had seven days to record fifteen songs. I was just concentrating on everything being as together as possible, having everything be tight and in sync. There wasn't too much time spent sitting in a chair thinking." Contrasting with the aggressive and rebellious themes of Nirvana, Grohl had positive and cheery tunes such as "This Is a Call", defined as "a 'hello' and a 'thank you'" to everyone that had played a key role in Grohl's life; Some reviewers considered the gun on the cover insensitive, given Kurt Cobain died by shooting himself, but Grohl dutifully disregarded it as just a coincidence. As well as performing with their own bands, Grohl and Vedder each picked up a role as a member of Watt's backing band throughout the tour, supplying drums and guitar respectively. In May 1995, radio stations KROQ-FM and KNDD started playing some tracks of the then-unreleased album before receiving a cease-and-desist from Capitol. That June, "Exhausted" and "This Is a Call" were sent to college and modern rock radio stations.
"I'll Stick Around" was issued as the second single on September 4, 1995, and would also mark Foo Fighters' music video debut, directed by Gerald Casale. That fall, the band continued to tour extensively, and visits to Japan, Australia and New Zealand. and "Big Me" in 1996. Additionally, "Alone + Easy Target" was released as promotional single in 1996. "Big Me" was the band's first commercial single to be made available in the US; it was also the second song on the album to receive a music video. Directed by Jesse Peretz, the music video parodies the distinctive commercials used to advertise Mentos candy.